A con-profit reckoning?

Looks like someone is digging up some old con-profit corpses and bringing them back from the dead:

Auditors:  Nonprofits with ties to current and former JP councilmen misused hundreds of thousands of dollars

Our old buddy former Jefferson Parish councilman and C-note Richmond wingman, Byron Lee, looks like he may have finally been snagged in the con-profit epic along with current JP councilman, Mark Spears.

AZ has covered some of Byron's con-profit meanderings ever since he came across my radar after I uncovered the NOCAP/NOCE con-profit scam perpetrated by Congressman Cedric Richmond and uber-political operative, Ike Spears.

Oh...that reminds me...in case you aren't keeping up, Nadine Ramsey announced her candidacy for City Council District C a couple of weeks ago.  I'm curious how she was going to justify residing over the Wisner hearing as an ad hoc judge in District D, offer ruling on that matter, then turn right around and announce her candidacy for city council.  I think I may have done her a favor by calling out the conflict when I did.  Also funny how no one seemed to care that the LA Supreme Court produced two separate, unstamped, documents on the same day for Justice Johnson's court order that had named Ramsey as a CDC ad hoc judge.   Both documents were requested approximately one month after the original order was supposedly created...one order was signed by the Clerk of Court, the order I received was unsigned.  Why were there two separate documents for the same court order?

Regardless,  Slabbed has been all over Byron , much more so than I considering it's a JP matter...waters I don't normally sail.  In fact, I think Doug originally broke this story.

I wonder if C-note will call in a favor to his new buddy in the local U.S. Attorneys Office to get some slack cut for Byron.  We'll soon know if this whole thing seems to magically go up in smoke like the elusive internal report on the commenting scandal that was supposedly being conducted by the DOJ.

Our old buddy and Apostle of the almighty, Leonard Lucas, probably won't be so lucky:

LOWER 9TH WARD ORG'S RECOVERY MONEY RAISES IRE OF STATE AUDITOR 

Thanks for the HT, Mr. Defender.

As readers know Lucas, the original Prophet of the Con-profit, is a long time target of AZ and I  reported back in June of 2012 that I had uncovered the motherlode of con-profit mining schemes when I started researching Lucas and his associate Audrey Walker.  Lucas had a whopping seven non-profits domiciled in a gutted building on 6030 St. Claude Avenue and between Walker and the Apostle I found 23 registered 501c3's back in 2010....earning them the infamous title of being the "Con-profit King and Queen of New Orleans".  I challenged anyone to outdo the Apostle and Walker and so far no one has even attempted to challeng the royal court.

That is until this report by the LA Legislative Auditor.

So it looks like the con-profit epic in New Orleans may be taking a turn for the worse...at least for some of those on the lower rungs of the ladder.  I'm sure you'll never see C-Note or Ike in that number...and should I even mention Bajoie?  Nah...no sense in bringing that zombie back to life, eh?

A non-non sequitur (you figure it out):

As I was writing this post it reminded me of the late night perusing I've been doing of the Michael Sherman email threads on Wisner and how in this city there seems to be only one degree of separation between just about everyone.

Retraction:  In this original post I posted an email from Michael Sherman's email chain and suggested a "Nadine" named in the email may have been Nadine Ramsey.  It was not Nadine Ramsey and I have deleted the email from this post.  Mea Culpa.

It seems like Sherman was a thread that weaved his way through all kinds of deals:

I'll do my best to avoid pointing out the sycophantic babbling to C-note (oops, I guess I just did) and just point out that Sherman seemed to be actively lobbying for Laney Chouest's NOLA Mortorsports park venture on multiple avenues.  That's curious considering Sherman claimed he had never met Mr. Chouest in a Wisner Trust Advisory Committee meeting.

It's also interesting because it's apparent from Sherman's emails that he had a significant interest in the JEDCO/JP Fairfield development which encompasses Chouest's NOLA Motorsports Park and is adjacent to Wisner property.  In fact, it appears as if Sherman may have even played a role in Chouest's purchase of the land from Joseph Marcello, who owns a massive portion of the property slated for development in the Fairfield footprint.  What's most important is that it appears he was conducting much of this business while holding a position as a City Attorney and serving as the appointee to the Wisner Trust Advisory Committee for Mayor Landrieu.

Cedric and Ike's greatest hits, Vol. 1

I was wrong.  I admit it.  I had a very important fact dead wrong about Cedric Richmond, Ike Spears, 5437 Crowder Blvd., NOCE and NOCAP......Grateful Realty did not own the property from 2000 to 2004 while the non-profits were housed there.

A company called Crowder Development Corporation, LLC owned the property.  And guess who owns Crowder Development?

Un-fucking-believable.

Spears formed the company in August of 2000.  He then purchased 5437 Crowder from Northstar Properties for 180k in September of 2000.  It would appear he incorporated this company for the sole purpose of housing NOCE, NOCAP and Cedric's office.  After the non-profits imploded and the LSED grant money dried up, he sold the building to Grateful Realty for 220k in February of 2005....the building had served it's purpose and a nearly a million dollars (that I can account for) had been run through it in non-profit funds...including a NOCE line item for 60k in renovations to the property.  I had a friend call the current owner of the building who is selling it and ask them if they had done any renovations on the building....she said no..no renovations have been done in at least over 10 years.

NOCAP did receive grant money from the LSED as well as NOCE.  I could only find one NOCAP grant for 15k:

NOCAP was running at around the same budget as NOCE ....200k.  The grant proposal did not have an audit of the company so I have no way of finding out where they were getting the bulk of their funding.

Get this....as I pointed out before the LSED grants specify that you cannot have a non-profit perform duplicate services in the same area:

Well not only were NOCAP and NOCE the exact same service, they even told the LSED that they were going to use NOCE's "experts":

Now keep in mind that NOCE was only paying one person a little over 4k/year to be the computer expert.  So far I have only accounted for 3 computers between the two non-profits and only one computer teacher.  They are asking for 1000 dollars in this grant to buy computers.  You have a company running at 200k/year to teach computer skills and "bridge the digital divide" and they are buying $1000 in computers.

That's pretty amazing...was anybody even reading these grant requests or were they just stroking the checks?

Notice that for the grant, Spears listed the NOCAP address at 1555 Poydras Street...I think that is his law office.  Also notice that on the bottom of some of these documents you see Spears and Spears upside down....that means the documents were faxed from his law office.  Interesting how he failed to list NOCAP's real address as 5437 Crowder....this was two years after they had already housed the non-profit there and they even put up the damn sign outside:

 
This is a classic Jefferson scam....classic....textbook.  Cedric Richmond is a crook, we already knew Ike Spears was but now we know Richmond's true nature as well.

I have accounted for over 50 LSED grant requests from Richmond totaling in the millions.  I would say a little over half those requests and money went to churches who had similar mission statements...bridging the digital divide, teaching kids to pass the leap, developing "life skills" for kids, etc.  Non-profits with names like A Blessing in a Blessing, inc,  Put God First Community Development Corp., Stars Over the East Television Program, New Life Community Development Corp., Doing Good in the Hood, LLC, Franklin Ave. Baptist Church, Roy Ave. Baptist church ($55,000), On Giant Shoulders, inc......the list goes on.

I'm not suggesting all these organizations were bogus, I'm sure many of them produced great results. I'm just stating that it seems the LSED was stroking checks at Richmond's behest without care nor clue as to what the money was going to or if it could be accounted for.  The NOCAP proposal even stated they were tapping another LSED grantee for services, NOCE, which is a clear violation of the grant requirements.  Was anyone reading this stuff or did they just stroke the checks every time Richmond told them to?

You know, I have to ask....do other cities dole out cash to churches?  Millions of dollars from the Hotel/Motel taxes being stroked  out to any church who can fill out an application and is in the favor of Cedric Richmond or another state legislator?

Here was one of my favorite question responses:

Nice....repeat the answer back in the form of the question and get 30k. 

Bottom line...Richmond and Spears were running a Jefferson non-profit scam out of 5437 Crowder.  There is money missing from the entities which can't be accounted for, including 60k via NOCE to renovate Ike Spears property.  I believe Richmond was fleecing that non-profit through a credit card and by proxy through the Executive Director he was romantically involved with.  I believe when the non-profit auditor/accountant found the irregularities, Richmond had the woman take the fall and possibly paid her to keep the matter quiet.

This guy is bad news....bad fucking news.

Speaking of "bad news"... I still can't believe no one in the MSM has had the balls to call him out on this stuff.