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Accountability
June 2, 2011
Woman accused of stealing $50k from charity
Travis County Sheriff’s deputies say they need help tracking down a woman indicted seven months ago for allegedly stealing tens of thousands of dollars from a local nonprofit.
Lisa Dorhauer, 55, was indicted by a Travis County grand jury in November on a second-degree felony theft charge. She is accused of stealing $46,000 from Lutheran Social Services of the South. But she has not yet been arrested because sheriff’s deputies did not find her at her given address when they went to serve the warrant, said Roger Wade, spokesman for the Travis County Sheriff’s Office.
Dorhauer could not be reached for comment. Public records show she lives in Georgetown.
Wade said anyone with information should call CrimeStoppers at 472-8477 or call the Fugitive Warrant Division at 854-9769.
Lutheran Social Services is an Austin-based nonprofit that provides services for children and seniors in Texas and Louisiana. It also provides disaster relief for those areas. It has a $100 million budget, 1,000 employees and a total of 30 locations in Texas where they provide services.
Dorhauer was hired in 2007 as an administrative assistant whose duties included making travel arrangements for other employees, said Lutheran Social Services spokesman Scott Carroll. During that time, Dorhauer submitted phony expense reimbursement forms in the names of other employees, then kept the money for herself, Carroll said. According to the indictment, the theft went on between May 2008 and April 2010.
Since then, the nonprofit has improved internal policies to avoid such theft, Carroll said.
The theft case isn’t the only employee issue Lutheran Social Services is currently addressing. The nonprofit is also investigating a separate incident with an employee believed to have been selling the charity’s property, then submitting false bills of sale to make it look like the items sold for less than they did. No one has been charged in that incident.
“In both cases it appears to be individuals running internal scams and got caught,” Carroll said. “The systems we had in place eventually caught up with them.”
The Travis County Sheriff’s Office has provided this photo of Dorhauer.
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October 27, 2010
Red Cross, North Miami and Haiti
There are days when I completely flake and this is apparently one of them.
In an earlier version of this blog, I wrote about a skirmish between the North Miami city council and the American Red Cross. While researching the issue, I misunderstood some information and wrongly said that the Red Cross has been accused — and does not allow — donors to designate where their money goes.
Obviously I was in the middle of some kind of episode when I wrote this because it is NOT true. While donors can’t pick a certain project, like a school or a hospital, they can designate their dollars to a particular disaster or cause.
According to local Red Cross CEO Marty McKellips, ” The American Red Cross always honors donor intent. Those people who designated their money for Haiti relief can be assured that 100% of their money will go toward that work. We always appreciate money that is undesignated because it allows us to refill our warehouses and buy the emergency supplies that are needed in the first 24 hours of a disaster. But our donors always have the option to designate a specific disaster.”
So I’ve rewritten the blog below to relect that. Many apologies to the Red Cross for the blunder.
The city of North Miami and the American Red Cross recently got into a dispute about Haiti donations.
According to this story in the Miami Herald, North Miami collected $116,000 earlier this year to support the Red Cross’ Haiti relief efforts.
But when critics across the country started accusing the national nonprofit of not pouring enough money into the country, North Miami decided to hold on to the $116,000. This week, it split the money between three groups: the Red Cross, the United Way of Miami-Dade and Nord Ouest Environmental.
Apparently, Nord Quest is not even a registered nonprofit.
“According to state records, Nord Ouest Environmental is an inactive nonprofit organization,” the article states. “The group’s name does not appear in the Internal Revenue Services database of tax deductible organizations.”
This is beyond ridiculous. The city told donors the money was for the Red Cross. That’s where it needs to go.
If the city doesn’t like the Red Cross, that’s their problem. Donors made their choice and the council should have respected it.
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