Pigs at the Trough: SoCal food bank accused of using food funds for cars, trips to Vegas, and more

 

By Monica Showalter

After braying for more public funding to feed the poor and "food-insecure," it turns out, a lot of food bank NGO leaders have been focused on feeding themselves.

According to the Los Angeles Times:

The state has filed a lawsuit against the Foodbank of Southern California alleging that its leaders misappropriated more than $11 million in state funds to enrich themselves and their families over the course of a decade.

The nearly 50-year-old Long Beach nonprofit shuttered most operations in September after the state halted all funding and California Highway Patrol agents raided the building as part of an investigation into the nonprofit’s use of government money.

Jeanne Cooper, the last CEO of the operation before the lawmen caught up with it, was making, on paper a $139,875 compensation package, plus $6,112 listed as "other" according to ProPublica.

That's low, though she may have had ways of drawing other "benefits." The LAT reports:

Cooper and her husband, Lamarr Ramsey, are accused of owing the Department of Social Services more than $250,000. The state alleges she purchased cellphones, smart watches, home renovations, furniture, home lawn services, gas cards, gift cards and an artificial Christmas tree with food bank funds.

If true, then the $139K was just gravy.

There are grosser instances of gigantic salaries from people in this particular NGO industry.

Like this charmer:

Or this one:

It's pretty amazing that food banks are such magnets for so much corruption.

Yet on all of them, the pleas for more are always out there, and how could any lawmaker, let alone the public, turn down a plea for food for the hungry?

Get a load of what the chief of the California Association of Food Banks and a pal were writing a couple months ago:

With the high cost of living, elevated levels of post-COVID need, earthquakes, and now firestorms — California’s hunger crisis is not just continuing, it’s getting worse.

Food insecurity in California is rising, with 22% of all households and 27% of households with children experiencing hunger.

Food banks are struggling to meet sustained and heightened levels of demand. At the same time the federal government is threatening sweeping funding freezes for anti-hunger
programs and pushing for cuts to CalFresh, our biggest and most important anti-hunger program.

If implemented, these policies will place an even greater burden on California’s food banks. The California Association of Food Banks’ 41-member network — which supports more than 6,000 churches, soup kitchens, schools, and pantries that distribute food — is providing groceries to more than 6 million Californians each month.

More, more, more. And Joe Biden's Bidenflation was just the vehicle to make it happen. More hunger, more public funds, more public funds, bigger salaries and that Vegas getaway, the free home improvement, and free car at least one of them reportedly helped herself to. No wonder Joe Biden and whoever was pulling his puppet strings was indifferent to inflation on his miserable watch. More misery meant bigger and better cash flow for his NGO allies who made bank in every way imaginable.

Grosser still is the Maxine Waters game -- of employing the relatives on the public dime.

According to the LA Times:

Among the other people named in the complaint is community activist “Sweet” Alice Harris, who founded Parents of Watts, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting disadvantaged youth and families in Watts.

The lawsuit alleges that Harris used her position on the food bank’s board to funnel more than $173,000 in funding to Parents of Watts.

She’s also accused of using her role to hire her granddaughter as a salaried employee and appoint her son-in-law to the board. She did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Just yuck.

How much more of this was going on that hasn't been reported? And how much food was taken out of the mouths of the Biden-impoverished to "pay for" this kind of alleged corruption?

The food bank claims it delivered 40 million to 60 million pounds of food annually. Whether they really did is anyone's guess, the Times didn't check.

Now that one at least has been busted and shut down, but whether these experienced NGO operatives face any real consequences is anyone's guess. They know how to sing for their supper to the public, which translates pretty well to juries, too.

And it's bound to be uneven justice. Not too long ago, and in the same Long Beach area, a pair of nuns from the Carondelet order were thrown in jail for misappropriating educational funding, and using it to blow on trips to Vegas.

Funny how they all do the same things.

The nuns, some of whom I know, actually do very good work and restored the stolen funding from their own funds, and I was sorry to see the Vegas pair, who apparently had a gambling addiction, get the book thrown at them. But justice is justice.

Now we learn of much worse corruption surrounding these private 501(c)3 food banks, one after another, premised on the politics of public funding and every one of them a Democrat voter, with all donations kicked back to Democrats.

Will the bunch in this case, if convicted, get similar punishment? They're so used to escaping any accountability owing to their political ties it's hard to see. But they should get the same types of sentencing as the nuns got if found guilty because this is the marker that was set.

Then the political creeps who enabled them from the one-party blue Democrat machine of state should be next. I guess I can dream, but the corruption gets even worse the higher you go up the California chain of command. For now, let it be known that food banks attract an awful lot of pigs to these government-funded troughs.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/04/pigs_at_the_trough_socal_food_bank_accused_of_using_food_funds_for_cars_trips_to_vegas_and_more.html