- Jul 25, 2002
- 10,053
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Paid Boy Scout Leaders
Washington Post
Leaders ? Where do these con-artists get off thinking that they're 'Leading' ?
Using the Boy Scouts as a front to scam the Government & Taxpayers.
<CLIP>
The middle-aged parents, unmistakable in their Boy Scout leader browns and khakis, clumped outside a training meeting here, their worries spilling out. These are troubled days for the grown-ups at the Scout get-togethers sprinkled among the churches, back yards and schoolhouses of Alabama's rolling northeast.
Federal subpoenas have been flying around. FBI agents have been asking questions, and the administrators down at the Boy Scouts' Greater Alabama Council headquarters in Birmingham have had to fess up to hundreds of volunteers that their 22-county organization is under federal investigation. The same U.S. attorney's office in Birmingham that this week opened its case against HealthSouth executive Richard M. Scrushy, one of the marquee corporate corruption probes in the nation, is also investigating the local Boy Scouts.
Volunteers say paid Scout leaders have created fictitious "ghost units" for years to pump up membership numbers to trick donor groups and charities, including the United Way, into giving them more money. In some cases, the alleged membership scams do not even appear to have been very clever. Volunteer Tom Willis, a 1960s Eagle Scout who is also the father of two Eagle Scouts, says he was presented with a roster for a supposed group of 30 youths in Fort Payne, Ala. -- each had the last name Doe.
"It seems to go against the basic things Scouts are about: trustworthy, loyal . . . trustworthy, most of all," volunteer Susan Backus said as the stragglers trickled out of the Jacksonville training meeting.
The uproar in Alabama, the latest in a string of at least five bogus-membership scandals in Boy Scout councils around the country since the 1990s, has exposed an undercurrent of tension between unpaid volunteers and the professionals who are paid -- sometimes handsomely -- to run Boy Scout programs.
The United Way of Central Alabama, which received a subpoena and is one of several chapters that contributed money to the Greater Alabama Council, has given more than $6 million to the council in the past five years. Big membership numbers can translate to big donations, promotions and pay raises, many volunteers say, providing temptation for ambitious Scout leaders to engage in creative accounting.
"Just because these people call themselves Boy Scout professionals doesn't mean they're going to adhere to the principles of the Boy Scouts," said Ralph Stark, a Boy Scout volunteer in Locust Fork, Ala., and a retired investigator for the Office of Personnel Management. "They're playing the game of a businessperson."
<and a whole bunch more . . .>
Washington Post
Leaders ? Where do these con-artists get off thinking that they're 'Leading' ?
Using the Boy Scouts as a front to scam the Government & Taxpayers.
<CLIP>
The middle-aged parents, unmistakable in their Boy Scout leader browns and khakis, clumped outside a training meeting here, their worries spilling out. These are troubled days for the grown-ups at the Scout get-togethers sprinkled among the churches, back yards and schoolhouses of Alabama's rolling northeast.
Federal subpoenas have been flying around. FBI agents have been asking questions, and the administrators down at the Boy Scouts' Greater Alabama Council headquarters in Birmingham have had to fess up to hundreds of volunteers that their 22-county organization is under federal investigation. The same U.S. attorney's office in Birmingham that this week opened its case against HealthSouth executive Richard M. Scrushy, one of the marquee corporate corruption probes in the nation, is also investigating the local Boy Scouts.
Volunteers say paid Scout leaders have created fictitious "ghost units" for years to pump up membership numbers to trick donor groups and charities, including the United Way, into giving them more money. In some cases, the alleged membership scams do not even appear to have been very clever. Volunteer Tom Willis, a 1960s Eagle Scout who is also the father of two Eagle Scouts, says he was presented with a roster for a supposed group of 30 youths in Fort Payne, Ala. -- each had the last name Doe.
"It seems to go against the basic things Scouts are about: trustworthy, loyal . . . trustworthy, most of all," volunteer Susan Backus said as the stragglers trickled out of the Jacksonville training meeting.
The uproar in Alabama, the latest in a string of at least five bogus-membership scandals in Boy Scout councils around the country since the 1990s, has exposed an undercurrent of tension between unpaid volunteers and the professionals who are paid -- sometimes handsomely -- to run Boy Scout programs.
The United Way of Central Alabama, which received a subpoena and is one of several chapters that contributed money to the Greater Alabama Council, has given more than $6 million to the council in the past five years. Big membership numbers can translate to big donations, promotions and pay raises, many volunteers say, providing temptation for ambitious Scout leaders to engage in creative accounting.
"Just because these people call themselves Boy Scout professionals doesn't mean they're going to adhere to the principles of the Boy Scouts," said Ralph Stark, a Boy Scout volunteer in Locust Fork, Ala., and a retired investigator for the Office of Personnel Management. "They're playing the game of a businessperson."
<and a whole bunch more . . .>
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