Only this one makes the last one (Wounded Warriors) look like a church group! Unbelievable that our government allows this so-called charity to have a non-profit 501 3c designation. And, to add more fuel to the flame, this CEO works for who — non other than the Veterans Administration, AND drives a Rolls Royce! Do the additions to the Scam Artists Hall of Fame ever end? Watch this unbelievable CNN report:
http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/16/politics/vietnam-veterans-charity/index.html
But look a little closer on those same filings and you can see that nearly all of those donations have been cycled back to telemarketers, leaving less than 2 percent for actual veterans and veterans’ charitable causes.
That’s why Charity Navigator, one of the nation’s largest and most influential charity watchdog organizations,
has given the charity a “zero” out of four stars for those same four years.
“It’s a zero-star organization and you can’t go lower than that,” says Michael Thatcher, Charity Navigator’s CEO. “They don’t have an independent board of directors, they actually don’t even have a comprehensive board of directors — only three members on the board at this point in time and some of them are family. So one can say, is this representative of an independent board? It’s not.”
The charity’s most recently filed tax return, for 2014, lists a catalogue of expenses paid for by donations: including $133,000 for travel, $21,000 for unnamed “awards”, $70,000 for a category described as “other expenses” and even a little more than $8,000 for parking.
Charity president works at VA
The CEO and founder of the National Vietnam Veterans Foundation, himself a veteran, is J. Thomas Burch, who is also a federal employee working as an attorney for the Department of Veterans Affairs. Burch is deputy director in the VA’s Office of General Counsel, where he pulled down $127,000 in salary in 2014. That’s the same year he drew a salary of $65,000 as head of his “zero-star” charity.
A VA spokesman told CNN Burch’s position at the veteran’s charity is not a conflict of interest “per se”. But the spokesman added the VA is now “reviewing” the situation and that the agency’s Office of Inspector General is handling that review.
When contacted by CNN, Burch asked that we not contact him at his job at the Department of Veterans Affairs, but he refused to answer phone calls placed to his home. CNN tried to confront Burch as he drove home from work in a black Rolls Royce, but upon seeing a CNN camera crew, Burch gunned the Rolls Royce down his suburban Washington, D.C. street and disappeared.
The charity’s vice president, David Kauffman, said in an email that the NVVF was responsible for “feeding homeless and unemployed veterans by donating to food banks, sent personal care kits to hospitalized veterans and donated blankets, hats and gloves to homeless centers.”
According to the charity’s tax filings, though, it accounted for about $122,000 in cash donations to veterans, out of more than $8.5 million raised in donations in 2014. That is less than 2% of the charities cash donations being used to support veterans and their families.
Originally posted 2016-05-18 13:03:25.
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Only this one makes the last one (Wounded Warriors) look like a church group! Unbelievable that our government allows this so-called charity to have a non-profit 501 3c designation. And, to add more fuel to the flame, this CEO works for who — non other than the Veterans Administration, AND drives a Rolls Royce! Do the additions to the Scam Artists Hall of Fame ever end? Watch this unbelievable CNN report:
I would encourage – just for starters – letting the air out of tires of the Jackal who drives the Rolls.
I love the military and would anything for them. So when I got a note from a Jones Walsh stationed in Syria, I was ready to Western Union money for a watch and a cell phone. They had shot 4 rebels and were heading out on a mission tomorrow. Other pictures showed two younger servicemen with him. For the first time EVER I gave out my phone number. My son said he was sure servicemen don’t take their cells with them in case they were captured or killed,….too much info. On them..my sons friends saved me. He showed me the exact picture gotten from one of his policemen friends cell as the one I had..my husband was a Marine and I hate to think what he would say…probably..Ever summer dumber.
You are correct Linda, be VERY careful out there, it is a danger world out there we now live in today.
BTW, your husband is still a Marine regardless living or passed way. My book, “We’ll All Die As Marines” says it all!
Our policemen stopped me from a scam of three men in cammies supposedly in Syria. I fell for the whole thing.