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.

Verily, verily I say unto thee....

...readeth from the Gospel of Clancy and thou shall laugh so hard, thou shall pee.

The "Prophet of Conprofits", Leonard Lucas took Bobby "the exorcist" Jindal's voucher program to glorious new heights.  The Apostle nabbed 80 vouchers @ $4,555/voucher for his Light City Academy school that has an enrollment of only 53 students.  I assume the 27 extra spots were for the holy spirt.  That puts Lucas pulling down $364k from the voucher program.

I reported back in June that I had tracked down a whopping 23 nonprofit entities registered under the Apostle with seven being housed in a small, gutted building at 6030 St. Claude Avenue.  That building is the clown car of pseudo-charities.  I knew about the vouchers but I wanted to find out more about the school before I blogged about it.  No matter...I have bigger fish to fry at the moment.

However, I would like to congratulate Governor Jindal on his voucher program.  In his effort to make the children of Louisiana the stupidest most ill-informed in the state, he has unwittingly resurrected the Apostle of Appropriation....The Prophet of Con-profits.....The Ayatollah of public payola....Leonard Lucas is risen!  Glory be to 501c3!

Oh and don't bother looking for 990's....religious organizations don't have to disclose them.  

Hey, I think I found Jesus...

...he's freeloading down on St. Claude Ave. and I think it's high time we sent him a bill.

There was a time, where I was much more willing to share my AZ meanderings with local MSM entities.  In fact, right before I launched the Cedric "C-note" Richmond foray I met with former WWL reporter Lucy Bustamante in an effort to work together on investigative stories.  I presented her with the information I had on Cedric and Ike and the two con-profits, NOCE and NOCAP, they had housed in Ike Spears' building at 5437 Crowder Blvd.

Lucy did a tremendous amount of research and groundwork on the issue but her superiors at WWL-TV were reluctant to run the story of NOCE and NOCAP despite the incontrovertible issues we found with the entities and the money being pumped into the building which Ike owned.  I believe their reasoning for not running the story was that it was during an election period and that this con-profit thing was commonplace around the city so it wasn't fair to shine a spotlight solely on C-note.  They told her she would need to find other examples for them to run a story on the con-profit phenomenon.

So she did just that.

What she found was outrageous.  If you mapped out all of the buildings along St. Claude Avenue that held non-profits you were looking at nearly half the properties on the street that were tax exempt per 501.c3 status.

But even in that morass, there were some glaring gems that simply couldn't be ignored.

One of those gems....6030 St. Claude Avenue.

This quaint, gutted building located right across the street from former state Representative Leonard Lucas's Light City Church, had no less than seven non-profits domiciled in the building:

Communication in Action
District 99 Advocacy Corporation
Gatekeepers Inc.
Light City Community Development Corporation
Prosperity Economic Development Corporation
Seniors on the Go
9th Ward Concerned Citizens for Change

All these entities were created by Leonard Lucas or his right hand gal, Audrey Walker.

Lucy went down to the location and talked to a kind, humorous, gentleman who lived next door to 6030 St. Claude.  She asked him if he had ever seen any activity going on there by a charity.  He laughed and told her, "I think one year they gave away some turkeys for thanksgiving."  She didn't have the heart to tell him there were 7 charities located in that building that were supposed to be serving his community.

For some reason, WWL-TV still wasn't happy with the evidence Lucy had turned up and she finally threw in the towel, turned over the public records she had accrued to me and told me to do my best.  She left WWL-TV shortly after that for bigger and better things in Virginia Beach.

I hope she's doing well.  I'm pretty sure she is.

I would still love to hear WWL's reasoning for not running the story she churned up.

Regardless....I took what she had uncovered and decided to dig a little deeper on Apostle Lucas.



Now I have a confession to admit before I unload this on you guys.  I faintly remember doing this but I got a little sauced one night and spent about 6 to 7 hours on the SOS database looking for non-profits and for-profits that were associated with Apostle Lucas and Audrey Walker.

What I found was epic.

I spent the whole night taking screen shots and cropping them down so I could dump this massive con-profit scenario on you guys.  Then I got up the next day in a foul mood and said, "Fuck it."  I was still a little pissed about what had just happened with the C-note scenario....I was in a very bad mood, so I just shelved it.

I figured it wouldn't matter anyway because the MSM was not going to touch C-note or the con-profit issue.  In fact, they still aren't touching it with the exception of City Business.

KUDOS to CB.

But being a zombie, I love to resurrect things from the grave and I think what I'm about to drop on you will blow your fucking mind.

Between Apostle Lucas and Audrey Walker....I found a whopping 23 registered non-profit organizations:

Citizens Coalition for Education
Communication in Action
Crossroads Community Development Corp.
Destiny Enterprises Inc.
District 99 Advocacy Corp.
Elizabeth's Health Care Community Development Corp.
Gatekeepers, Inc.
Giant Steps Ministries
Jesus the Light Center, Inc.
Light City Community Development Corp.
Light City Fellowship, Inc.
New Life Intracoastal Community Devleopment Corp.
Next Level Ministries
NU, Inc.
Old Fashion Care
Project Restoration Inc. of New Orleans
Prosperity Economic Development
Seniors on the Go
Smart Start Spectrum
The House of Exchange, Inc.
Varnise Lucas Ministries
Visioning Better Education (VIBE)
Youth Alive Inc.

Now keep in mind this was back in 2010...I haven't even searched for new ones since then.

I had to create a .pdf of the screen shots as there were simply too many to post as images.  You can get that:

Here

I think we can officially name Apostle Lucas and Mrs. Walker the king and queen of the con-profit game.  That, sirs and madames, is a direct challenge.  I defy you to out-Lucas me!  Get busy!

We might as well have fun with this, right?

I don't think anyone is listening anyway.

Praise Jesus!