HSUS Money Man in Education Funding Fraud Scandal

Early adopters of HumaneWatch may remember an episode from back in March, which involved the Mary Kay Cosmetics company sponsoring—and then not sponsoring—a major Humane Society of the United States fundraising gala in Dallas. (It’s amazing what can happen when a few thousand HumaneWatchers pick up the phone!)

That $200-per-plate soiree, which HSUS called “Spotlight Humane: Dallas,” was presented by American Dog Rescue—a charity founded by Arthur E. Benjamin—and by the Gail L. and Arthur E. Benjamin Foundation.

Two months earlier Benjamin, a recognized expert in "marketing post-secondary education" to under-educated adults, gave HSUS $50,000 for animal rescue in Haiti—you remember, the animal rescue work that HSUS’s own expert said was unnecessary. Combined with this donation, the March event solidified Benjamin as a top HSUS money man in Texas’s most HSUS-friendly city.

But after this weekend’s news, HSUS may not want to hold a “second annual” Dallas fundraiser. Not with Arthur Benjamin’s support, anyhow.

On Friday night WFAA-TV8 in Dallas aired a blistering exposé of ATI, the for-profit network of career training schools that Benjamin operates. Among other things, WFAA discovered that Arthur Benjamin’s ATI has “targeted the homeless and felons as students, tapping into government loans and grants, and misleading both the students and the government.”

According to the school itself, 84 percent of ATI tuition costs are covered by federal government grants and loans. And getting students to enroll—even those who are practically unemployable and have little chance of paying back their loans—is the key to scamming taxpayer funds from the government’s education programs.



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