The Shelia Dixon Rip Off - Continues

For the past couple of days we have been talking about corruption in Baltimore, Maryland. We talked about how a group out of Baltimore Maryland called The Sickle Cell Disease Association of America has misappropriated foundation, private donations and federal funds with little Federal, or state charity oversight.

We also talked about how in the city of Baltimore former the queen of ripping off the black poor, Mayor Shelia Dixon, stepped down after a jury convicted her of embezzling gift cards donated to the city for needy families.

Well if you thought we heard the last of the former Mayor - not yet folks! You see... former Baltimore Mayor Shelia Dixon, sent the city of Baltimore tax payers a bill for of $260 for hair styling.

Dixon's stylist submitted invoices for "curling and styling hair" twice in 2008 and once in January, according to the records obtained by The Baltimore Sun. Dixon told the newspaper that she occasionally had her hair styled before taping segments for the city's public access channel and the styling appointments were approved by her former communications director.

Black Rip Off Report: There must be something in the water in Baltimore that causes a Mayor to embezzle money from the needy. That toxic water must have also been consumed by the leaders of the Baltimore based Sickle Cell Disease Association of America.

Misappropriation of funds not only hurts an organization, it hurts the people it serves and the community that supports it. Misappropriation of funds is a more common and bigger issue than we may think. In the for-profit sector, it's estimated that 7% of gross revenue is lost to employee fraud (Association of Certified Fraud Examiners report).

(Imagine if we budgeted 7% of our budgets for fraud loss!)

As the publisher of Black Rip Off Report I'm reminded of a story I read in a blog recently:

"I was one of the ones [board members] who wanted to keep [the misappropriation/embezzlement] quiet. I was afraid it would affect donors. But then on one of the conference calls where we were discussing how to deal with it, someone said, 'If someone broke into your house and stole $250,000, wouldn't you report it to the police?' We ended up reporting it, and also issuing a statement about what happened and what we were doing to correct the situation. It was fine." --

Let's hope the Baltimore based sickle cell organization will do the same...