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| FBI Director James B. Comey presents 2014 Director’s Community Leadership Award to WSB-TV investigative Jodie Fleischer "for her extraordinary contributions to preventing crime and violence in the Atlanta area and throughout the state of Georgia...Ms. Fleischer further demonstrated leadership by coordinating her investigative reporting with investigative efforts of law enforcement, to include the FBI." (source) |
On July 15, WSB-TV (Atlanta's ABC affiliate) aired CDC gives millions of tax dollars to shady nonprofit by investigative reporter Jodie Fleischer, the latest chapter in the $9 million Save-A-Life Foundation (SALF) scandal and the sweeping federal civil rights lawsuit filed by former SALF employee, Annabel Melongo.
Don't miss the video, but here's the takeaway:
The (U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) is refusing to answer Channel 2 Action News' questions about a high-ranking employee who served on the board of a now-defunct nonprofit that's been the subject of a series of scandals.
The Save A Life Foundation (SALF) also happened to receive more than $3 million in CDC funding, much of it while that same employee (Doug Browne of Doraville, GA) was serving as the nonprofit's treasurer.
"Save A Life was a fraud, it can't be described as anything but a total fraud," said attorney Jennifer Bonjean, who represents a whistleblower who used to work there.
The nonprofit was based in a Chicago suburb, and in its heyday, claimed to have helped teach more than a million school children various first aid techniques.
But beginning in 2006, a series of investigations by the ABC station in Chicago debunked the nonprofit's founder as a fraud.
Carol Spizzirri had claimed to be a registered nurse in her bio on the SALF website and on various grant applications; but she wasn't. She's also accused of lying about the circumstances of her daughter's tragic accident that was the motivating force behind the creation of SALF.
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| Screenshot from SALF's now-defunct website -- the correct spelling of Spizzirri's alleged alma mater -- also defunct -- is Mt. Senario College in Ladysmith, Wisconsin |
Spizzirri was born Carol Jean Niemann and grew up in Milwaukee where in 1968, according to his 2009 affidavit, she met and married her first husband, the late Gordon T. Pratt, with whom she had three daughters and who divorced her in 1980. About seven years later, she moved to Grayslake, Illinois, with her second husband, David T. Spizzirri, who divorced her in 1993, the year she started SALF.
Around the time the IL Attorney General's investigation was made public, Spizzirri beat feat to San Marcos, California, where she and former SALF executive Scott Anderson co-own a property in a mobile home park at which Spizzirri is vice president of the residents association.
Re: the Melongo lawsuit, as I reported last month, Ms. Bonjean told me, "Carol Spizzirri has been served and I will be filing a motion for default judgement against her."
Here's proof of service from November:
Via SALF's year 2000 Annual Report:
Via the print edition of the San Diego Reader:
Click here for the June 16, 2015 motion of default filed against Spizzirri.
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| Donald J. Angelini, Jr. (source) |
That apparently made Spizzirri snap to because about a month later, her Chicago attorney Donald J. Angelini, Jr. filed this motion on her behalf:
As it happens, her lawyer and I have something in common.
Both of our fathers worked the dark side of the street.
Via FBI: Mob boss on tape in McCormick Place case, an April 25, 2010 ABC7 Chicago story by investigative reporter Chuck Goudie who coincidentally (per the Atlanta CDC expose) was responsible for the "series of investigations by the ABC station in Chicago that) debunked (Spizzirri) as a fraud.":
The FBI recorded more than 50 conversations involving Chicago Outfit boss Rudy "The Chin" Fratto during an investigation of alleged bid-rigging at the city's McCormick Place.
...Fratto, 66, the leader of the Mob's Elmwood Park crew according to federal authorities, was indicted with another man last month on charges that he used inside information to score a forklift deal at McCormick Place.
...An attached affidavit from Donald Angelini, Jr., the attorney handling the sweetheart contract case, states that Fratto's defense would be "greatly hampered" if he was imprisoned and couldn't assist in the preparation.
...Angelini Jr. (is the) son of the late Mob bookmaker Don "the Wizard of Odds" Angelini....Via Donald J. Angelini, Odds Wizard Who Ran Gambling For Chicago Mob by Cam Simpson, a December 8, 2000 obituary published by the Chicago Tribune:
Dubbed the "Wizard of Odds" in the Chicago Outfit, the name organized crime members for decades have given to the city's Mafia faction, (Donald Angelini Sr.) was viewed by authorities as one of the top money makers in Chicago crime syndicate history.The Heimlich Institute's notorious "malariotherapy" experiments were the subject of three federal investigations (CDC, FDA, Justice Department), but my pa never did time.
...Mr. Angelini (Sr.) pleaded guilty to federal gambling charges in 1989 and was sentenced to 21 months in prison.
Prosecutors alleged that Mr. Angelini (Sr.), along with the late Dominic Cortina, reigned as gambling czar over a $20 million per-year sports betting empire.
Mr. Angelini (Sr.) and his attorney scoffed at the government's figures, but government agents insisted their numbers may even have been conservative.
However, via a 2003 Reuters story about vulnerable AIDS patients being infected with malaria, at least one expert thought he deserved to:
"If (Dr.) Heimlich is really doing this, he should be put in jail," said Mark Harrington, executive director of Treatment Action Group, an AIDS research advocacy organization.In any event, I don't know how Spizzirri came to choose the younger Angelini to represent her, but of course everyone's entitled to hire any lawyer willing to represent them, be they Rudy "The Chin" or Carol "The Nurse."
