Santa Clara Vanguard 2024

[HockeyDad]

7 minutes ago, Richard Lesher said:

There is no Bingo Committee, the Bingo Manager works from Hawaii, no one that represents the board is keeping close tabs on Bingo Operations. 

Bingo is a very large cash driven business, and I suspect they are no longer inventorying the bingo cards and other gaming supplies inventory. 

It's not impossible the entire SCV leadership, management and Board have no idea the nuances of bingo operations. Everyone is working virtually except a few lower level folks. 

It's highly likely every single Bingo Employee could just pocket cash covertly and walk out the door with it. 

YES, YES!!!!!!!!!!! Folks will claim some bingo employees were arrested for stealing a few hundred dollars in the last year or so. So a claim can be made to some sort of oversight. 

What I'm getting at is who is checking the folks that tally up the deposits at the end of the day, and report the final numbers that get put into the finances? There certainly aren't any audits of such. 

Now that I think about it, I can only imagine the difficulty of trying retroactively clean that up for several years to the degree auditors given an unqualified opinion. 

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So if a bingo player buys $100 worth of bingo cards, and there is no inventory check of the cards at the end of the day relative to the revenue taken in for that day then how does one check that $100 just didn't go into someone's pocket. 

OK, so someone got caught on camera last year. 

So at the end of the day when there is say $10,000 in revenue to deposit across all registers who is checking that revenue against the inventory and ensuring that revenue is matching the deposited funds that actually make it into the bank account? 

Whatever the counter argument is, there are no audited financial statements to say everything is on the up and up. 

The Bingo Manager in no way can attest to the bingo reports that are filed to the City. At best he can only blindly trust they are correct. 

 

 

 

That would be a stunning revelation , if after the 2006 event with Charlotte Luciani (public information - don’t freak out), proper controls were not put in place to ensure this could not happen again. I will assume that’s not the case but now you have me wondering. 

[Richard Lesher]

12 minutes ago, DWW11 said:

It’s a naive response, for sure, but here in PA and NJ i know people who WILL drive an hour for bingo if the pots are good and the hall is nice.  And the $2 mil increase does seem to be reflected in their gaming profits.

I think that holds true here in CA. Gamblers will go out of their way, but I suspect there are other places all along that way. 

The point I think we should take away is that perhaps the Bingo Market isn't as weak as SCV would like us to believe. 

 

[Richard Lesher]

8 minutes ago, HockeyDad said:

That would be a stunning revelation , if after the 2006 event with Charlotte Luciani (public information - don’t freak out), proper controls were not put in place to ensure this could not happen again. I will assume that’s not the case but now you have me wondering. 

I personally put those controls in place, but they have to be maintained. 

The biggest aspect of theft we could confirm were something called "pull tabs". Think of them as lottery tickets or more common scratch offs. 

We would buy say a box of 1,000 tickets, and sell that box for say $3000 ($3 a ticket) and return winning tickets of say $2000 for a net of $1000 to SCV. Now, what Luciani was doing was opening the tickets herself, giving the winning tickets to friends (looking for the BIG winner tickets). So what she did was prevent SCV from selling any ticket she ruined trying to find the winners. 

What NO ONE WAS DOING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Was LOOKING AT THE NET PROFIT OF pull tab sales. 

The PROFIT IS LOCKED IN at 20-30%, and NO ONE SAID!!!!!!!!!! Hey WAIT A MINUTE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Why are we barely breaking even on pull tabs or even losing money in some of these. For SCV to lose money on the pull tabs and there be no fraud or theft or operating errors that means the VENDOR would be defrauding us on a box of cardboard tickets they don't collect any money on. 

That was relatively easy to start a control process. 

Now, the bigger problem is the Bingo paper. They were printed on news paper quality paper, and there are millions of them, and there is really no easy way to inventory them in a reasonable manner. So when someone buys said Bingo paper with cash, welp, it's nearly impossible to keep an audit trail of that. 

Other ways around that is to simply TRACK DATA. What are normal trends, which registers are better performing, who is manning the registers at what times and what is the performance. Mix up the staff duties and see of trends follow the staff verses the duties and time and day of expected business performance, etc.....

I just do not see a culture of Bingo operating in a highly inventory controlled operations when SCV isn't doing audits and filing registrations correctly. 

***************
I have a lot of experience in my life and profession that I have come to the conclusion that the following is always true:

Wherever opportunity exists it will be taken advantage of. 

One can let a system of checks and balances slack of here and there, but it has to eventually fall back in check. If the lack of oversight is persistent and part of the culture it will absolutely be taken advantaged of.

It has explicitly happened before with SCV, and now the CA DOJ has sent verbiage that the Tax Board will be requested to revoke SCV's nonprofit status, and SCV leadership is saying take their word everything is OK. 

 

 

 

 

[Terri Schehr]

1 hour ago, HockeyDad said:

That would be a stunning revelation , if after the 2006 event with Charlotte Luciani (public information - don’t freak out), proper controls were not put in place to ensure this could not happen again. I will assume that’s not the case but now you have me wondering. 

It was on RAMD when it happened.  

[OldSnareDrummer]

[Boss Anova]

5 hours ago, Richard Lesher said:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5 hours ago, Richard Lesher said:

It has explicitly happened before with SCV, and now the CA DOJ has sent verbiage that the Tax Board will be requested to revoke SCV's nonprofit status, and SCV leadership is saying take their word everything is OK. 

 

 

 

 

 I was not aware that the tax board  was requested to revoke SCV's non profit status.   Requested by the CA. DOJ ?   I thought it was dumped in their hands in jurisdiction to assess and make judgement on that status. If "the request was was made to revoke SCV's non profit status", thats big news (that I might have missed here in the off season, as I only read here a couple of times per week, and miss posts ).  If SCV is in serious current jeopardy of losing their 50+ years of non profit status, then their for profit status changes everything there at SCV.... including their membership in DCI.  I'm pretty sure that DCI will not allow a For Profit status Drum Corps to retain membership in a non profit 501(c) 3 organization such as DCI.  I am intrigued with what is going on at SCV at the moment, but I have to tell you, I don't know what the heck is up with them. Dont know whats real and whats not  anymore.

Edited November 30, 2023 by Boss Anova

[Richard Lesher]

1 hour ago, Boss Anova said:

 I was not aware that the tax board  was requested to revoke SCV's non profit status.   Requested by the CA. DOJ ? 

Yes, requested by the DOJ

Vanguard's charity ID number is 009838

https://rct.doj.ca.gov/Verification/Web/Search.aspx?facility=Y

Sometimes you have to run the data search twice, most the time it returns no record the first try. 

 

 

 

Edited November 30, 2023 by Richard Lesher

[Richard Lesher]

1 hour ago, Boss Anova said:

I am intrigued with what is going on at SCV at the moment, but I have to tell you, I don't know what the heck is up with them. Dont know whats real and whats not  anymore.

The DOJ notices are real. All things being crazy and emotional, the DOJ stuff is dead serious. 

When considering what the DOJ notices say, and considering what SCV is saying realize, the DOJ is like the department of motor vehicles. They truly do not care.

Forms come in, and if they are not right they are kicked back. If the fees are wrong they are kicked back. If audits are not completed the registration is never made current. Ever try and register your car without a smog check, and hope the DMV just takes your payment and ignore you didn't smog you car? Yea, it's not going to happen. 

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This is what is freaking me out so much. SCV could submit total trash in terms of financials and auditor comments it would still meet the state's standards so long as something was submitted, boxes where checked, fees were paid, and the correct form was used. 

The IRS 990 could indicate SCV is losing $10,000,000 a year and as long as it's audited and all the forms are done correctly I would have absolutely nothing to stand on. 

The problem is now, they started 2023 in default which indicates they have no reserves of non bingo revenue saved, and without the member fees from the corps they are clearly paying Bingo employees with bingo revenue in FY 2023. 

What about donations to pay Bingo salaries? Well, because they are delinquent they are prohibited by state law from soliciting donations. Even in a good year that still wouldn't have been enough by itself. So there's that. 

Additionally........... if one takes into account when SCV's expired registration started and looks purely at their 990's they submitted there is over $1,000,000 of donations that shouldn't have been there. We also don't have FY2022 or FY2023 numbers. 

To add to that, SCV to this very moment continues to have up their Donation Pages of there website. I would say that's an argument for solicitation. SCV might argue otherwise, but an entity expired and delinquent since 2020 shouldn't be splitting hairs so close to the edge of compliance. 

If one reads the whole DOJ letter SCV is given another 60 days (from 16-NOV). From what I can tell, another letter will follow after 60 days, and with no action the DOJ will give a notice to revoke or suspect the non profit status, and give another 60 days from there. 

So............. SCV is 120 days from 16-NOV-2023 to getting a cease and desist notification with a corresponding tax bill. 

That is literally what SCV is facing right here, right now. 

Edited November 30, 2023 by Richard Lesher

[Jurassic Lancer]

And yet they are announcing initiatives with the Oakland Unified School District. I have a serious disconnect here. 

[Richard Lesher]

16 minutes ago, Jurassic Lancer said:

And yet they are announcing initiatives with the Oakland Unified School District. I have a serious disconnect here. 

I'll just speculate..................

It's probably nothing more than a single instructor helping the kids bang on drums for a few hours a week. Maybe they end up doing a parade or two. 

It will be entirely dependent on the drive of the instructor to make it happen, and it will need SCV to fund it. 

***************

There is speculation I will throw a monkey wrench into the Oakland thing, and it would be astronomically easy enough to send the DOJ notices to the school board, the school admin, and the school PTA and just let the whole thing play out as is. 

But in the magical event SCV pulls itself out of the depths this Oakland program is something they need to help them get traction with. Running a tour is going to kill them. 

If SCV does end up getting a Cease and Desist from the DOJ I will be all over it, and go gangbusters. 

But, as I speculate the Oakland thing is probably a single instructor giving some time, and with or without SCV that could still go on given the motivations of the instructor and willingness of the School. 

 

 

 

Edited November 30, 2023 by Richard Lesher