A string of sham cancer charities busted this week by the Federal Trade Commission for ripping off tens of thousands of donors, pocketed nearly $200-million in contributions in just a five-year period.
Investigators say between 2008 and 2012 the owner of the bogus charitable foundations, James T. Reynolds Sr., collected cancer contributions on total pretext, and used them to enrich himself, his family members, and his friends -- none of whom have the dreaded ailment.
Reynolds and his crooked crew also redirected donors’ well-intended dollars for such frivolous things as Hooter excursions and Caribbean cruises, in addition to tuition expenses, dating site membership dues, and Victoria Secret shopping sprees.
Worse, he cooked the books to hide the fraud and claimed instead in his corporate literature that “100 percent of proceeds” went to cancer patients in the form of hospice care, chemotherapy transportation, pain medications, etc.
“These were lies,” the FTC states in its criminal complaint, accusing the sham cancer charities of actually spending less than 3-percent of donations on cancer patients, and specifically citing the Children’s Cancer Fund as one of Reynolds’ top offenders.
“Some charities use donations to send children with cancer to Disney World,” said the outraged secretary of state for South Carolina -- one of 50 plaintiff states suing to recoup donor funds -- “but in this case the Children’s Cancer Fund of America used donations to send themselves to Disney World.”
Also named in the massive lawsuit was Reynolds’ so called Cancer Support Services and his bogus Breast Cancer Society.
Government officials say that four groups in all spent almost every penny of the donations they received on nonstop fund-raising, huge salaries and unearned bonuses, among other illicit things.
A day after being served the complaint against them, all those charities’ websites had virtually disappeared.
Although the degree of fraud committed by James Reynolds and his heartless cohorts is mindboggling, it was easy to perpetrate, explains a top official for the Better Business Bureau. “Because, if you get a phone call, your response is ‘I know someone who had cancer' or 'I had cancer' … and your instinct is to open your wallet.”
Neither Reynolds, nor his various associates, responded to messages for comment at the time this story broke.
