Brooklyn, NY – Charity may begin at home — but nearly 200 nonprofits at one Brooklyn residence might be a record.
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IRS documents show that 196 such New York groups are registered to a house on Bedford Avenue whose owners know nothing about the organizations.
The eye-popping number accounts for about a quarter of the 720 charities in the Midwood ZIP code.
“I would love for this to be straightened out, for someone to do something,” said Rose Meisner, who, with husband Joseph, bought the Bedford Avenue house 10 years ago. “I’m just an innocent little lady.”
Investigators have been regular visitors to the Meisner home.
The Post last week traced about a dozen of the registrations to Suffern-based tax lawyer Joseph Schubin, who owned the house before the Meisners and at the time operated out of an office a few blocks away.
Schubin attributed the huge number of charities at his former residence to an IRS “mistake.”
“For some crazy reason, the IRS puts down the address of the lawyer who does the work on the registration and not the official address of the group,” Schubin claimed. “The government does what the government does. It has the real address in another database.”
But the IRS nonprofit application states that a charity must register its own address.
An Internet and records search of dozens of the Bedford Avenue charities turned up no alternate addresses, Web sites or other info beyond their initial registrations, many of which date back as far as 1991.
“Most of these organizations are very small and formed by volunteers, people who have other, full-time jobs,” said Schubin, who estimated he’s set up about 100 of them.
the house is in midwood by avenue J (close but not right by J) Not fair to list current innocent owner
the lawyers excuse is lame since there are many more charities listed at that address than he created so something else is going on
and some of the charities leaders that list at that address are in jail, or are convicted felons.
Funny no matter how many time rebbies mention that people should do that never ever mention the obvious.
scam.fraud, lying to get section 8, food stamps
Just asking why, but will go on about Internet, skirts, tznius and so on
Another proud kiddush Hashem, folks.
Don’t jump to conclusions. This could be plausible. If the IRS wants to go after someone for fraud, they should be required to at least show the original fraudulent paperwork.. Additionally, addresses are just technical issues. It does not prove any real wrong doing. For example, a tzedaka that collects money for yesomim, needs meshulachim, the use of a call center and a manager. The address is a paper technicality. Don’t scorn your brother for no reason, especially on Rosh Chodesh Av.
I don’t see anything wrong with it. The house may have been owned by an askan fond raiser, who may have set up a separate fund for each family he collected tzedakah for. For example. The Weiss family wedding fund. Etc.
Too many lawyers!
“Its usually crooks like u that believe that everybody out there is doing the same.”
That sentence could well be considered libellous and shredready would be well within his/her rights to sue both the author – and the publishers – for substantial punitive damages.
As a lawyer I know that it often happens that when I form a corporation I use my address. If a lawyer has a corporate practice he could easily have hundreds of corporations registered at his address. Many lawyers do this so that they get official mail for the companies and then get to deal with it. Its like an annuity…forming the company leads to years of ongoing work.