Last updated on 2014.04.30
There are three kinds of falsehoods: lies, damned lies, and stuff Annette Bosworth says. Now that Sioux Falls paper has decided the whoppers Annette Bosworth tells are too big to ignore. In a lengthy report, Jonathan Ellis confirms much of what I've reported about Bosworth's raffle scam and her fake Senate campaign. Ellis adds these important facts to the public record:
1. Two more South Dakotans, Maureen Lee near Yankton and Patty Andresen near Hartford, go on record saying they bought raffle tickets for prizes that were never awarded. Lee and Andresen say, as have Nathan Fluit of Sioux Falls, Ryan Kappenman of Madison, and a third buyer, that they have struggled to get Bosworth and her husband Chad Haber or anybody in the Preventive Health Strategies/Meaningful Medicine/Bosworth for Senate office to merely communicate with them, let alone give back their money.
2. The Attorney General's office has received five formal complaints from raffle ticket holders stiffed by Bosworth and Haber.
3. Former PHS executive director Mathia Rall says part of the problem with the failed raffles was Bosworth's bad record-keeping:
Rall said that Bosworth, her husband, and a friend of the couple went to the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally that summer to sell tickets to the various raffles. She accuses them of selling the tickets at various price points, and when they returned from Sturgis, tickets had been sold without the names of buyers. There was no accounting of who sold tickets for what raffle and for how much money, she said.
“She just starts pulling wads out of her pockets, out of her shirt, out of the backpack she always carries,” Rall said. “She just starts throwing these wads all over the place” [Jonathan Ellis, "Tenuous Finances Nagging Senate Hopeful," that Sioux Falls paper, 2014.02.23].
4. While Rall and another former employee maintain lawsuits against Bosworth for unpaid wages, Bosworth has had to settle a lawsuit with a doctor to whom she failed to pay rent on a transcranial magnetic stimulation machine. Sioux Falls printing company Alphagraphics had to sue Bosworth and Haber to get $2,042 to pay for raffle promotion materials.
5. Republican ad firm SSC, which pulled Bosworth's campaign materials from online circulation in November, is considering a lawsuit to get Bosworth to pay them. SSC's Douglas Brown says Bosworth is using graphics and video for which she has not paid. Brown says Bosworth proposed a third-party payment that would have violated campaign finance law. Brown says Bosworth's financial irresponsibility is unconservative, unprecedented, and un-South Dakotan:
“The conservative brand,” Brown added, “we’re known for paying our bills and being fiscally responsible. And it’s unfortunate that we have not been paid.”
...Bosworth said there’s an “ongoing dispute” about the campaign’s contract with SSC, and the firm has not delivered the product it was asked to deliver. She said the campaign did offer partial payment.
“In South Dakota, if you don’t do the full job, you don’t get full payment,” she said.
Brown said the campaign offered to have a third party pay the debt, an offer the firm rejected because SSC viewed it as an attempt to bypass campaign-finance laws. He noted that the campaign acknowledges the debt on its finance report, and he said that in 25 years in the business, he has not encountered a similar situation.
“It’s not advisable for a candidate with a growing track record of not paying her bills to lecture anyone on the South Dakota tradition,” he said [Ellis, 2014.02.23].
Bosworth and Haber respond to the raffle-scam charges by having their lawyer, GOP bigwig Joel Arends, write up a letter framing two PHS staffers for stealing documents (sound familiar?). Bosworth claims that, following the great document heist, her office gave up trying to compile an accurate list of raffle ticket holders and says folks claiming to have purchased tickets are lying.
Bosworth uses the alleged document heist to excuse not paying her former employees. Asked about the Alphagraphics lawsuit, she moans about having to sell her couch (and invites a psychotherapy punchline). Ellis fails to tell us whether Annette also held her cute little dog throughout the interview and invoked her dead father-in-law's name for sympathy.
Ellis's report comes too late for the hundreds of donors already duped by Bosworth's expensive direct-mail marketing campaign. Bosworth claims that her fundraising total for this quarter is already bigger than the surprising $315K she claimed in Q4. We can only hope that the national press will take notice of Bosworth's trail of financial irresponsibility and protect more donors from falling for her latest, greatest flim-flam.
I welcome the opportunity to talk with Jackley. And fyi when I left PHD I brought a witness with me to clean out my shared office. I documented everything I took. I took nothing related to PHD or independent medicine. The only time that accusation was made is when I tried to collect unpaid wages. In addition my attorney at the time Raleigh hansman made multiple attempts to retrieve a list from them as to what was missing, they never provided one. Most raffle tickets were sold after my departure which john Ellis can verify. So please Mr. Jackley let's chat, I am very easy to find and always available.
Reactions to the Ellis article:
1. Bosworth is extraordinarily amoral and ruthless. She's not going to crash and burn without a vicious fight.
2. What the hell took the state's largest newspaper sooooooo long to finally do this story after it's been on Madville for the last several months?
3. What is taking our state attorney general sooooooo long to prosecute when the witnesses and victims came forward months ago?
It's not like a security camera caught Annette shoplifting a pack of gum or something. A lot of people got bilked out of a lot of money, and then the lists of the drawings are suddenly "missing." Sounds like what they did with the EB-5 transaction records in Aberdeen. How convenient. Isn't it a crime to destroy or obstruct access to financial records in these instances?
Justice delayed is justice denied.
Stace Nelson is looking like the more viable candidate all the time.
Yeah but according to the article, she says that it is all your fault Cory. And she says that the people looking for money back for the tickets that they purchased in her raffle, are lying because their names are not on the list, even though the list is gone missing. If this were a novel, it would never get published for its unbelievability.
Mathia, you're evidently easier to get a hold of than Dr. Bosworth.
Rick said: "3. What is taking our state attorney general sooooooo long to prosecute when the witnesses and victims came forward months ago?"
It took bringing in an competent prosecutor (or one not tainted by conflicts of interests) from outside South Dakota to finally investigate and prosecute in the sewage ash scam. When the entire system is corrupt, it's hard to find someone able to take charge of a prosecution.
In the letter, Joel Arends used quotation marks around the volunteers when describing the Executive Director and Special Projects Manager. That's interesting ... Arends letter stinks of BS.
Yes I am Corey.
I feel that I should file a defamation suit. I will be talking to my attorney monday
I would like to see a copy of the police report they filed alleging theft of the raffle list... Oh wait, that never happened. The only item Haber was concerned about was the senate campaign schedule that was "stolen" from a "locked" location, which never existed. After all, it is really difficult to lock a cube.
Thanks for keeping us updated!
Why have a scam if you can't scam somebody? Rather pointless,I'd say. There's a lesson for libs in here,somewhere.
Actualy Paul voting for Democrats and Rick Weiland is the way to go.
Does that mean she isn't really going to raffle off her farm?
Merlyn, she already raffled off a portion of the family farm in Aurora County. That first raffle happened. The subsequent raffle was of land that Bosworth and Haber purchased from friend.. though not without financial difficulty, as they quickly spent big money on a family fishing trip to Alaska.
Merlyn, perhaps they call that a "phantom raffle."
Regardless of what Bosworth claims about the raffle list, she hasn't paid back the people who have proof they bought a ticket. Taking money for a raffle, not holding the raffle, and refusing to pay it back is fraud. Not holding the money in an account until persons entitled to refunds are identified - i.e. spending the money - that's theft. There needs to be a criminal prosecution.
I'm troubled by the fact the AG hasn't had DCI or the investigator from the consumer protection division of his office call Mathia Rall. Very troubled.
If elected she will will fit right inn with the bunch of crooks in DC already.
The Republican Party in South Dakota should change their Mascott from an elephant to a statue of Bernie Madoff
I have talked with DCI. They know I have no raffle list.
So there is an open investigation in South Dakota on Bosworth and Haber?
They're professional criminal interviewees by now.
Sam 2
Generally politicians become crooks after they get to D.C.
Bozworth is a crook trying to get to D.C.