Written by Bob Comer   

As the Boy Scouts of America goes...so goes the USA. Make an organization a "Sacred Cow" and it will leave the door wide open for unethical, immoral and criminal behavior to flourish.

I started investigating an organization, B.S.A., in 1986. I had been a member from age 8 to age 19. I attained the rank of Eagle Scout, the highest rank, and earned 43 merit badges. I attended the 5th National Jamboree in Colorado Springs in 1960 and Philmont Scout Ranch in 1961. As an adult volunteer in the late 1980's and early 1990's, I had served as a Merit Badge Counselor, Webelos Den Leader, Cubmaster, Scout Troop committeeman and Assistant Scoutmaster.

When you belong to an organization as old and established (1910) as B.S.A., you tend to not see any problems. You tend to love the organization and are loyal to it. "A Scout is Trustworthy, Loyal....." The second part of the Scout Law is "A Scout is Loyal." So does Loyalty mean that you, as a member, ignore the faults, lapses, misdeeds, unethical and immoral behavior and, yes, criminal behavior of the leadership? I think not! In fact, I think that a Scout should be even more dedicated to watching for such behavior within the organization than people on the outside.

How corrupt is the moral and ethical foundation of B.S.A. today? Well, I can tell you that you can find plenty of news media reports of serious misconduct by local Scout Council leadership and national Scout Council leadership over the last 30 years. Examples? Within the last 20 years: A Chief Scout Executive was arrested at the Miami Int. airport carrying a pistol and ammunition as he tried to board a plane. A national executive at the headquarters in Texas, who was responsible for B.S.A. Child Protection issues, was caught with Child Pornography on his computer. Local Council professionals (paid staff) in cities across America have been caught padding the membership rolls with 10's of thousands of boys' names who either never officially joined Scouting or joined and then quit. I would call it what it is,FRAUD,to acquire United Way and other charitable funding based on false membership numbers. You will find very serious cases of B.S.A. membership fraud in Dallas, Texas and Birmingham, Alabama, to name a couple. But I believe, based on my investigations, that B.S.A. membership fraud was, and still is, a pervasive problem all over the U.S.A.

Charitable organizations in the United States, especially religious organizations, have been the focus of criminal behavior in the form of embezzling funds. But few Americans have heard anything about embezzlement in the Boy Scouts of America. There is plenty of evidence that a Boy Scout Council in Ohio was used to embezzle charitable money for over 25 years. There are even allegations that an employee who worked in that Council office for more than 25 years was MURDERED to make sure she would never be able to testify as to what she saw and knew was being done.

The easiest way to embezzle money from a "Sacred Cow" organization like B.S.A. is to have someone at another charitable organization send money to the B.S.A. Council for major projects, like buying land, erecting an office building and building a new camp, and then get "kick-backs." The financial records are "cooked" to make it appear that the incoming charitable money is being properly allocated and spent on the various expensive (millions of dollars) projects.

EXAMPLE: Imagine that a new, large (1,000 acres) camp will have to have toilet (latrine) facilities at every campsite. Imagine 50 campsites. Now, find a contractor who will build the 50 latrines and charge $50,000 per latrine when the actual cost was $10,000. Who will ever check these figures / contracts? NO ONE!---Certainly NOT the I.R.S. So, $2.5 million is charged for 50 latrines that should have cost $500,000. The contractor, who is part of the embezzlement team, gets, say, a $10,000 kick-back on each latrine---he gets to steal half a million. The outside charitable organization that supplies the $2.5 million? It is totally controlled by one man and he has 10's of millions to play with. He gets, say, $1.5 million as a kick-back. He uses a small part of that to pay-off a couple of people, one a paid B.S.A. executive, to keep the entire embezzlement scheme covered-up. So, the camp gets its needed 50 latrines, all very nice and big, THANK YOU!, and the criminals get their pockets loaded with charitable money. The criminals pat themselves on the back and get plaques at the camp dedication for doing such wonderful "charitable work." This is justified amongst the conspirators as "getting the job done" and "giving the kids the camp equipment they need."

SCORE CARD: 50 latrines = $2.5 million in charitable money to
contractor. (but 50 latrines only cost him $10K
each to build = $500,000.)
Charitable money supplier: gets $1.5 million kick-
back from contractor. Small part is used to pay-off
co-conspirators. Contractor pockets half million
above his cost. Everyone lives happily ever-after
(?)

If you think that is a "fairy-tale", think again. AND, that's only a tiny bit of the entire story. Has anyone been arrested? NO! Has anyone been properly investigated? NO! What about the alleged murder? Investigated? NO! Now you know why I call the organization a "Sacred Cow!" What would you call it? I would call it a criminal operation---a R.I.C.O.