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TUCKER, Ga. - When you get a call asking for money in the name of a charity, Georgia law requires them to tell you whether they're getting paid with some of your donation.
But there's a loophole to that law, one the FOX 5 I-Team discovered a local police charity knows all too well.
The DeKalb Fraternal Order of Police decided years ago to fire their outside fundraising company over complaints those paid solicitors misled the public by pretending to be police officers. The lodge tried doing it themselves, but they weren't good at asking for money. So they hired their own solicitors, who quickly took advantage of a loophole in the law: if the phone solicitors work for the charity, they don't have to admit they are pocketing some of the donations themselves.
But one former employee argued it actually made the deception worse.
"We lead business owners to think we're just there working for the lodge. And we're volunteering," pointed out Marilyn Williams, a former DeKalb FOP phone solicitor.
"You're just doing it out of the goodness of your heart," FOX 5 I-Team reporter Randy Travis suggested.
"Exactly."
Earlier the FOX 5 I-Team reported how the DeKalb FOP raised money year round with the promise of helping needy kids. The biggest program: Shop With a Cop, giving less fortunate children a chance to buy Christmas toys and games with donated money.
In 2013, the most recent reporting year, the lodge's phone room brought in $240,000 for those kids. But the charity's admitted less than 10 percent of that money -- $23,000 -- actually got spent on children. The charity averaged a little more than 50 children each year who got helped through Shop With A Cop at around $200 worth of toys and clothes each. The charity could not explain how the remainder of that $23,000 was spent on needy children.
Regardless, the rest wound up in the paid solicitors' pockets... or the FOP's bank account.
"A lot of that money goes into the general account," argued DeKalb FOP fundraising chairman Tom Reiner.
"Right," replied Travis. "But you're not pitching that. You're pitching kids."
That's the program we're working on, yeah," Reiner admitted.
And as for his people not telling the donors they're getting paid?
"Well, I mean if someone were to contact somebody and the first thing out of their mouth is hey, this is the percentage it, it gives a bad impression."
He said they did not make the change to get around the law. Donors aren't told the callers get to keep 25% of the money given for needy children. The phone room manager pockets another 15%. Out of $240,000 raised in 2013, nearly $100,000 went to pay the phone solicitors.
We also discovered the charity paid little attention to the background of the people they hire to raise money. Two minutes after an undercover FOX 5 I-Team producer walked into the Tucker phone room, manager Joe Swirble told him he was hired.
"You got the job," he announced. "Come by tomorrow morning at 9." We didn't come back.
"They have anybody working there," stressed former solicitor Marilyn Williams. "They don't do criminal background checks. They don't do drug screening."
In fact, no one from the DeKalb Fraternal Order of Police bothered to call the phone room manager's previous employer. The president of the Gwinnett Fraternal Order of Police told the FOX 5 I-Team Joe Swirble was fired for taking donor information from their office.
Our investigation left the DeKalb FOP reeling. The charity's officers do not draw a salary. They insisted the money they don't spend on needy children stays in a bank account for future worthy needs. Shortly after our original investigation aired, the Tucker phone room closed.
At the end of 2013 the charity had built up more than $200,000 in cash. Yet they continued begging for money in the name of disadvantaged kids, pulling at the heart strings of DeKalb's business community.
"If there's wrongdoing going on, all I can do is apologize to the community for that and try to fix it," offered DeKalb FOP president Jeff Wiggs. "We don't like having to do this but it's a necessary evil to make this work."