ACORN Fraud Case
Anish Tamrakar
Regis University
MBAA-619
March 02, 2013
Dr. Steve Green

Association of Community Organization for Reform Now
In the twenty-first century there are around more than 1.5 million non-for-profit organizations in the United States. We cannot even imagine how many there are in this entire world, but their main purpose is to serve the public by using their revenues profits rather than distributing it to their owners or investors. The nonprofit sector is a collection of entities that are organizations; private as opposed to governmental; non-profit distributing; self-governing; voluntary; and of public benefit(Salamon, 1999). There are still many good people in this world who come together when some disastrous event occurs or they want to do something good for the needy. However, some people take advantage of such events for their own betterment. This paper will discuss one of the biggest fraud and charity scams that occurred in this world by the Association of Community Organization for Reform Now (ACORN) one of the biggest not-for-profit organization. In addition, this paper will also include some the different fraud measures for the organizations this from happening in the near future.
Background
The Association of Community Organization for Reform Now (ACORN) was established in 1970 by Wade Rathke when he was sent to Little Rock, Arkansas as a member of National Welfare Rights Organization. The main objective of ACORN is to improve housing and wages for the poor, increase the community development investments from the various banks and institution, provide affordable health care and increase the number of registered voters (ACORN: A Brief History, 2009). The founder Wade Rathke always saw ACORN as a major organization where many communities or groups would cooperate towards a common goal. The people felt that ACORN was just what U.S society needed (Grishman, 2008).
ACORN started its journey when they sponsored “Save the City” campaign in the place where it got started all in Little Rock, Arkansas around 1972. This campaign basically worked with homeowner’s problem they had within their community regarding traffic (Grishman, 2008). ACORN also had a big hand in putting a halt to many maneuvers including blockbusting, which is basically trying to sell the white owned houses to African Americans in a panic selling technique done by local real estate agents (Grishman, 2008). ACORN also had a big hand in organizing a group of farmers to take action against sulfur emission by Arkansas Power and Light (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, 2010).
After their “Save the City” campaign, ACORN took it to the next gear by setting up branches in Texas and South Dakota (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, 2010). At the end of the same year, the organization elected their first executive board along with their first president Steve McDonald (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, 2010). By 1980 around twenty states joined ACORN because they were impressed by their work, objectives, and outline. The organization never looked back after that; it kept on growing. The People’s Platform, which was the basic foundation of the organization, was started at the Democratic Party conference and later approved in 1979(Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, 2010). This platform was their first step in the election of 1980, which also ended up being the organization’s main symbol during the time of the election (Grishman, 2008). ACORN also accomplished much during the tenure of President Ronald Regan. ACORN sponsored the “Regan Ranches” which were basically tent cities that were built to protest the president’s massive spending on military and a big reduction in social spending in 1982 (Staff, 2010). Even though they were bombarded by the National Park Services to leave the premises, they kept doing their protest outside of the White House (Staff, 2010). After the organization’s involvement in politics, ACORN finally decided to put one of its members on the ballot in the election of 1984; however, none of its member reached the required members of votes to get on the ballot (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, 2010). Even though the year 1984 was a big failure for them in politics, ACORN had big support from Jesse Jackson during their efforts (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, 2010). By the end of Regan’s regime, ACORN kept on getting bigger and bigger expanding to twenty-eight states with more than seventy thousand members and started its new housing corporation in 1986 with their motto ”build and preserve housing assets” which later helped more than forty-five thousand families (ACORN: A Brief History, 2009). By the time of 1990 ACORN was not only known for its big hand in the housing area but also in health, public safety, education, work, and workers right (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, 2010). In the same year, ACORN had a convention in Chicago and focused on their housing campaigns. Regarding the same issue, the organization held a summit known as “ACORN-Bank Summit” with some of the big banks like Continental, First Fidelity, and Mellon to cooperate with them to help start programs for low and moderate income applicants who qualified for the mortgages (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, 2010). However, Citibank took its name off the participation in the program, and the organization activists protested in front of the bank’s main headquarters in Manhattan until they agreed to meet (Staff, 2010).
ACORN got involved in politics again in the same year with the “Project Vote” campaign, which was headed by current president Barack Obama (Staff, 2010). The campaign helped to elect Carol Moseley Braun, the first black woman in the U.S. Senate. However, later on ACORN was sued for allegedly violating polling laws (Staff, 2010). At least fifty two individuals who were connected with ACORN’s voting campaign had been convicted for voter registration and fraud (Institute, Employment Policies, 2009). ACORN started another campaign to target Allstate, one of the biggest insurance companies, to fight against insurance redlining which kept the profit made out of housing programs at risk (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, 2010). They did this practice to work on their part to help the low-income buyers to acquire mortgages. Finally after all their protest, both the parties came to an agreement and signed the ten million to help the low-income home buyers (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, 2010). The year 1998 was a big year for ACORN, they had many up’s and downs. The “Working Families Party” was established in the same year, which started increasing the minimum wage as its main issue, but also cross endorsed the candidates for political office (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, 2010). ACORN also started to strengthen their ties with the Service Employees International Union after their dispute with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) regarding the layoff of two of their own employees (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, 2010). Service Employee International Union worked with ACORN regarding the health insurance cost and minimum wage issues, donating a huge sum of money to the organization (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, 2010). In the following year, ACORN started to work internationally establishing its operations in Canada, Peru, and Dominican Republic. The Same year, ACORN also helped to increase the minimum wage for the state of Florida by one dollar (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, 2010). They also played a huge role in the relief program for Hurricane Katrina in 2005 by establishing many projects like the clean out demonstration program and relief fund for which they received great publicity (ACORN: A Brief History, 2009).
History of Controversies The background of the ACORN given so far has only mentioned about its great history of work over the years. This not-for-profit organization has also had a history of controversy during its tenure from voter’s fraud registration, the video sting, and the financial embezzlement by the founder’s brother. The list gets longer and the more we talk about it, the more interesting it gets. Because of these controversies, people started to loose faith in ACORN. The organization was affected dramatically, they not only loss the faith from its supporters but, also loss funding from many government and private donors including the legislative amendments to spending bills in the United States House and Senate prohibiting government funding of the group(Congress Votes to Strip ACORN of Federal Funding, 2009). In addition, ACORN’s housing affiliate was hit especially hard from its controversies. The group, which changed its name to the Affordable Housing Centers of America which had twenty nice offices in 2009 closed down twelve of its offices a year later(Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, 2010). The housing group’s annual budget also went into downfall similar to its closure of its offices, the group dropped its annual budget from $24 million to $6 million in 2010 (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, 2010). The Association of Community Organization for Reform Now calls itself a community group, but it is really a multimillion-dollar and multinational conglomerate (Berman, 2009). We though Enron was bad, but ACORN is even worst that has been through so many defiance of business and charity it might be one of the biggest frauds in the history of not-for- profit organizations. Senator John McCain has labeled ACORN as one the groups responsible for the Unites States falling economy (Institute, Employment Policies, 2009).
Voters Registration and Fraud ACORN has been hit with many accusations of voter registration fraud during the time of its operation. On top of the 2008 heated election controversy, in 1998 one of its employees in Arkansas was arrested for falsifying the voter registration form (Staff, 2010). In addition, the authorities in Philadelphia found that the same person filled out more than hundred registration forms. During 2008-heated presidential election between Barack Obama and John McCain, ACORN was tagged with title “Vote Fraud” (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, 2010). In the same presidential campaign, the organization had a list of fraudulent voter registration files; the list included the Dallas Cowboy’s lineup registered as voters in Nevada (Institute, Employment Policies, 2009). Not only this, some of its activists tried to turn in forms registering Mickey Mouse as a voter (Institute, Employment Policies, 2009). These kinds of fraudulent activities led to the raid in the ACORN’s offices in many the states, which resulted in dozens of the indictments (Institute, Employment Policies, 2009). In the state of Nevada alone, there were twenty-six cases of voter’s registration fraud (Institute, Employment Policies, 2009). Not only this, in 2009 the state of Nevada filed criminal charges against ACORN, alleging that some of the top leaders within the organization illegally paid the workers to register voters (Staff, 2010). Similarly in the state of Pennsylvania, seven of its employees were charged with the falsification of voters’ registration forms and six of them were also accused of the illegal quota system (Institute, Employment Policies, 2009). ACORN and its affiliate Project Vote generated around 1.1 million voters registration packages across America in 2008 (ACORN: A Brief History, 2009). At least fifty two individuals who were connected with ACORN had been convicted for voter registration and fraud (Institute, Employment Policies, 2009). But the main question in this scenario is, how did the law enforcement who viewed those registration was irresponsible to commit such mistakes. ACORN’s activists in the voting campaign used names like Mickey Mouse and entire Dallas Cowboys Lineup as a voters, we can say that the activist were stupid enough to put these names as the registered voters (Institute, Employment Policies, 2009). However, how could the law enforcement could be fooled by such names, these law enforcements are professionals working in such fields. All those fraud registration should be prosecuted to the fullest extent by the law for their fraudulent activities to constitute. Looking at these allegation, we can clearly state that no single group in American history ever outdid ACORN in terms if voter registration and fraud.
The McCain and Palin’s presidential campaign also attacked ACORN numerous ways. First its blog stated that Obama was involved with ACORN, the organization which was accused of one of the biggest voter registration frauds and the advocating of various types of loans which have led to the United States biggest economic crisis (Institute, Employment Policies, 2009). ACORN had acquired more than one million voter registration forms from more than twenty-one states, which were later flagged for review (ACORN: A Brief History, 2009). As a result of the review, four hundred thousand of those were rejected for being incomplete, duplicated, or fraudulent. McCain also claimed the 2008 general election was one of the greatest frauds in voter history, and may be destroying the fabric of the democracy (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, 2010). The main point to support his claim was ACORN‘s work with home loans and in their part in economy crisis (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, 2010).
Embezzlement
July 9, 2008, is one of the saddest day in the history of not-for profit organizations, which was the day for the one of the biggest embezzlement every done by an organization in the history of the corporate world. There might be news of corporate fraud in the newspaper every week, but the embezzlement found in this organization is one a major one. Dale Rathke, the brother of the ACORN’s founder was found to have embezzled around $948,607.50 from the organization and affiliated charitable organization in 1999 and 2000 (Volpe, 2009). Dale took the money from ACORN accounting and financial services arm Citizen Consulting Incorporated (Scott, 2009). The top executives decided to handle the case in an internal manner and did not even report to the board members, but instead signed an enforceable restitution agreement with the family to repay the total amount of the debt (Volpe, 2009). There were questions regarding the organization’s decision about keeping the matter secret, but Wade Rathke, brother of the accused, mentioned that the decision to keep the matter secret was to protect the organization by keeping the enemy away from the lethal weapon known as the “embezzlement” (Volpe, 2009). Even though the embezzlement was done during 1999 and 2000, it was finally revealed eight years after the occurrence. As a result, Dale Rathke was dismissed and his brother and the founder, Wade Rathke, stepped down from his post as a chief organizer but still worked as the chief organizer for ACORN International L.L.C (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, 2010). After this event, two members of the board of directors filed a lawsuit in order to get the financial documents (Top 10 Charity Scams, 2010). However, the two investigators were removed from the organization as they were accused of leaking the confidential documents to the press claiming that it was very confidential and could harm the organization in the long run (Top 10 Charity Scams, 2010). In addition, Louisiana’s Attorney General Buddy Caldwell claimed that ACORN’s board of directors found that an amount near five million had had been embezzled from the organization (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, 2010). However, Bertha Lewis, the CEO of ACORN, claimed that the allegation was completely false (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, 2010). Caldwell even conducted the search warrant at the organization main headquarters in Louisiana upon the courts request.
The Video Sting ACORN came into the spotlights again in September 2009 when activists Hannah Giles and James O’Keefe came to the organization with a hidden camera and made their video viral through Fox News (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, 2010). The two activists posed themselves as a prostitute and a pimp, with their aim to exploit the responses from their employees in several ACORN offices (Staff, 2010). The video showed that the employees started to give them advice about the various ways to evade taxes and to acquire mortgages to start child prostitution (Staff, 2010). ACORN was affected dramatically after the video was made public. After the incident, ACORN performed an investigation regarding the issue and accused O’Keefe of editing the original video(Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, 2010). The United States Congress decided to eliminate the federal funding to ACORN as a result of such event (Congress Votes to Strip ACORN of Federal Funding, 2009). The matter was taken to federal court and was nullified as the measure was an unconstitutional bill of attainder (Congress Votes to Strip ACORN of Federal Funding, 2009). However, the United States Congress did not change its decision regarding the funding. Though there were no charges against them, it was ACORN who had to pay the big price as it lost millions and millions in federal funding from Congress (Congress Votes to Strip ACORN of Federal Funding, 2009). As a result, ACORN announced that it would be closing its office due to loss of funding from the government.
After the incident, James O’Keefe also had to pay the price for carrying out such sting. His action led The Salt Lake City Republican Party to cancel his appearance as a guest speaker in a fundraiser (Scott, 2009). Michelle Malkin, a conservative pundit wrote that O’Keefe’s action was wrong and his action should have been taken seriously (Scott, 2009).
Defund Acorn Acts ACORN once labeled itself as the country’s largest grassroots community organization of low and moderate-income people serving more than 110 cities with more than 40,000 members (ACORN: A Brief History, 2009). After being bombarded with various allegations, a number of Democrats who once had a strong connection with ACORN started to stay away from ACORN (Congress Votes to Strip ACORN of Federal Funding, 2009). Republicans used this story to label Democrats as corrupt (Congress Votes to Strip ACORN of Federal Funding, 2009). The video sting controversy in 2009 made the United States House and Senate motivated to attach an amendment that would cause the federal government to stop funding ACORN (Congress Votes to Strip ACORN of Federal Funding, 2009). Since federal funding was one of the largest source of funds the organization. ACORN sued the United States Government with a measure known as “Defund ACORN Act” claiming that it was an act of legislation declaring the organization guilty of some crimes and punishing them before the trial (Congress Votes to Strip ACORN of Federal Funding, 2009). However, the court issued a preliminary injunction that nullified the act (Congress Votes to Strip ACORN of Federal Funding, 2009). Finally, the Government Accountability Office re-opened the investigation and stated that there were no sign of fraud or scams on $40 million of the federal funds they had received from various federal agencies (Congress Votes to Strip ACORN of Federal Funding, 2009). The case was sent to the U.S. Courts of Appeals, which cited that a study found out that only 10 percent of the federal funding came from federal sources. So the court decided to stay with the punishment (Congress Votes to Strip ACORN of Federal Funding, 2009). As a result of historical controversies, ACORN finally decided to hang up their boots and, close all of its operation on April 1, 2010 (Staff, 2010). Even though the organization stated falling revenues for such a move, there were claims that they had a series of controversies and wing attacks that resulted in the closures (Staff, 2010).
Effects on Other Not-For-Profit Organization A non-profit organization is an organization, which is built with the purpose of serving the public by using its profits rather than distributing them to their owners or the investors. After studying the history of controversies about ACORN, I feel that it will be really hard for the public to trust any not-for profit organizations. It is always said it takes hundreds of good things and hard work to gain that trust, but it always takes a small mistake to lose it. In the ACORN case, it wasn’t just a small mistake; it was stealing from the pockets of people who were promised improved housing and wages for the poor. Talking about trust issues, how can anybody will to donate any funds when one of the biggest and most respected not- for profit organization in the history has corrupted top officials embezzling the funds for their own benefit and they hide it from others expecting that it could be used as a weapon. I would totally agree with John McCain labeling ACORN as one the groups responsible for the Unites States falling economy (Institute, Employment Policies, 2009).
Avoiding Fraud in Not-For-Profit Organizations Fraud and charity’s scam in not-for-profit organizations are not new at all. An estimated $40 to $50 billion per year is lost to fraud in not-for-profit organizations (Bush, n.d). In the twenty-first century, the economy is tough. We know we learn from mistakes, so organizations should look at the mistakes that ACORN made and look at the ways they could have prevented them in order to prevent future happenings. There are many tools in the present accounting system to prevent them like fraud triangle, anti-fraud control, surprise audits, behavioral warning signs, fraud reporting hotlines, internal controls etc(Bush, n.d). Similarly, another great accounting tool is red flag, this detection technique can prove very important to detect fraud in any types of organization(Bush, n.d). There are many legal ways to prevent this; it is the responsibility of the organization to present the IRS Form 990 tax returns and the salary information about the board members on their official website. If the organization does not present the information, it could be a chance to present a red flag (Bush, n.d). Many not-for-profit organizations use grant money to carry out frauds so better supervision of such funds would be really helpful (Bush, n.d). Various reports have presented that the fraud is basically committed by female employees with no criminal records and by employees around the age of 35 to 60 year old; so supervision of these kinds of people would be really helpful (Bush, n.d). Reports have also claimed that not-for-profit organizations should always be suspicious about the people working in the financial section like the founder, treasurer, bookkeeper and the signer of checks, since these people are the ones who know how to avoid getting caught (Bush, n.d). There should be a set of practices about how the money and financial documents of the organization should be handled. Putting the group of people in a same task might be handy as they supervise each other. The Board of Directors (BOD) should meet without the management present, and they should also seek ideas from professionals in designing better internal controls that would focus on management fraud (Bush, n.d). All the not-for-profit organizations should have a clear mission statement. None of the BOD members should participate in any board decision, which would benefit him or any of his family (Bush, n.d). The organization would at least have an internal audit once a year, and it would also be beneficial for the organization to carry out a surprise audit. Another great recommendation would be not to put any paid staff on the Board of Directors, as there is always conflict of interest and possible potential problem (Bush, n.d). One of the biggest controversies in the case of ACORN was that the founder’s brother Dale Rathke was accused of embezzling a huge sum of funds from the organization. As he was the brother of Wade Rathke, he must have had a close eye on the financial documents. So another great recommendation would be to keep the finances of the organization separate from the finances of the founders or other members of the Board of Directors (Bush, n.d). Putting a requirement of two signatures on a check and bank transfer on a certain set of money would be another idea (Bush, n.d). The organization should also have an organized file of the bank statements along with the list of purchases made or donations received which could be easily accessible to the all the board members (Bush, n.d). The Board members should always be covered by the Director’s and Officer’s Insurance(Bush, n.d). These kinds of insurance help to protect organizations against employee theft or embezzlement (Bush, n.d).
Triangle of Fraud The fraud triangle is one of the most common measures to explain any fraudulent activities. Dr. Cressey theory explains why criminals perpetrate the fraud(Otto, 2011). Therefore, we learn by understanding the motivation of the perpetrator. Based on the fraud triangle, management would design an internal fraud control system to mitigate the fraud (Heitger, Smith, & Crumbley, 2011). However, the financial statement fraud is typically perpetrated by the same management that is responsible for the internal control (Heitger, Smith, & Crumbley, 2011). The management not only has the power to create the internal control of the organization, but also has the power to override such controls (Heitger, Smith, & Crumbley, 2011). Most of the fraudulent acts come out of three basic circumstances: incentive, opportunity, and rationalization of the fraud. If we take into account the embezzlement case conducted by Dale Rathke, brother of the founder of ACORN we can see that we can use this theory.
Incentive
Incentive or Pressure is one of the first circumstances presented in the fraud triangle. It is basically about what caused Dale Rathke to commit a fraud. There might be many factors that may trigger a person to conduct fraud. Examples in this circumstance include if he had a debt, addiction, ongoing divorce or lawsuit etc (Loughran, n.d). But Dale Rathke didn’t have any of these problems; maybe he just had an expensive taste because there were reports that he would charge various item on his credit cards like expensive personal dinners or trips and later on charge them as business expenses (Volpe, 2009). Maybe he just had an expensive taste or it might just have been greed since their not-for-profit organization was doing so well when the embezzlement started happening.
Opportunity
According to the Triangle of Fraud, opportunity can be also labeled as an ability to commit fraud (Loughran, n.d). A person who looking to commit fraud will always look for opportunity no matter what. A fraud can come from many directions like weak internal controls, poor management oversight, failure to punish the past problems, or ineffective board of directors etc (Loughran, n.d). There might be something that Dale Rathke must have seen among the organization before committing the fraud. Another fact that we could link to the embezzlement would be ineffective BOD as we can clearly see that after ACORN found out about this activity Wade Rathke convinced the BOD to keep it quiet.
Rationalization
People caught in fraud always have a reason or answer to the allegation when it comes to giving justification for the fraud. Like it or not the most common rationalization used in the cases of the frauds are I just borrowed it and I will repay it, I deserved it because I worked harder than others etc (Loughran, n.d). Similarly, Wade Rathke the brother of the accused and the founder of the ACORN came to his brother’s defense stating that his brother along with his family would repay the total amount embezzled (Volpe, 2009).
Conclusion
Frauds in the big organizations and corporate are no big news in this time frame. There has been report hat around forty to fifty billions is lost to fraud every year (Bush, n.d). However, it was really shocking to see ACORN be involved with fraud and charity scams issues having working really hard for past thirty years for the benefit of the people. It took almost 8 years to reveal the embezzlement done by Dale Rathke, due to ineffective control by the board of directors. Due to weak internal controls, failure to punish the past, poor management, financial controls, the structure of the board, and adequate controls over donations and grants, the fairy tale of ACORN came to an end. Now can we expect anybody to trust a not-for-profit organization again, I believe the answer is no. The public will always have second though about donating the fund to the not-for-profits or any other charity. Their controversies effect will be felt by many of the other not-for profit organizations. Rathke family may repay the money and finally get back to their lives but, the trust they have broken will never heal. This might be a good lesson for other not-for profits for preventing these happening and look for.

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