This comes courtesy of Weaponsman. I’ve copied and pasted it here in full. The organization in question is the VSO, Veterans Support Organization, which if allegations are true spends approximately 6% of what it brings in on actually supporting real veterans.
Yep, 6%.
Volunteers out soliciting money allegedly keep 30% of whatever they bring in as a “finder’s fee”. Nice eh?
As the original author points out, there are many legitimate charities, some career field specific, some are for service dogs for veterans, some for veterans with specific injuries. Choose the one you want, but put some due diligence into it. Check with the DVA or the VFW or one of the charity watch organizations; make sure your money isn’t lining some grifter’s pockets. Note: if you aren’t aware, BLUF is Bottom Line Up Front.
The article from Weaponsman:
Veterans Support Organization: A Scam?
DAV (legit vets’ org) letter about the VSO (scam vets’ org). Click to expand.
BLUF: Almost certainly.
What occasioned this post is the attached letter from the DAV. Unfortunately it came to us as a .jpg so the links in it are not clickable. So we googled up the organization and found a bunch of criticism out there:
- NewsChannel 5, Nashville TN finds that most of the money goes to paid staff, many of whom aren’t even veterans. They dress non-veterans in uniforms to solicit money!
- NewsChannel 5’s Consumer Investgator Jennifer Kraus follows up with a story that reports the state is investigating the suspect organization, and that “the VSO keeps most of what you give to pay for its own expenses and that what VSO fundraisers will say to get donations isn’t always true.”
- They claim to be raising money for shelters that don’t exist and aren’t planned, and for legitimate charities like the Fisher House Foundation (Fisher House won’t even take their tainted money!) (Link is to the 2nd NewsChannel 5 story again).
- A Florida TV Station, 10 News, corroborated the findings of Ms Kraus’s reports. In fact, they found the VSO was even worse… dedicating a mere 6.6 percent of the millions it collects to helping veterans, concealing its fundraising expenses as “somehow related to its programs,” and reporting a fundraising expense of $0 despite relying on paid fundraisers — street solicitors, often fake veterans, who get 30% off the top. (The article also includes five helpful tips for evaluating charities at the end).
- Some of the fundraisers are volunteers. Here’s 10 News’s story of one who quit after suffering pangs of conscience. She also revealed — and the individual confirmed — that the Tampa, Florida branch head of VSO was a convicted violent repeat felon. “We have a lot of convicted felons,” he told the station, and VSO HQ confirmed that. VSO spokesman Justin Wells implied that it was just because so many veterans were felons and ex-cons. “[V]eterans are a very small part of the adult population, so why are veterans 2-3 times more likely to serve time in our prison system?” he demanded. But in fact, veterans are less likely than their cohort who never served to do time.
- Their Director of Treatment, Jack Bittleman, is a career felon with a criminal record in 4 states, according to a letter sent to major veterans groups by Steve Udovich, a legitimate member of all.
- VSO boss, the extremely well-compensated Richard Van Houten, was unable to produce a DD-214 of his own and may not be a veteran at all, according to the Udovich letter.
We’re very critical of the media here, and so critical of TV that we don’t have one. But the media, particularly TV consumer reporters at local stations nationwide, including Noah Pransky and Jennifer Kraus, whose stories are linked above, have been instrumental in exposing this rip-off charity. Tip o’the beret to them both.
Not everyone recognizes VSO as a scam. Ken Smith of the fake-veterans online paper Veterans Today wrote this apologia which followed the VSO party line, but Smith is a problematic figure. He has made his fortune on tha backs of veterans, and is himself one of the most egregious cases of Stolen Valor, whose exaggerations of his pedestrian record resonated with gullible donors — but were exposed in the book Stolen Valor that gave its name to the phenomenon, and even recognized in the Boston Globe: “Ken Smith, founder of the New England Shelter for Homeless Veterans in Boston, was found to have boasted of battles he never fought and donned awards he never won.” BG Burkett. co-author of Stolen Valor, expanded elsewhere:
One of the stories in the book is actually a Boston story. They have a New England Mission for the Homeless here, it was run by a guy named Ken Smith. I saw this guy in Heraldo and he was had some Vietnam veterans with him and they were going through the litany of their Vietnam service and everything and Smith had talked about his glorious combat in Vietnam and the Easter Offensive and all that stuff. I get his military record and he was in Vietnam at that time but he was a security guard, didn’t even have a Combat Infantry Badge and never came under fire, basically concocted his whole record. I then checked further and he had multiple felony convictions for embezzlement and fraud and all this. Now the Kennedys got this man 20 million dollars to start this facility, got him the building and of course money starting disappearing in the balance, they did not match up and I frankly don’t know what happened to the guy but he is in my book. You all hear the same kind of thing about the homeless, it goes on like the suicide rates.
Convicted embezzler and fraud artist! Well, that makes us trust Smith’s defense of VSO all the more! A look at the latest stories on Veterans Today indicates that Smith also seems to have an obsession about Israel and Jews — and not a healthy one. No, I won’t reward this crook with another link.
There are many good veterans’ organizations. Personally we recommend The Special Operations Warrior Foundation, the Green Beret Foundation, and Divers for Heroes. The first supports the families of operators and SOF support personnel killed in combat, on clandestine operations, or in training mishaps. (It has been putting SOF kids through college for their lost fathers since the aftermath of Desert One, for almost 30 years). The second is new, but specifically supports legitimate needs in the Special Forces community — it’s SF helping SF. The third gives wounded and crippled warriors a chance to experience weightlessness and freedom by scuba diving, and it’s run by a couple that are personal friends.
