I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
New Mexico Assistant Attorney General Elizabeth Korsmo has ordered the U.S. Navy Veterans Association charity to stop fundraising in New Mexico, the St. Petersburg Times reported today. The paper’s investigative series on the charity found that telemarketers and fund-raising companies hired by the group keep up to 90 percent of the money raised from donors, and that most of the organization’s offices around the nation are little more than mail drops. The group’s members, officers and auditors could not be found by reporters.
The New Mexico chapter is listed as donating $132,506 in food, shelter, clothing, direct cash assistance and medical and dental care to indigent veterans and families in New Mexico, according to IRS records obtained by The Independent. However, no details are offered about where exactly the money and donations were spent, or what hospitals or health clinics were paid.
Korsmo, whose father is a Navy veteran, investigated the New Mexico chapter and found the chapter officials’ addresses listed in IRS filings do not actually exist.
IRS documents list Howard Bonifacio as head of the New Mexico chapter, and his address as 388 Boutz Road in Las Cruces. But that address is an empty field, the Attorney General’s Office found. AG officials could find no evidence in tax records or phone books that Bonifacio, or another New Mexico chapter official, Don Archer of 2698 Espina St., Las Cruces, really exist.
“We found nothing but some dirt and some mesquite,” Korsmo said. “And Howard Bonifacio is not in the White Pages of New Mexico; nor is he in the White Pages anywhere in the U.S. Until Mr. Bonifacio comes to talk to us, I’m going to assume he doesn’t exist.”
Korsmo wrote to the group’s Washington, D.C. headquarters on April 1, notifying them that they are not lawfully registered as a charity in New Mexico and are in violation of the state Charitable Solicitations Act.
“New Mexico is the first state to react to the news about the USNVA from a regulatory standpoint, so it is clear Ms. Korsmo and her staff take the responsibility of protecting New Mexico consumers seriously,” Times journalist Jeff Testerman, one of the authors of the investigative series, told The Independent. “If the names and/or addresses on the 990 (nonprofit IRS) tax forms are fictional, then the tax returns have been falsified, and the IRS should take an interest.”
The U.S. Navy Veterans Association, formed in Tampa, Florida in 2002, is registered in New Mexico and 40 other states, and has annual revenues of $22 million, according to a St. Petersburg Times.
The New Mexico chapter of the Navy Veterans said it raised $249,305 in 2008, the most current tax return available.
The Times reporters have been investigating the group’s activities in 41 states.
“In most cases, the USNVA simply listed state officers at rented mailboxes, so it was impossible to verify addresses,” Testerman told The Independent. “In most cases, the (Navy Veterans Association) simply listed state officers at rented mailboxes, so it was impossible to verify addresses. For some reason, the New Mexico chapter officers were listed on 990 tax forms at street addresses, which we now know turned out to be non-existent.”
The charity’s founder, Bobby Thompson, has is “now missing from his Tampa address,” Testerman added.
