2006 NONPROFIT HALL OF SHAME

Are nonprofits just sitting ducks? Is it easier to steal from a nonprofit? or is it a limit of imagination...our hearts are in the right place so much so that we can't conceive of someone setting out to take advantage...

Still every month (even every week at times), another story of a nonprofit fraud. NOTE: these are not charities who have defrauded the public, but rather charities who have been the victims of fraud.

SEPTEMBER 29, 2006

METHUEN, Mass. A Methuen woman faces two dozen felony charges for allegedly stealing from the Children's Glaucoma Foundation. ...45-year-old Karen Sicher stole more than half a million dollars from the Boston-based nonprofit organization....

SEPTEMBER 24, 2006

Elaine Bernard and Carol Dela Torre (launched) Genesis in 1987, eventually turning the Fresno group home and foster-care business into an $8 million annual enterprise caring for neglected, abused and abandoned children...Now the sisters...are accused of using the nonprofit's credit cards and business checks to skim more than $500,000 from the nonprofit business between 1996 and 2002, squandering public money intended for children on vacations and shopping sprees.

SEPTEMBER 12, 2006

TEWKSBURY — A former chief financial officer and another ex-employee of Oldwick's Work-Family Connection have been charged with embezzling more than $50,000 from the nonprofit agency, authorities said.

To further explore (deconstruct?) a recent non-profit fraud and see what steps you can take to prevent it at your organization refer to Risky Business.

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Comments

Anonymous said…
Hi Pam - Great post - My reply, however, got to be a bit too long and so I've posted it on my blog:
http://nonprofitconsultant.blogspot.com/2006/10/fraud-burnout-and-getting-what-we.html
10/01/2006 9:49 AM
"a fundraiser" said…
Great post as well. Despite the fact that my blgo focuses almost exclusively on these types of stories that fundraisers don't want to tell the donor. I honestly do not believe that nonprofit organizations are more at risk than for profit companies when it comes to fraud... and I certainly don't buy the burn-out excuse.
11/25/2006 1:15 PM
Anonymous said…
I keep hearing strange stories about Sibley Memorial Hospital -- Lucy Webb Hayes Foundation -- according to the Guidestar 990, the hospital had over 400 million cash. That makes the hospital the richest in DC and one of the richest in the US.

Robert Sloan, Sibley President tells its staff -- We're in dire financial straits. Plan on budget cuts.

Board members have hinted that Sibley has lost half of its endowment -- we're down to 260 million.

Where did our hospital money go?
5/28/2009 7:42 PM
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