Way back in 2021, the Nevada Legislature passed a law greatly expanding the regulation of fundraising beyond traditional tax-exempt charities. For the first time, almost any kind of non-religious outfit purporting to solicit money within the state–usually on the phone–benefiting various specified causes was barred from doing so without first registering with the Secretary of State’s Office (SOSO) and making financial filings. The enumerated causes included law enforcement, fire fighting, public safety, public health, patriotism, and anything else that sounds like a charitable mission. Also–and crucially–for the first time, the SOSO was given broad authority to issue cease-and-desist orders and issue civil financial penalties, which would also draw public attention to any culprits.
A huge number of these outfits were what I call faux charities (others call them scam charities). These are political action committees, poorly regulated at the federal level, that sound like charities when they cold-call you asking you for money but aren’t. Instead, they spend almost all the money raised in fundraising expense and hidden fees for their operators, generating terrible financial efficiencies. Donors get rooked. These telemarketers, who employ computer-generated voices using soundboard technology, operate nationally, but they seem to find fertile ground in Nevada.
I’ve been writing about these operators and their activities in Nevada for a long time, focusing on the many who were dumb enough to call me–often repeatedly–at the New To Law Vegas world headquarters. (You can find my coverage by entering “faux charity” in the nearby search box.) There undoubtedly have been tens of thousands of such calls over the years to my fellow Nevadans. I’ve yet to find even one of these telemarketers properly registered in the state.
The law, known as Senate Bill 62 and codified at Nevada Revised Statues 82A.025 et seq., took effect on October 1, 2021. On its face, the measure put Nevada in the vanguard of consumer protection on this issue. Ha! Knowing something of the historically weak commitment to effective charitable regulation–or any regulation–by the SOSO, I wrote in this space just 12 days after the law took effect, “Let’s all join the watch party … We’ll see if Nevada regulators invoke their brand new law requiring registration before soliciting.”
On August 2, 2024, I filed a request with the SOSO for information under the Nevada Public Records Act. The agency repeatedly blew a number of statutory deadlines and rules for responding to my request. Finally, the SOSO last week admitted to me in writing just how many civil penalties the agency assessed under the law through December 31, 2024, a time period covering the heyday of faux charity calling.
Zero.
The SOSO also finally admitted to me how many cease-and-desist letters the agency issued to errant fundraisers under the law through December 31, 2024.
Zero.
How does a governmental agency admit this kind of failure? Why, by anonymously speaking the language of Classic Bureaucracy, which I learned about long ago in law school. The SOSO “does not hold any responsive records” concerning my request, the letter said. It was from “The Office of the Secretary of State,” but bore no name or signature.
Here’s exactly what I had asked for: “All documents within your agency memorializing all civil penalties and cease-and-desist orders issued against soliciting fundraising organizations in violation of Senate Bill 62 … since the law’s effective date in October 2021.”
I also requested all documents referencing any referral in 2023 and 2024 of potential violations of Senate Bill 62 to the Nevada Attorney General’s Office, which has greater investigatory resources and the power to invoke consumer protection laws. While I listed by name 13 faux charities that have called me and I have written up, I included a request for “any other” fundraising organization so referred.
No can do, the SOSO said. Again, the agency “does not hold any responsive records.”
Although I didn’t ask specifically for this, the SOSO letter volunteered that the agency has “open investigations,” presumably of its own rather than referrals to the AG, into three of the 13 faux charities on my submitted list: Firefighters and EMS Fund PAC, National Police Support Fund and American Police Officers Alliance. In what likely isn’t a coincidence, these three also happened to be mentioned in a long New York Times expose about faux charities by Pulitzer Prize-winner David Fahrenthold. But that was published nearly two years ago, and after I had written about the trio. How long does it take to look at records, send an email and write up a disciplinary letter?
So would-be donors in Nevada and elsewhere are on notice, here are the names of the 10 other faux charities I asked about that the SOSO apparently is not–I repeat not–looking into, with underlying links to some of my articles: American Breast Cancer Coalition PAC, American Coalition for Police and Sheriff’s PAC, American Police Officers Coalition PAC, Law Enforcement for a Safer America PAC, National Coalition for Disabled Veterans PAC, National Committee for Volunteer Firefighters PAC, National Police Officers Alliance PAC, Police Officers Support Association PAC, Police Officers Support Committee PAC, and POSC PAC.
The SOSO is the state’s official records keeper, especially when it comes to businesses and elections. Sadly, the agency is no stranger to screwing up. In 1991 I wrote a story for Forbes about how the SOSO granted permission to do business in Nevada to a nonexistent company with an obviously made-up name, Banco de Asia, incorporated in a nonexistent country with an even more eyebrow-raising name, the Dominion of Melchizedek. They were inventions of the many-time convicted swindler, Branch Vinedresser, a/k/a Mark Logan Pedley a/k/a Tzemach Ben David Netzer Korem, who repeatedly has been a resident of federal housing.
SOSO accepted the filing even after in an earlier story I had exposed the Dominion of Melchidedek as a fraud. No matter: Agency officials told me back then Nevada law did not require them to check if a company is chartered in a real jurisdiction. I wrote, “Wonder what they’ll say after some Nevada residents get hosed.”
In 2013, the Nevada Legislature passed a law requiring the SOSO to post on its own website the full annual financial report or IRS Form 990 tax return of every charitiy registered to solicit within Nevada, making it easier for residents to check financial their bona fides. Twelve years later, the SOSO has yet to post even one. Conversely, on other occasions the SOSO website has listed active citations to state law repealed years earlier.
In 2018, the Las Vegas Review-Journal published a prize-winning expose by now-former-reporter Brian Joseph about the SOSO. The story recounted how the agency did little to stop scamsters from making fake corporation filings to swindle folks out of property in Las Vegas and elsewhere.
More recently, the conservative Las Vegas Republican activist and blogger Chuck Muth has been going after the SOSO over what he says is the agency’s lax attitude toward, among other things, purging the voting rolls of folks who have moved away from the state. Muth is a very partisan fellow. But in my view he has done a terrific job of casting the SOSO as MIA on this issue.
Now, the number of faux charity pitches I have received in the past few months is way, way down. I don’t think the SOSO is the reason. It’s possible the telemarketers are simply wising up to me and not calling. I might credit publicity surrounding the 10-year prison sentence and $8.9 million fine meted out in December to Richard Zeitlin. He is (or was) a Las Vegas resident with a call center operation in the state and considered one of the national kings of faux charity solicitations. Over the years I received calls from several of his causes, including United Police Officers Coalition PAC. Zeitlin, now 54, pleaded guilty to wire fraud and is now inmate No. 73600-510 in the federal prison system. I imagine this put the fear of God in some of these other characters.
But Zeitlin’s criminal case was brought by federal prosecutors in far-away New York City. The press release issued by U.S. Attorney Damian Williams announcing the sentencing “praised the outstanding investigative work of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” It made absolutely no mention of the Nevada SOSO.
I invite the posting of comment below on any of the issues this post raises. In the past I have not been able to get the SOSO to respond to my perception of its shortcomings.
Anyway, if you live in Las Vegas or Nevada, this is your government at work. The current Secretary of State, Francisco V. (Cisco) Aguilar, is the state’s third-highest elected official. A Democrat, he’s up for re-election next year. Remember his name.
Obviously, Zero isn’t good enough.