Brooklyn ACORN Community Organizer Accused of Fraud

After we noted the dubious ACORN HS for Social Justice yesterday you just had to know there were more layers to peel back to uncover some fraud involved. Sure enough today we discover a community organizer involved with ACORN, the New York City Department of Education and the ACORN HS for Social Justice is being accused of fraud.

ACORN and fraud: Perfect together.

The free corporate rewards gifts arrived by the dozens: $5,000 IBM gift certificates, $500 travel coupons, Broadway show tickets, tickets to Mets and Yankees games. The only problem was that, according to city schools investigators, it was all based on a scam.

Investigators on Tuesday alleged that a Brooklyn-based bookkeeper and community organizer for the beleaguered anti-poverty group Acorn improperly netted $500,000 in merchandise for a corporate rewards program with Verizon, the telephone company, through a complex scam that went on for more than four years.

“She left no stone unturned,” said Richard J. Condon, the special commissioner of investigations for the city’s schools.

Investigators said the fraud began in 2004, when the woman, Donnett Davis, was working at the financial desk at a Brooklyn office of Acorn. She opened a corporate rewards program for Acorn’s 10 to 20 phone lines with Verizon, but put her name as the recipient in order to get the rewards herself, she told investigators, according to a report submitted to Joel I. Klein, the schools chancellor, on Tuesday.

Shortly afterward, investigators allege, Ms. Davis added about 9,000 Department of Education phone lines to her rewards account. With millions of dollars in billings, the trickle of reward points became a roaring torrent of gift certificates, L.L. Bean merchandise and other freebies, investigators said.

It is not known how Ms. Davis got access to the Department of Education numbers, but Mr. Cordon said he suspects she may have had help from someone within the department or Verizon. “We’re not alleging she did it alone,” Mr. Cordon said. “Quite frankly we would be surprised if she did.”

New York Acorn terminated Ms. Davis’s employment in April 2008, Arthur Schwartz, counsel for Acorn, said Tuesday. Shortly afterward, Ms. Davis went to work directly for the Department of Education, as the parent coordinator for an Acorn-affiliated school, the Acorn High School for Social Justice in Brooklyn.

There, the scam continued until Verizon discovered the suspicious activity in October 2008 while auditing its accounts, and the Department of Education began an investigation. Ms. Davis resigned from her schools job in August, the letter to Mr. Klein said. The matter has been referred to prosecutors.

H/T Big Government.

How is it someone can be terminated from ACORN and then go directly to work for the DoE? Isn't there any vetting? Or did she have cushy union connections that allowed her to glide right in?

Now despite Klein's assertion she was dismissed in August, Davis is still listed as a parent coordinator at the School for Social Justice. There has not been a reply to an email inquiry to that address.

Meanwhile the attorney for Davis responded.

Davis's attorney Scott Cerbin downplayed the accusations. "As of this time, I'm not aware of any criminal charges," he said.