One of the Democratic Party's top fundraisers in Los Angeles
has agreed to plead guilty to embezzling funds from
the defunct Hollywood anti poverty group he led for decades.
Now this was a non-profit and it appears based on his willingness
to plead guilty that he had stolen some of the money from this non-profit and
spent that money on himself pretty lavishly actually.
Now, the man in question is Dixon Slingerland who says he's guilty of
embezzling more than $71,000 from the Youth Policy Institute.
He was the CEO of the group from 1996 to 2019 before the non-profit collapsed.
I should note that he received millions,
tens of millions of dollars in both local and
federal grants in order to run this non-profit.
And it's interesting because he was one of the donors for
Eric Garcetti and would you look at that?
He gets local grants in order to run his non-profit from local leaders here
in Los Angeles.
Now, let's give you some of the details of what he did.
According to the Los Angeles times from 2009 to 2019,
Youth Policy Institute received $281 million in federal grants.
When it filed for Chapter seven bankruptcy in 2019, the organization reported that
it had demanded Slingerland repay more than 1.7 million in misspent funds.
So the $71,000 that he embezzled is nothing
compared to the 1.7 million that he had misused.
So he also acknowledged miss spending more than $600,000 in federal grants
to the non-profit for payroll and other things that were not allowed including
personal expenses he put on the organization's American Express card.
And also Dixon Slingerland admitted charging the non-profit for
his family's $6131 dinner at Momofuku Ko a Manhattan restaurant
where celebrity chef David hang serves guests a 10-course gourmet meal.
>> I do to clarify.
>> $14,703 in property taxes sounds like he lives in a pretty
nice home on his L A home, and $10,806 for a relative's tutoring.
But that's just the tip of the iceberg.
I've got more for you in just a moment Cenk.
But I wanted to get your thoughts.
>> He says they were reporting errors.
Man, this guy is really bad at math.
If he's mis reporting $1.7 million, here's a question I had as I read the story.
So this guy gives a lot of money to politicians.
His salary is $400,000 a year, which is a really healthy salary, right?
But it's not so healthy that you can give out tons of money to politicians so
that they grease you back, right?
And by the way guys, if you don't know the system, welcome to America.
That's how it works.
This crook alleged crook, [LAUGH] this miss reporter, okay.
A mean he has plead guilty, so he is crook.
>> Yeah. >> Yeah.
>> His crook goes and gives money to Obama Garcetti.
So yes, Democrats I know if you watch MSNBC or CNN you're shocked.
No, all the Democrats are angels.
No, they're not.
No, great majority of crooks who take bribes from guys like this and
then what do they do?
They take our taxpayer money and they funnel back to the guy,
I want to see who he spends it on Momofuku Ko, whatever the hell that thing was.
And on giant properties and then greasing the politicians back this circle Cenk
leads to all of us getting robbed by a so called anti poverty crusader.
>> Well, okay, so there's a few, there's many things I want to bring up
about this story because I think that there is this.
I don't know this thought process that if you're dealing with non-profit,
I mean it's a non-profit.
So by the nature of it being a non-profit,
it must be a good organization looking to help people in need.
And in this particular case,
the non-profit that he was running was supposed to be an anti poverty
non-profit that focused on underprivileged youth job training education.
One of the things that he would boast about is how
he succeeded in opening up to charter schools in Los Angeles.
>> By the way, I'm just gonna interrupt for one second.
>> Yeah.
>> The charter school scam, right.
Obama loved charter school.
>> Love it.
>> Okay.
>> Yes. >> And by the way,
Republicans are 100% in favor of charter schools, but
I thought they always disagreed.
That's funny on economic issues where they're both being bribed.
They agree 100% how that works.
>> Undercutting unionized teachers is something that corporate Democrats and
Republicans can agree on and get behind.
>> What the hell does that have to do with anti poverty?
>> Right, so I want to give you some more details because it turns out that he is
also allegedly a tax dodger.
So, I mean, accidentally misused funds, but
also accidentally forgot to pay his taxes, really interesting.
So in a plea agreement that prosecutors filed Tuesday in federal court in
Los Angeles, Slingerland admitted that he failed to report nearly $450,000
in income from the nonprofit on his personal tax returns from 2016 to 2019.
And as Cenk mentioned, but I really want to reiterate here,
he was in fact collecting a $400,000 salary, which I would
venture to say is quite a bit of money for someone working at a nonprofit.
I get that he's running the nonprofit, but this is not, it's not supposed to be for
profit, but they got a lot of money in government grants and
that's the thing that I really want to focus on here.
Okay, but but first, a word from Cenk.
>> ,Yeah, no, just, I'm gonna agree with you on this one of course, but and
it's that these guys, look, I don't want you to get it wrong.
A lot of people that work at nonprofits,
especially at the lower levels are the most wonderful people in the world, right?
They go and they take a lot less salary, they work there and they're actually
trying to help people that are homeless or have issues with poverty, etc.
But what the media doesn't tell you what no one in power tells you and
we're the only show honest enough to tell you.
We don't give a damn about Republicans or Democrats, is that no,
some of the people at the top level,
they don't give a damn about any of the issues they claim to care about.
And a lot of them go and just siphon off all the, and
it's just a giant scam and by the way, it does massive damage.
It's like a minority that reports racism.
That isn't real, although like the boy who cried wolf, it does so
much damage to minorities, right?
Because there's so much real racism.
And when you miss report, no one believes it anymore, right?
So the double damage that the guys like this do is then people go, well,
am I gonna give the anti poverty programs because it turns out the son of bitch
crooks are robbing from it, right?
And so unfortunately a lot of these organizations,
a lot of people at the top, they just want to keep them the gravy train going.
They don't actually care about solving the issue.
They want the issue to keep going.
So they keep making money of it.
>> So I just wanna give you a sense of what their operating budget was.
Because I think that listen, I know it sounds conspiratorial, but
it's something that I've been noticing locally quite a bit.
When you when your livelihood relies on a problem continuing,
problems like homelessness.
Are you really gonna want to solve it when you get government grants this large?
So in 2018, for instance,
youth policy institute received $45.6 million in government grants.
That's both state, local and federal.
>> Yeah, by the way, why is the government giving it to an organization
that then takes and giant amount and income salaries etc,
why doesn't the government do the anti poverty program?
>> Yes, thank you. >> Okay, and by the way,
there is a real reason for, you know why, because they like the robbery.
The point is the robbery, right?
Why do you need to do set up a whole different organization?
And look at that Golly Gee, the people we gave $45 million to the head
of that organization, funnels a certain percentage back to those same politicians.
Did that happen?
Have we fixed poverty yet?
Look, I don't want you guys to get too jaded on, we're not right wingers,
right wingers tell you that the school poverty, no, we have to address poverty.
We are too interested. >> But this is not the right way to do it.
>> Getting middlemen involved, who obviously,
they've I mean think about that cushy salary you're gonna want to give by really
solving the problems that you're purporting to want to solve.
I'm just keeping it real.
What do you do as the CEO or the head of a nonprofit that gets tens
of millions of dollars a year in government grants?
If you actually do solve the problem that you claim to want to solve,
what do you do after that?
You know what I'm saying?
>> Yeah, I know exactly, what your saying.
>> What's your livelihood from?
>> Okay. >> Yeah.
>> So, because, so two things about it,
when I informed Wolfpack, I told that everybody that was involved, and I tell
everyone who was ever involved in it. Look, our job here is to shut this
goddamn thing down. Okay, if we're still doing this
30 years for, well, we didn't win. Okay, and
then I'll shut it down anyway. This is not supposed to be a thing where
you get salary and last forever because you'll never solve it,
you won't be incentivized, right? >> Exactly, yes.
>> And I look, I'll leave out names, but
I know that there's a former congress person,
that headed a homeless organization and she don't give a goddamn about
the homeless. And
she thought it was like the best grift in the whole area, and
she purposely went and found the highest salary she could find, why is helping
the homeless get you the highest salary. It's just, unfortunately,
there's a giant cottage industry of it. And since everybody's in bed together,
including the media, nobody ever tells you about it.
>> Right, and it's just something to keep
an eye out for. And,
I want to just go back to what Cenk said because I think it is
important to emphasize this. It doesn't mean that all nonprofits
are a grift, it doesn't mean that all nonprofits are engaging in bad behavior.
But when you see a nonprofit failing to
actually address the issue they claim
they want to address. You
should wonder about that. You should take a look at their public
filings, right? Because they do have to publicly
disclose the salaries that their executives
are earning. And
I'm sorry. I just think that if you're taking
government grants to solve a problem having to do with poverty,
I don't see why you should earn nearly half a million dollars a year.
>> I don't, again, look,
he's busted, he misappropriated all that, $1.7 million so, and
no way is given kind of money to those politicians and leaving that kind of home
even on $400,000 salary. So there might be even more than meets
the eye here. There's a plea deal, right?
God knows what he actually did.
>> 100%