Every time I read one of these DOJ Press Releases, I swear they all are talking about Detroit, but then again, that may just be a bit of foreshadowing on my part, just to keep everyone on their legal defense fundraising toes, you know.
A jury sitting in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania convicted longtime political operative Kenneth Smukler, 58, of Villanova, Pennsylvania, today on charges of making and concealing illegal campaign contributions in two Congressional primary elections, and of obstructing justice in an investigation by the Federal Election Commission (FEC), announced Assistant Attorney General Brian A. Benczkowski of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney William M. McSwain for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
“Today’s convictions demonstrate the Department of Justice’s commitment to ensuring a level playing field in the financing of federal elections,” said Assistant Attorney General Benczkowski. “We will hold accountable those who violate campaign finance and other laws designed to protect the fairness and transparency of our democracy.”
“Smukler was the mastermind of multiple crooked political schemes,” said U.S. Attorney McSwain. “He showed a true pattern of deception by misusing funds and lying to corrupt the entire political process. The only way to guarantee open and fair elections is to have everyone play by the same rules. Smukler ignored those rules and broke the law so that his candidates could try to win at all costs. We are grateful that the jury saw through his lies and held him accountable for his widespread criminal conduct.”
The jury found Smukler guilty of conspiracy to violate federal law, making and causing unlawful campaign contributions and causing false statements to the FEC in connection with a 2012 congressional primary campaign in a Philadelphia-area Congressional district. The jury further found Smukler guilty of making and causing unlawful campaign contributions, causing the filing of false reports to the FEC concerning contributions and expenditures, causing false statements to the FEC in connection with a 2014 congressional primary campaign in another Philadelphia-area Congressional district, and obstructing an FEC investigation.
In 2012, Smukler engaged in a conspiracy to make a concealed payment of $90,000 to Congressional candidate and former Philadelphia Municipal Judge Jimmie Moore to get Judge Moore to drop out of the primary election race. Smukler, who worked for another candidate, orchestrated the payment of the money through his own companies, a shell company of Judge Moore’s campaign manager, Carolyn Cavaness, and another campaign consultant, D.A. Jones. Judge Moore, Cavaness, and Jones all have pleaded guilty separately.
From 2014 through 2015, Smukler, as a campaign manager, also made, caused, and concealed excess and conduit contributions and engaged in a falsification and obstruction scheme involving a different Congressional candidate. The excess contributions came from associates of Smukler and were funneled through two of Smukler’s consulting companies. The conduit contributions were routed through another political consultant and the candidate.
The jury found that in or about April 2014, Smukler became aware that the campaign was running out of funds that it could spend on primary election expenses. Smukler nevertheless directed the campaign to continue paying for goods and services associated with the primary election. In or about May 2014, one of Smukler’s companies made a $78,750 payment to the campaign that was used to pay for primary election expenses. Smukler falsely told the campaign that this money came from a “segregated media account,” when in fact the payment was funded by an associate of Smukler’s and therefore constituted an illegal campaign contribution.
Moreover, after Smukler’s candidate lost the primary election, the campaign did not have sufficient funds to repay the contributions that the campaign had received for the general election. To conceal this shortfall, Smukler funneled illegal contributions totaling $150,000 from an associate to the campaign through two of Smukler’s consulting companies. Smukler falsely told the campaign that these payments were refunds of money that had been “escrowed” in Smukler’s companies for general election expenses, when, in fact, the money had come not from any such account but from Smukler’s associate, and the money could not have been “escrowed” campaign funds because Smukler’s companies had already spent a significant portion of the funds they had received from the campaign.
Smukler further caused the campaign to falsely characterize the payments from his companies as refunds in FEC reports and in a letter to the FEC from unwitting campaign counsel, which led the FEC to dismiss a pending complaint against the campaign by another candidate in the primary.
The jury also convicted Smukler of making unlawful conduit contributions to the campaign in 2014, through Jones, and again in 2015 through the candidate herself.
Judge Jan E. DuBois set sentencing for March 13, 2019.
The case was investigated by the FBI and prosecuted by Richard C. Pilger, Director of the Election Crimes Branch of the Public Integrity Section of the Criminal Division; Rebecca Moses, Trial Attorney of the Public Integrity Section and by Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric L. Gibson of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
From the beginning of my blog, I have been coming up with the most entertainingly creative ways of enlightening "The Elected Ones" that child welfare, all inclusive of foster care and adoption, is more than just human trafficking and Medicaid fraud.
"The Elected Ones" are more focused on being deified in securing political titles of nobility than the trafficking of children.
Child welfare is the foundational tenats of Chrisitanity.
This religious foundation used to be called imperialism, but now it is known as privatization, a machine to take over institutions for personal inurement, whether that be financially or the opportunity to be glorified in the churches through complicit ignorance. Yes, even the churches cover up child trafficking with Faith Based Inititative funding.
Philadelphia police have busted a Child Protection Agency whose employees were caught operating a pedophile ring.
The Camden County Prosecutor’s Office in New Jersey has charged 55-year-old Charles Borrelli, a senior employee of the Philadelphia Department of Human Services, with third-degree possession of child pornography.
Thegoldwater.com reports: According to investigators, the Camden County High-Tech Crimes Unit, conducted a full and detailed search of Borrelli’s home on Rollingwood Drive after they’d received a tip from. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Investigators say that during the search they seized multiple digital devices from his residence that all were found to contain child pornography, in which led to Borrelli being arrested at his home without incident.
Borrelli is the also owner of the company Dynamic Sights, an IT consulting firm that has been around since 1994, according to a bio on the company’s now deleted website.
Various services were offered by Dynamic Sights that included web design, IT project management, as well as drone and event photography.
For the past 15 years however, Borrelli worked directly with Department of Human Services, in which is responsible for the wellbeing of thousands of at-risk children in and around the Philadelphia area, although now it seems he was doing so because he is a pedophile. He also worked as part of a team that built and maintained the IT infrastructure at DHS, including what’s now their current case-management system, that allows caseworkers to track children and their families; and apparently, pedophiles who work inside the DHS also use it for following children. I keep telling you people it is all in the databases and the contracts.
According to two DHS sources from within the organization, Borrelli had unfettered access to the databases that include personal information about the children under DHS care, without supervision.
This is incredibly worrysome that a pedophile could have been monitoring or even worse stalking these children.
Borelli has not been charged with directly harming or exploiting children as of yet, and authorities have not alleged that he made any improper use of the database information, but sources from inside the DHS have expressed their concerns.
DHS spokesperson Alicia Taylor says that all DHS contractors who work directly with children undergo clearances in accordance with Pennsylvania’s Child Protective Services Law, but that contractors who do not work with children are not subject to the same requirements.
I hate to tell Miss Taylor, but clearly this pedophile was employed with then for fifteen years and their failures to recognize such have not only made their organization a fraud but I would suggest that there are likely even more who have slipped through the cracks.
It’s a pedophile’s dream to work with kids like this, and Borrelli successfully achieved the potential to have tens of thousands of children at his fingertips.
Alicia Taylor still insists that Borrelli did not have direct contact with children as part of his IT contract with them, but that’s a moronic statement because he had access to their information and could have been preying upon them.
The agency’s 2013 annual report includes a photo credited to a “Charles Borrelli” that was taken of a child at a DHS event.
“DHS was surprised and horrified to learn of the charges against Mr. Borrelli,” says Taylor.
“DHS learned of his arrest on December 11th from an online news article and promptly contacted law enforcement. We are currently cooperating fully with authorities.”
Borrelli was since been released from jail pending trial, which only further shows the incompetence of the Judicial system.
Pedophiles should not have a bond, period.
Despite the charges Borrelli did not return a call from Philly Mag, who reached out for any potential comment.
I just love stories like this. Makes me all warm and fuzzy inside.
Now, who can name the funding stream in which false claims were filed? Medicaid! That's absolutely correct! Five will get you ten that hospital is infected with more revenue maximization schemes.
The best part to this story is, I sniffed out the use of a CID, Civil Investigative Demand. This means while the feds were looking at the criminal aspects, it had to execute a CID for the civil portion to get the docs.
PHILADELPHIA - June 3, 2011 (WPVI) -- Federal authorities say a longtime top executive at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia embezzled $1.7 million from the institution to finance a lavish lifestyle.The federal charges, filed in a "criminal information" Thursday in Philadelphia, charges Roosevelt Hairston Jr. with mail fraud, money laundering and filing a false tax return.
Prosecutors allege that Hairston created dozens of false invoices for shell companies dating back to 1999. They say he used the money to buy real estate, a luxury yacht and expensive cars.
Hairston has held various senior hospital positions, most recently general counsel and executive vice president. He was fired in February during the federal probe.
Hairston's attorney, Howard Bruce Klein, says his client is a devoted community servant who acknowledged involvement in financial irregularities during an internal hospital investigation.
The sentencing for the federally funded fraudfeasors is taking place. My question to the State of Pennsylvania, more specifically to Attorney General Tom Corbett is this:
What many do not know is the child welfare services, the services that these people who allowed Danieal to be tortured and murdered, are funded through Medicaid. I place the blame on the Attorney General for her unfortunate life and horrendous death, but I am quite sure he will do it again and again, that is do nothing to stop Medicaid fraud in child welfare.
campisg@phillynews.com 215-854-5935
A co-founder and two employees of MultiEthnic Behavioral Health are being sent to prison in the federal fraud case that stemmed from the fatal torment suffered by Danieal Kelly, a 14-year-old girl with cerebral palsy who starved to death while under the social-service agency's care.
Manuelita Buenaflor, 66, a co-founder of the now-closed agency, yesterday was sentenced to 36 months in prison. Two other employees also were sentenced to jail yesterday by U.S. District Judge Stewart Dalzell.
Buenaflor's job was to make sure that workers for MultiEthnic, which had been contracted by the city Department of Human Services to visit families, filed the proper reports, notes and case reviews.
She admitted in court to concerns that some workers were filing phony reports, dubbed "ghost visits," but she never alerted the city or the workers' supervisors. MultiEthnic employees also were accused of destroying records in a coverup.
The city paid MultiEthnic with money provided by the federal government to oversee social services for 500 at-risk, poor families between 2000 and 2006.
Buenaflor pleaded guilty to wire fraud, health-care fraud, and conspiracy to obstruct an investigation.
The feds said eight of the nine defendants they charged schemed to bill the city for services never rendered. The ninth was charged with perjury.
Besides Buenaflor, Dalzell yesterday sentenced former social worker Christiana Nimpson, 54, to 20 months for wire fraud, health-care fraud, and conspiracy. Sotheary Chan, 41, another MultiEthnic employee, received 15 months for wire fraud and conspiracy. None of the three sentenced yesterday was directly involved in the Kelly case.
Besides malnutrition, bedsores contributed to Danieal's death on Aug. 4, 2006, during a heat wave, officials said.
Danieal's mother, Andrea Kelly, was convicted of third-degree murder and sentenced a year ago to up to 40 years in prison.
Another co-founder of MultiEthnic, Earl McNeill, is scheduled to be sentenced next Thursday. MEBH employee Patricia Burch, who pleaded guilty to perjury, will be sentenced Tuesday.
Others will be sentenced in June.
Two MultiEthnic managers, Mickal Kamuvaka, 60, and Solomon Manamela, 52, and two caseworkers, Julius Murray, 52, and Mariam Coulibaly, 42, were convicted last month on charges of fraud and obstructing a federal investigation.
It took the horrific death of a helpless child for the feds to finally stand up and do something about "health care fraud" (a.k.a. Medicaid fraud) in child welfare.
Medicaid fraud happens every day. The differences are most children survive the torture and most privatized agencies get away with the false claims.
SPARKLE Ballard had her baby home just a year when city social workers swooped in and snatched the infant away to foster care, deeming Ballard an unfit mom.
Her offense: She didn't have permanent housing.
Desperate for her daughter, Ballard did what she was told in a bid to get her back: She quit hopscotching houses and settled in a Mount Airy apartment, took parenting and GED classes and applied for jobs with more family-friendly hours.
But it wasn't enough. One year later, Ballard has seen her daughter, Christianna, only in weekly, supervised visits on the foster agency's turf.
"I think it's outrageous," said Ballard, now 19. "There are other people out there who can use their help and services, people that actually are abusing and neglecting their kids. I'm not one of those people."
Like Ballard, thousands of parents nationally have lost their children to foster care for little reason other than inadequate housing.
One fifth of foster children nationally landed in county custody - or languished there, as housing issues delayed family reunification - because of inappropriate housing, according to the Child Welfare League of America. A third of the nation's foster children have at least one homeless or "unstably housed" parent, according to the league.
Desensitized bureaucrats too often equate poverty with neglect and seize children away from biological parents whose only "offense" is hardship, critics charge.
And once kids are in the system, it can prove insurmountably difficult to get them out.
Parents petitioning to get their children back in Philadelphia typically wait five months between hearings, local parent-advocates say.
Because federal law requires social-service agencies to place foster children in permanent homes - biological or adoptive - after 15 months in county custody, biological parents might have just two or three chances to get their children back.
"There is not endless time to resolve some pretty serious problems," said Kathy Gomez, managing attorney of the Family Advocacy Unit of Community Legal Services, who represents hundreds of parents in custody cases.
"Housing is among the single biggest factors in the use and misuse of foster care," said Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform. "Not only is it doing enormous harm to the children, who face abuse [in foster care] and possible permanent separation from their parents. It's doing enormous harm to the taxpayers, because foster care costs more than a rent subsidy.
"It is never an excuse to take away a child because the child's family can't afford a decent place to live," Wexler added. "It is incredibly cruel to the child and it's stupid financially."
Poverty a problem
Under the Pennsylvania Juvenile Act, the list of reasons why children can be placed in county care is vast and varied: Physical or sexual abuse; delinquency under age 10; the death of or abandonment by parents; parental behavior such as drug abuse that endangers the child; the child's habitual disobedience or truancy; and so on.
Poverty is not on the list.
But poverty is a common denominator in many of the families whose children end up in foster care. It invites authorities' scrutiny, and snowballs into other issues that could prompt removal or delay reunification, child advocates say.
"It's easy to come under child-protection observation when you're poor," Gomez said. "And there's no room for error when you're poor: Once something goes wrong, things just tend to spiral."
Housing problems frequently result.
Parents struggling to pay rent might not have money to cover utilities or maintenance and repairs, creating living conditions that social workers might deem unsafe for children, Gomez said. Others who can't afford child care and transportation costs might miss so much work that they get fired - and without a paycheck to pay rent or a mortgage, they lose their housing, she said.
"Lack of housing is not legal grounds for removal, but homelessness, housing problems and residence in low-income neighborhoods all result in a greater likelihood of CPS [child-protective services] being involved," said Corey Shdaimah, an assistant professor of social work at the University of Maryland who has studied the correlation between poverty, housing and child welfare issues.
Ruth White, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based National Center for Housing and Child Welfare, agreed: "Child welfare won't say that they have actually separated a family because of housing. But it totally happens."
The remedy seems obvious: Help these families get housing.
But agencies that offer subsidized housing are overwhelmed by demand.
The Philadelphia Housing Authority, for example, has a waiting list of 43,000, spokesman David Tillman said.
Still, PHA participates in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's Family Unification Program, which covers subsidized housing costs for 16,000 families nationally whose housing troubles threaten child-welfare involvement.
Since 2000, HUD has given PHA 300 vouchers under the program; 224 families in Philadelphia have benefitted, Tillman said. While 76 vouchers remain up for grabs, not everyone can use those vouchers, even if no one disputes a family's needs. HUD and PHA disqualify applicants with a history of violent crime or drug convictions.
DHS also partners with the city's Office of Supportive Housing to get 50 federally funded housing vouchers for families facing separation due to housing problems, DHS Commissioner Anne Marie Ambrose said.
Ambrose said that her agency doesn't track how many DHS-involved families have inadequate housing, nor how many children were removed from families living in poverty.
She insisted that her agency does not remove children solely for housing reasons. But among the more than 3,000 children in Philadelphia foster care, inadequate housing is a frequent concern, she acknowledged.
"I believe that children should, first and foremost, be with their families," Ambrose said. "We remove kids only if there is an identified safety threat. When there is a safety threat, we have a legal mandate to remove those children."
But family preservation is paramount, she added.
The agency has a $1.35 million emergency fund it uses to fix broken windows, buy beds, repair faulty plumbing, pay utility bills and solve other housing headaches that could endanger children, she said.
Because those funds are so sorely needed, DHS workers strive to ensure "housing sustainability," Ambrose added. That means that instead of passing out checks for security deposits willy-nilly, the agency wants to make sure that the families it helps can continue paying their monthly rent - and that requires a steady paycheck.
Further, the agency last July launched an "alternative response services" program, in which it identifies cases where no safety threat exists and hook up those families with in-home services to avert removal, Ambrose said.
DHS spends an average of $50 a day to provide a family in-home services under the new program, and up to $80 a day for those struggling with cognitive impairment, medical issues or sexual abuse, she said. In contrast, they pay foster parents about $24 a day per child.
"We pay double to triple to keep kids in their homes," Ambrose said. "We don't believe that children and families should be destabilized because of a housing issue."
Still, Shdaimah and others ask, why bother giving any money to foster parents? Why not just give it directly to the biological parents to fix whatever ails them and to preserve the family?
Wexler thinks that he knows the answer to those questions.
"The only reason we don't do this is it's not politically popular," he said. "It's not popular to provide help to 'bad parents.' The child-welfare system is really a parent-punishment system. But the problem is: When we take a swing at those parents, the blow almost always lands on the children."
But Ambrose disagreed.
"We're very clear about when we should remove children: It's when we can't keep them safe in their homes," Ambrose said. "I'm not sure that throwing money at them is what's going to keep them safe."
Hope for the future
Anyone with any experience in the child-welfare system knows that most cases are murkier than the waters of the Schuylkill.
In the decision to remove Ballard's daughter, Christianna, housing was an issue, Ambrose acknowledged.
But Ballard, who worked late nights as an IHOP waitress, occasionally left her daughter with a relative who was a sex offender, Ambrose said. Ballard and her baby also lived in one home where other residents had domestic-violence issues, Ambrose added. Ambrose listed other lesser problems she says delayed reunification, but Ballard denied any problems or noncompliance.
Ballard hasn't lost faith. She has a hearing scheduled for June, and she hopes that she'll get Christianna back then.
Until then, she'll visit her daughter, trying to coax the quiet girl into opening up more to mama.
"She doesn't talk - she just whispers," Ballard said. "They think she needs speech therapy. They think there's something wrong with her. But she's only 2; she doesn't understand what's happening to her. You [DHS] took her away from her mom. I wouldn't want to talk to you either."
Now, there are two major errors in this story.
ERROR ONE:The article is slanted to discredit the statement of DHS Commissioner Anne Marie Ambrose says housing is not the sole reason for children's removal.
I am here to support the statement of the DHS Commissioner Ambrose when she says "housing is not the sole reason for children's removal."
The sole reason for the children's removal is federal funding. The State of Pennsylvania, even more so, the City of Philadelphia has been found through federal audits, state investigations, grand juries, that the lack of administrative prowess has allowed fraud, waste and abuse to rifle through the system.
Child welfare is an industry and industries were designed to be efficient and sustainable, meaning it must continue the flow of federal dollars.
Social resources have been eliminated to the point where the only place to find assistance or any form of help is through the child welfare system. The more excuses the child placing agencies can create, the longer the length of stay for the child. The business objective of the child placing agencies is to continue the flow of financial resources to maintain jobs, at the expense of its vulnerable citizens.
ERROR TWO:Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform formulated a false policy position when he spoke of the "enormous harm to the children, who face abuse [in foster care] and possible permanent separation from their parents. It's doing enormous harm to the taxpayers, because foster care costs more than a rent subsidy."
It is not doing a harm to taxpayer as child welfare is an industry.
Even though Mr. Wexler acknowledges his deficiencies in policymaking and rulemaking, he has improperly assumed that, "The only reason we don't do this (provide greater financial assistance to families) is it's not politically popular." Actually, the "political popularity" is not very popular. The reason the States do not provide financial assistance to those in need is because of the moritoria on Medicaid Fraud regulation, co-sponsored by Pennsylvania's finest.
Back by popular demand, is an introductory video on why poverty is considered as abuse and neglect.
Pennsylvania just scooted through yet another U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Audit by the seat of their revenue-maximizing-scheme seat of their pants.
Since the U.S. DHHS and OIG and I cannot provide the public with the exact amounts of perpetual fraud in child welfare, we will just share with the public another memorable moment in federal audits of Pennsylvania's Department of Public Welfare's financial fiasco. This particular 2007 audit documented over $44,000,000 in fraud, in one county, in one program, in one facility: Castille.
Yes, Castille is juvenile detention facility, which shares the name with the Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald Castille, who stated in the "Kids for Cash" scandal:
So where is the Luzerne County federal audit? For that matter, where is the long-term fix in child welfare fraud in Pennsylvania? Well, it certainly is not in Pennsylvania.
Here are 1.6 million reasons, I mean another U.S. DHHS OIG audit report of $1,600,000 in Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare wrong doing to juveniles and their families in the state. Even though the audit only deals with a small sample population of children aging out of foster care (over 18 years of age), questions should be asked:
HOW MANY OF THESE CHILDREN WHO ARE AGING OUT SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN IN FOSTER CARE?
or
HOW MANY OF THESE CHILDREN WHO ARE AGING OUT WERE FROM LUZERNE AND PHILADELPHIA COUNTIES?
Pennsylvania Title IV-E Audit 2009
The pinnacle of the Pennsylvania Department of Public Services's performance is their objection to the authority of the U.S. DHHS OIG to perform the audit, itself.
