By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
"It now looks very much like there was a lot more truth to the criticisms about ACORN—the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now—than its leadership, its allies on Capitol Hill and its supporters in the media were willing to acknowledge...
"The journalists, James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles, posed as a prostitute and her pimp asking ACORN for help in obtaining a mortgage so they could purchase a building they could use in their sex business, which included a number of under-age girls brought to the United States from overseas as sex workers.
"The ACORN personnel cheerfully obliged, suggesting ways to defraud the bank, avoid tax payments by misstating income, and disguise the true nature of their activities. They were even advised to classify several of the under-age girls as "dependents" so the pair would qualify for the federal child tax credit. In one office an ACORN official even told Giles to classify her occupation as a "free lancer" and to bury any cash her business generated in the backyard...
"A report issued last summer by the Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, according to Sunday's Washington Times, "presented evidence that ACORN had engaged in criminal misconduct."
"Among the findings, the report said, ACORN:
Engaged in tax evasion, obstruction of justice and aiding and abetting a cover-up of nearly $1 million embezzled by Dale Rathke, brother of group founder Wade Rathke;
Committed investment fraud, depriving the public of the right to "honest services," and engaging in a racketeering enterprise affecting interstate commerce;
Conspired to defraud the United States by using taxpayer dollars for partisan political activities;
Submitted false filings to the Internal Revenue Service, and the U.S. Department of Labor
; and,
Violated the U.S. Fair Labor Standards Act....
http://www.usnews.com/blogs/peter-roff/2009/09/21/the-case-for-acorn-as-a-criminal-enterprise.html
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