Multiple Charity Scammer Caught Taking $100 million

by Gary Snyder

Richard Olive represented his TN phony charity group, National Foundation of America, as a legitimate 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. During that time, he solicited elderly investors for $30 million in annuities and real estate. He told the investors that they would receive an “installment bargain contract” from National Foundation of America that would give them a guaranteed payout within a certain period and a tax deduction.

When clients turned over existing annuities to Mr. Olive's group, he would surrender most of these contracts so the organization would obtain the funds, triggering surrender penalties, according to the indictment.

In the end, less than half of 1% of the $23.6 million the group received went to charity, prosecutors said. 

Mr. Olive's brush with the law in Tennessee is only the latest development in his legal history. The Securities and Exchange Commission last month filed charges against him, his wife Susan and a Tallahassee, Fla.-based organization they controlled called We the People Inc. of the United States.

The SEC claims that from June 2008 through April 2012, the group allegedly raised some $75 million from 400 elderly investors in more than 30 states using bogus charitable gift annuities.

Nonprofit Imperative gathers its information principally from public documents...some of which are directly quoted. Virtually all cited are in some phase of criminal proceedings; some have not been charged, however. Cites in various media: Featured in print, broadcast, and online media outlets, including: Vermont Public Radio, Miami Herald, National Public Radio, Huffington Post, The Sun News, Atlanta Journal Constitution, Wall Street Journal (Profile, News and Photos), FOX2, ABC Spotlight on the News, WWJ Radio, Ethics World, Aspen Philanthropy Newsletter, Harvard Business Review, Current Affairs, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, St. Petersburg Times, B, USA Today Topics, Newsweek.com, Responsive Philanthropy Magazine, New York Times...and many more Nonprofits: On the Brink (2006) Silence: The Impending Threat to the Charitable Sector (2011)