Man Guilty in Charity Scam Arrested Again

A Garden Grove man, convicted in May of making phony solicitations for charity that took in nearly $500,000, was arrested Friday on suspicion of doing it again, authorities said.

John C. Feldman, 40, had been free pending his sentencing next month on 63 counts of consumer fraud. He was convicted along with his girlfriend, Joa Thi Adams, 33, of Garden Grove.

Many of those counts were for violating a previous court order that they stop the phony solicitations.

Garden Grove Office

Deputy Dist. Atty. Gay Geiser-Sandoval said that investigators discovered Feldman operating his business once again last week at his office on Brookhurst Street in Garden Grove.

“He claimed that he was only doing work on the books, but clearly he was back in business,” she alleged.

Central Municipal Judge Randell L. Wilkinson heard Feldman’s explanation Friday, then ordered him into custody on $25,000 bail.

Feldman and Adams, scheduled to be sentenced July 8, could each face up to 15 years in prison and a $50,000 fine.

Their operation, J & H Productions, solicited money for the All-American Youth Foundation, the Wheelchair Basketball Assn. and the Los Angeles Stars Wheelchair Basketball Assn. While these were bona fide charities, Feldman’s operation was not, according to prosecutors.

Pocketed the Rest

Feldman and his telephone solicitors did not tell the donors that, essentially, only 10 cents out of every dollar donated actually went to charity. The rest was pocketed by Feldman and his subcontractors in the telephone-solicitation business, prosecutors said.

The district attorney’s consumer fraud unit almost always handles such complaints as a civil case, in which the immediate goal is to stop the fraud.

But criminal charges were filed against Feldman and Adams, Geiser-Sandoval said, only after civil remedies failed to work.

Their case was the first criminal action to be tried in Orange County under the state’s Charitable Contributions Act.