Cancer Charities Exec Stole $187 Million for Personal Use

Cancer Charities Exec Stole $187 Million for Personal Use

By Brianna Ehley, The Fiscal Times

Donors who have given money to four of the largest cancer charities in the United States may have unknowingly been financing the  lavish lifestyle of the C.E.O. who runs them—paying for luxury cruises, elite gym memberships instead of treatment for cancer patients. 

That’s according to a suit filed Tuesday by the Federal Trade Commission as well as attorneys general in all 50 states, which alleges that James Reynolds deceived and defrauded donors out of more than $187 million between four of his charities—including the Cancer Fund of America, Cancer Support Services, Children’s Cancer Fund of America and the Breast Cancer Society. 

Related: Medicare Recovers Nearly $28 Billion in Fraud Since 1997

The complaint says that the scheme started in the 1980’s. The charities told donors via telemarketing calls that their money would go toward medicine and transportation for cancer patients. However, most of the money actually went toward Reynolds’ personal indulges. 

The complaint says that between 2008 and 2012, only three percent of donations actually went to cancer patients. 

The FTC also accuses the organizations of cooking their books and reporting inflated revenues as well as “gifts in kind” that they said they distributed internationally. 

The FTC said two of the charities—the Children’s Cancer Fund of America and the Breast Cancer Society plan to settle the charges out of court. The Associated Press reported that the Breast Cancer Society, posted a statement on its website Tuesday blaming increased government scrutiny for the charity's downfall. 

"While the organization, its officers and directors have not been found guilty of any allegations of wrongdoing, and the government has not proven otherwise, our board of directors has decided that it does not help those who we seek to serve, and those who remain in need, for us to engage in a highly publicized, expensive, and distracting legal battle around our fundraising practices," the statement said. 

Several executives who were also involved in the sccheme, including Reynolds’ son, have agreed to a settlement, which bans them from working in fundraising or charities. The two charities that settled, Breast Cancer Society and the Children’ Cancer Fund of America will be dissolved. 

The settlement also orders a $65,664,360 judgment, which is the amount consumers donated between 2008 and 2012. Reynolds junior’s judgment will be for suspended once he pays $75,000. Meanwhile the legal proceedings for Reynolds’ senior and the two remaining charities are ongoing.

The New Billionaires: Younger, Self-Made, More Diverse

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By Beth Braverman

Quick, picture a billionaire.

Chances are you conjured up an older, white man who inherited his fortune. That stereotype was pretty accurate for the past century, but times are changing.

Cultural and economic shifts over the past decade are realigning the demographics of the world’s 1 percent, and the billionaires of the future will be self-made, younger, and more diverse, according to a new report from UBS and PwC

Last year, two-thirds of the world’s billionaires were self-made, compared with just 43 percent of billionaires 20 years ago. The report projects that the trend toward more self-made billionaires will continue get stronger over the next 5 to 10 years, peaking at about 70 percent of the billionaire population.

Related: Playgrounds of the Very Rich and Famous—A 2015 Guide

While two-thirds of current billionaires are over age 60, the average age is getting younger, thanks to both wealth transfers from the older generation and the growth of self-made billionaires.

In addition to getting younger, the report finds that billionaires are also increasingly more diverse. From 2003 to 2013, the number of female billionaires rose from 44 to 116. That’s still less than 10 percent, but it’s a number that’s growing fast. 

Part of the trend toward diversity among billionaires is the explosive growth of wealth in Asia. In the first quarter of 2015, China created a new billionaire almost every week. The authors of the report expect that Asia will overtake the United States as the center of billionaire growth in the next decade.

The Class of 2015 Isn’t Ready to Join the Workforce

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By Beth Braverman

The improving economy means that more employers are offering decent jobs to the Class of 2015, but many of those new graduates don’t feel ready to join the working world.

Only 35 percent of students believe that college was effective in preparing them for a job, and even fewer — 20 percent — feel very prepared to enter the workforce, according to the 2015 Workforce Readiness Survey by McGraw Hill Education.

More than half of students surveyed said they never learned to write a resume in college or how to conduct themselves in a job interview. Nearly 60 percent said they didn’t know how to network or search for a job.

Related: Why the Class of 2015 May Actually Get Good Jobs

The job market has loosened up this year — employers expect to hire nearly 10 percent more new college graduates this year than last year, according ot a study released last month by the National Association of Colleges and Employers. Still, the best gigs remain very competitive, and students who don’t know how to navigate the job search process may find themselves at a disadvantage. 

Two-thirds of those surveyed said that they wanted to get more internships or professional experience while in school, and about 60 percent wanted more time to focus on career prep.

Colleges regularly tout their career services departments, but the students surveyed for this report gave those offices poor marks. Only a third thought that their school’s career services department was effective, and a quarter had never used career services.

Cyber Thieves Hit the IRS—and 100,000 Taxpayers

REUTERS/Kacper Pempel/Files
By Brianna Ehley, The Fiscal Times

Identity thieves hacked into an Internal Revenue Service data system earlier this year, potentially gaining access to personal financial information for at least 100,000 taxpayers.

The IRS issued a statement today saying that its online system, “Get Transcript,” was breached between February and May, the Associated Press first reported. The portal possesses information including tax returns and other taxpayer data stored by the IRS.

Related: Tax Thieves Could Boost Their Income by 262 Percent

The IRS’s statement said the tax thieves were able to penetrate the system because they had knowledge of 100,000 taxpayers, including dates of birth, Social Security numbers and tax filing details.

The massive hack comes as identity theft is at a record high. Earlier this year, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) reported that 1.6 million taxpayers were affected by identity theft in 2014 – compared to just 271,000 in 2010.

The IRS’s ability to catch fraudsters was even added to the GAO’s “High Risk List” or the list of federal programs that are most-vulnerable to waste, fraud and abuse.

Auditors attribute the increase to the uptick in electronic filing, which is more convenient for tax filers, but also easier for fraudsters to file fake returns.

TIGTA says the IRS doled out more than $5.8 billion in fraudulent refunds related to identity theft during the 2013 filing season.

The shift to electronic filing is also apparently making taxpayer information even more vulnerable according to the latest breach.

Related: IRS Struggles to Help Victims of Identity Fraud

The hack is obviously bad news for the agency, which is already struggling to address cases of identity theft as they stack up. TIGTA reported the IRS took about 278 days on average to resolve identity theft cases in 2013, despite the agency claiming that it takes about 180 days or six months to resolve issues of identity theft.

When it does complete cases, the IG found that about 10 percent of the “resolved” were riddled with errors.

The latest report comes at a tough time for the IRS, which is struggling with a recent round of budget cuts and is operating with an even greater workload while enforcing at least 40 new tax provisions under the president’s health care law.

The agency said it has temporarily suspended the online service that was the subject of the breach until the vulnerabilities are resolved.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:

Charter to Buy Time Warner Cable: Winners and Losers

REUTERS/Mike Blake
By Yuval Rosenberg

Charter Communications on Tuesday said it will acquire Time Warner Cable in a deal valued at more than $55 billion. Charter will also buy Bright House Networks, a smaller cable company, for $10.4 billion. The two deals combined will make Charter into the second-largest cable and broadband provider in the U.S., with about 24 million subscribers, behind only Comcast, which has about 27 million subscribers.

WINNERS

Time Warner shareholders: An extra $10 billion over the $45.2 billion Comcast had offered sure makes for a nice payday after the earlier deal got scrapped. “Time Warner Cable has succeeded in extracting a fantastic price for its shareholders, far exceeding our expectations,” Morningstar strategist Michael Hodel wrote Tuesday. Hedge fund managers John Paulson of Paulson & Co. and Chris Hohn of Children’s Investment Fund Management reportedly both had sizable holdings in Time Warner Cable.

Time Warner Cable subscribers: The company’s service is reviled by customers. Charter’s isn’t exactly beloved, either, and subscribers may not see any immediate changes, but Charter promises that the deal will translate into faster broadband for subscribers and more free public Wi-Fi. Whether it actually does or not, the deal seems to spell the end of the Time Warner Cable name. Subscribers won’t miss it.

John Malone: The Liberty Media billionaire finally gets the megadeal he’s been looking for to make Charter Communications into a major industry power. If the deals goes through, the company would become the second-largest cable and broadband provider in the country, with some 24 million total subscribers.

Related: Charter and Time Warner Cable Merger: It’s All About Broadband

LOSERS

Comcast: At least CEO Brian Rogers was graceful about the prospect of a larger competitor. "This deal makes all the sense in the world,” he said in a statement. “I would like to congratulate all the parties."

Television content providers: One rationale for the deal is that the scale of the combined company will afford it more leverage in its negotiations with programmers.

Cable customers and online video watchers? The proposed deal still concerns consumer advocates like those at public interest group Free Press. “The issue of the cable industry's power to harm online video competition, which is what ultimately sank Comcast’s consolidation plans, are very much at play in this deal,” said Derek Turner, research director for Free Press. “Ultimately, this merger is yet another example of the poor incentives Wall Street’s quarterly-result mentality creates. Charter would rather take on an enormous amount of debt to pay a premium for Time Warner Cable than build fiber infrastructure, improve service for its existing customers or bring competition into new communities.”

Bloomberg for President? Today There Was a Telling Tweet

Iron Horse Entertainment/Reuters/The Fiscal Times
By Ciro Scotti

Who is the only person who could nail the Democratic nomination for president if Hillary Rodham Clinton falters? According to USA Today columnist Michael Wolff, it’s not declared candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont or about-to-declare former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley or progressive champion Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.

Nobody has the cash — which Wolff pegs at close to $2 billion — that would be required to mount a competitive race except for one potential candidate who been down the “will he or won’t he?” road before: former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Wolff calls the self-made billionaire the obvious and only alternative because of his money, first and foremost, but also because of his “progressive social conscience with pro-growth-economic views.”

Related: Is America Ready for a Liberal Rock ‘n Roll President?

Of course, there is no reason to take Wolff seriously. Since leaving City Hall, Bloomberg has been busy reestablishing his direct control over Bloomberg L.P., the financial data and media behemoth he founded, and he hasn’t even offered a tease about possibly running.

But this morning, the Wolff column was tweeted out by Kevin Sheekey, who managed Bloomberg’s three winning campaigns for mayor. Sheekey, a former deputy mayor, is currently head of government relations and communications at Bloomberg.

“Next February say, if the sky falls in on Hillary — one or more of the storm-cloud scenarios breaking over her head — would Michael Bloomberg step up?” Wolff asks.

Kevin Sheekey probably knows the answer.