The initial court hearing over a leadership crisis at the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now and a possible coverup of a $1 million embezzlement scandal was scuttled Thursday when it became clear that defendants had not been properly served notice of the proceedings.
“It appears that due to Hurricanes Ike and/or Gustav, there was a service problem,” Civil District Court Judge Michael Bagneris said after an hour and 45 minutes of delays.
But Bagneris took the opportunity of having lawyers for most of the stakeholders in the room to craft a solution that could enable ACORN to work through some of its challenges without facing a messy court battle.
ACORN is facing tough times after Dale Rathke, the brother of ACORN founder Wade Rathke, was accused of embezzling in 1999 and 2000 $948,507 in faulty credit card charges while working as comptroller of an organization that kept the books for all of the ACORN-affiliated groups across the country. When Wade Rathke was alerted of the fraud in 2001, he set up a formal schedule for his brother to repay the debt at a rate of about $30,000 a year. After $214,000 had been repaid, a California donor stepped in this summer and paid the rest.
But not everyone on the board knew of the arrangements, and when an ACORN donor raised questions this spring about the incident, the board smelled a coverup and asked Rathke to step aside. The situation has since disintegrated into leadership fights at the organization.
ACORN leaders from across the country assembled at the New Orleans court Thursday morning after two members of an interim management committee filed suit to make sure that financial records at Citizens Consulting Inc. , where Dale Rathke worked, would be preserved and made available to the board. In their suit, they also sought to enforce a board resolution directing Wade Rathke to step aside from all ACORN organizations, after he left his post as chief organizer of the group’s domestic operations but went to work for ACORN International .
Later, the full 51-member board said the two management committee members had exceeded their authority and sought to have the suit withdrawn.
But Bagneris found a way to resolve the issues without conducting a hearing. He secured a pledge from Citizens Consulting that the records would not be destroyed, then instructed the national board to figure out who was authorized to represent the group at its Oct. 17 meeting in New Orleans in the presence of a court reporter. If there is still a dispute about who gets to inspect the records after a Nov. 7 status conference in the case of ACORN v. Wade Rathke et al, Bagneris said he would schedule a hearing.
But as the court helped shape how the inquiries would proceed into the affairs of one of the nation’s most prominent social justice groups, many people around town were filled with questions about the embezzlement.
Chief among them: How could Dale Rathke spend some $40,000 a month, as he is accused? Why did it take two years for anyone to notice lavish spending on food, travel and entertainment? When Wade Rathke devised the repayment plan, was he trying to protect his brother’s interests or the organization’s? And while ACORN was dealing with the theft, did the group keep a lower-than-normal profile, thereby short-changing its supporters on issues of the day?
Another set of questions exists about ACORN’s legal liability in the financial scandal and Wade Rathke’s handling of it.
Dane Ciolino, a Loyola law professor with experience in criminal and ethical questions, said ACORN officers who knew about the embezzlement may have violated their fiduciary responsibilities to the board by failing to report what happened. It is also possible they may have committed the federal crime of “misprision” if they did anything to conceal the theft, Ciolino said.
But Tania Tetlow, a former federal prosecutor who teaches at Tulane Law School, said the statute of limitations on most federal crimes is five years, so it may not matter.
Bertha Lewis, a New York ACORN leader who replaced Wade Rathke on an interim basis as chief organizer, said the answers to these questions will become more clear in a few weeks when Sidley Austin LLP , the Chicago global law firm ACORN hired to assess its legal exposure over the handling of the embezzlement, reports to the board. ACORN has hired another law firm to assess its corporate structure and a financial firm to overhaul its accounting controls to ensure it has the credibility to move forward.
Vanessa Gueringer, chair of the Lower 9th Ward chapter of ACORN and a national executive board member, said the most important thing is that her group’s efforts continue.
ACORN is dispatching part-time employees around the state of Michigan to register voters. The problem is more than 200,000 “new” voters have been registered in that state with widespread problem applications. The Free Press identified the problem. Here is what they wrote today.
Several municipal clerks across the state are reporting fraudulent and duplicate voter registration applications, most of them from a nationwide community activist group working to help low- and moderate-income families.
The majority of the problem applications are coming from the group ACORN, Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, which has a large voter registration program among its many social service programs. ACORN’s Michigan branch, based in Detroit, has enrolled 200,000 voters statewide in recent months, mostly with the use of paid, part-time employees.
Freep spoke with the Secretary of State about ACORN.
“There appears to be a sizeable number of duplicate and fraudulent applications,” said Kelly Chesney, spokeswoman for the Michigan Secretary of State’s Office. “And it appears to be widespread.”
Chesney said her office has had discussions with ACORN officials after local clerks reported the questionable applications to the state. Chesney said some of the applications are duplicates and some appear to be names that have been made up. The Secretary of State’s Office has turned over several of the applications to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
The Secretary of State has done her job, but the U.S.Attorney’s office refused to comment on the applications that were turned over to their office. Nor did they comment on whether there is an ongoing investigation.
And what did ACORN say, what they always do!
ACORN officials said they were looking into the problem.
“We’ll do an investigation to see what’s happening,” said David Lagstein, a spokesman for the Detroit office. “If it’s really as many as that, it warrants further investigation.”
And we are aware of the fact they do not police themselves. It usually takes a Justice Department investigation to find employees guilty of voter fraud. This just isn’t enough anymore. The paltry $25,000 fine by the State of Washington has not curtailed their fraudulent work, if anything ACORN seems to be ramping up efforts to register voters fraudulently. Their excuse is lack of attention to detail or sloppiness. In my opinion it is neither. I believe it is because of inadequate training. We will never know the real reason why this fraud continues. However we do know it is a real problem in states like Michigan.
Why is this a real problem in Michigan this year?
Simply because Michigan is a key battleground state in the presidential election this year. According to WZZM13.com, Michigan is a “yellow state”. More from WZZM13:
Michigan has been called a yellow state, a battleground state, neither red nor blue, and worth 17 electoral votes in what pollsters are showing to be a tight presidential race here between Republican candidate John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama.
This is what some of the clerks responsible for checking “all” incoming applications said:
In Pontiac, where several thousand applications have been submitted by ACORN in the last few weeks for the November election, the clerk’s office is finding that numerous applications are sometimes filed under one name.
“What it causes is a slowdown of our operations,” said Pontiac City Clerk Yvette Talley. “They’re steadily coming in, and we are finding a huge number of duplications.”
Talley said she could not provide an exact number.
Clerks are required to check their records against a statewide database of all registered voters within their jurisdiction, so it would be unlikely that duplications would allow voters to cast their votes more than once, Talley said.
“We catch them all, but it’s taking up a lot of our time,” she said.
In Oak Park, clerk Sandra Gadd said they have been seeing “lots of duplication” from ACORN in recent months but were reassured by ACORN officials that the group was working to correct the problem.
“They’ve been very cooperative,” Gadd said. “I spoke with them this week. They called me, and they’re willing to go door-to-door to do whatever they have to do to take care of this.”
I have a burning question for the Justice Department….What are you going to do stop ACORN’s voter fraud? When will their ability to cause problems in localities checking voter applications during an election year be ended for good? Your completed actions against ACORN employees isn’t doing the job! ACORN must be stopped now!
Looks like the folks inside the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) are finally showing how upset they are that their chief tried to hide the fact that his brother embezzled a million dollars from the organization.
The Pittsburgh Tribune reports that some members of the board are suing founder Wade Rathke for the cover up attempt.
Board members Marcel Reid and Karen Inman are seeking a court order that also would sever ties between ACORN and founder Wade Rathke, The New York Times reported Tuesday. Although Rathke resigned as chief organizer, he oversees staff and expenditures, the lawsuit contends.
The court action reflects continuing turmoil at ACORN. Rathke resigned after it became public this summer that his brother, Dale Rathke, embezzled $948,607.50.
Rathke tried to hide the fact that his brother stole a cool one mil from the organization’s funds several years ago. Looks like his buddies on the ACORN Board are finally fed up.
Of course, this points to the sort of corruption endemic with the mindset of the group in the first place. That its founder thought he could cover up such a criminal action speaks to the place of privilege he thinks he and his brother holds. He and his brother are above the law, apparently.
In any case, let’s hope everyone gets what they deserve here.
This expose is cross posted from NoQuarter. Here is the link: http://noquarterusa.net/blog/.
Irrefutable evidence indicates that Obama’s campaign has been doing business with CSI, which appears to have been operating fraudulently in the State of Maryland and Ohio, and ACORN, which has been associated with a laundry list of fraudulent business practices. The full nature of the relationship between ACORN and Citizens Services Inc is not known but this much is clear: both share the same address in
New Orleans and officials with CSI refer folks to ACORN for questions about “political consulting” and “Get-Out-The-Vote” activities. These are questions that mainstream media should examine.
According to Wikipedia, ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, was founded in 1970 as “a community organization of low- and moderate-income families that addresses housing, schools, neighborhood safety, health care, job conditions, and other social issues that affect its members.” Voter registration has been a major activity for the organization and ACORN has been working actively to register voters on behalf of the Obama campaign. According to the Milwaukee Journal Online,
The ACORN effort is part of a massive voter registration drive aimed at the fall presidential election, which is expected to pit Democratic Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois against Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona.
Although voter registration and Get Out the Vote drives seem like noble activities, in fact, not all of ACORNs dealings have been legal, and once again ACORN is facing investigation for illegal voter registration:
Criminal investigations could be launched against at least six voter registration workers who tried to add dead, imprisoned or imaginary people to the voter rolls, according to the Milwaukee Election Commission and the organization that employed them.
This is not the first time that ACORN has been under criminal investigation. I have already looked at Obama’s connections to ACORN and put into context ACORN’s fraudulent activities during the primary election season here, and here. In fact, the same Wiki entry list five earlier indictments:
August 6, 2008 - 2:08 pm - Posted by Union Labeler
KRQE in Albuquerque exposes ACORN voter registration done by thieves, child rapists, and drug dealers. ACORN does not currently perform background checks on their workers, but don’t worry… they’re “thinking about it.”
After seven years of hiding corruption, ACORN has admitted Dale Rathke, brother of founder, Wade Rathke had embezzled nearly $1 million from the company. The embezzlement was only known to a few and was hidden from the remainder of the ACORN board. Unfortunately the wide scale corruption doesn’t even start with the embezzlement. The embezzlement is part of a much longer line of illegal activity.
ACORN is connected to money laundering, misuse of taxpayer funds, voter fraud especially in the Presidential Primaries, Wage and Hour Issues among their employees, and even safety issues in their offices. They are interfering in gubernatorial races especially in the State of Indiana. Their interference in the political arena knows no bounds. ACORN is the umbrella company to at least 75 non-profits all operating out of 1024 Elysian Fields Avenue, New Orleans, LA as verified by the Secretary of State in Louisiana. It is time to examine their fraud and expose it for what it is. So here is their dirty laundry list to date.
Money Laundering
The money laundering that was identified by the Consumer Rights League was released in a report in June 2008. The money laundering happened in 1996 and involved the Teamster’s Union, causing the president’s election to be thrown out by federal Read the rest of this entry »
We have been reporting a bit on the Association of Community Organizations for Reform (ACORN) this week on the Union Label Blog and ACORN is an organization that bears close watch. It was reported that ACORN made $2.9 million from organized labor last year and a lot of this money seems to be slipping past Federal regulators raising significant questions of ACORN ties to big labor.
This money paid to ACORN supposedly covered the expenses for a number of shadowy union activities.
Training organizers to devise and implement anti-corporate campaigns
Providing “strike support”
Conducting campaign research and providing staffing
“Protecting market share”
Some of these services ware also paid on retainer and not just after services rendered.
ACORN has developed very close ties to the labor movement becoming a sort of “one-stop shop for unions looking to contract out labor activities,” according to Maverick Strategies. ACORN’s efforts have thus far flown under the radar for Federal regulatory agencies that act as watchdogs and regulators over union activities.
ACORN has, for instance, worked closely with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW). Most notably ACORN served to train SEIU staffers in the anti-Wal-Mart efforts the SIEU launched in the last few years.
Some of ACORN’s recent activities are as follows:
SEIU paid ACORN founder and chief of anti-Wal-Mart strategies Wade Rathke $21,885 in salary and $5,233 in expenses for the role of “campaign project organizer.”
SEIU gave $50,000 contribution to “Walmart Associations” in the care of Wade Rathke
SEIU paid a $126,000 “subsidy” to Wal-Mart Alliance for Reform Now, operated by ACORN
Change to Win paid ACORN $30,000 for a “public awareness campaign.”
SEIU twice awarded ACORN a $40,000 “monthly retainer.”
SEIU paid more than $970,000 to ACORN’s ACLOC program for “training.”
SEIU Local 5 paid ACLOC $58,487 for an internship phase and for an “organizing partnership.”
UFCW hired ACLOC as a “consultant for organizing program” at a cost of $429,431
UFCW Local 876 paid $131,089 for a “community standards program.”
ACORN is also on record as providing direct staffing for various labor union efforts and programs as opposed to mere training and consultancy work, as well.
This close relationship raises questions as to whether ACORN should fall under Federal regulations as a labor organization.
This video just came in via BlockersRus.com. The video shows ACORN employees admitting they are on the payroll, and admitting they haven’t even read the language of the petition they are blocking. It’s a shame that ACORN ignores the basic principles of free speech by sending paid bully’s to intimidate voters.
Keep an eye on our new ACORN Section as we’ll be bringing you a lot more info in the coming months.
As we all know… unions are some of the most corrupt organizations in the country. Union thugs work to limit free speech by blocking the initiative process, they scam union members by using dues for fraud type transactions and political activism, and they corrupt the American political process on all fronts.
This is why we at the Union Label Blog have worked hard to keep the union news flowing, and our stats are showing that people are indeed interested to hear what we have to say.
Because of this growth in traffic and attention, we’ve decided to add a section documenting election fraud via ACORN, an organization that is doing everything possible to cheat the American voters out of fair elections.
Some ACORN allies will preach about the organization being there for the low income families who need help, but they refuse to include anything about ACORN’s massive election fraud campaigns, attacks on free speech, and internal fraud/corruption.
Which brings us back to the perfect timing of taking this new section live… and this is extremely important for those of you who might think ACORN is looking out for your best interest.
Wade Rathke, who founded ACORN in 1970, left his position as the organization’s chief organizer after an embezzlement scandal that occurred eight years ago surfaced last month involving his brother and the group’s finances. ACORN’s national board asked Rathke to step down from his position about a week ago. Rathke’s brother, Dale, embezzled almost $1 million from the community group but the crime was handled internally and not reported to the police, allegedly at the behest of Wade Rathke.
The founder of ACORN and his brother were scamming members of the organization for years!
According to the New York Times column on the story, the organization hid the fraud from the board as well as its members because it was afraid of giving groups who might feel this is unacceptable, you know… as in… MOST AMERICANS, ammunition to fire at ACORN.
He said the decision to keep the matter secret was not made to protect his brother but because word of the embezzlement would have put a “weapon” into the hands of enemies of Acorn, a liberal group that is a frequent target of conservatives who object to its often strident advocacy on behalf of low- and moderate-income families and workers.
And apparently a lot of the staffers who were either aware of the rip off eight years ago when it started, or were actually a part of it, are still working at ACORN.
But the fact that most of the handful of people who did not disclose the fraud when they learned of it eight years ago still work for Acorn or its affiliates concerns many of the group’s financial supporters.
Have no doubt folks, ACORN is a big scam, an insult to Americans, a hindrance to the American voting process, and this sort of thing will only continue to get worse moving forward.
If you want to keep up to date with union corruption, as well as the ACORN scam of America, please sign up for e-mail updates and RSS feeds on our site.
After seven years of hiding corruption, ACORN has admitted Dale Rathke, brother of founder, Wade Rathke had embezzled nearly $1 million from the company. The embezzlement was only known to a few and was hidden from the remainder of the ACORN board. Unfortunately the wide scale corruption doesn’t even start with the embezzlement. The embezzlement is part of a much longer line of illegal activity. 
