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Cover Story
Carmen Bolden already convicted of ripping off the AIDS and Latino communities, is now in the mental health business. Former employees have complained to authorities that she’s providing shoddy treatment and bilking the state. Why are taxpayers still footing this woman’s bills?
A tall, thin man in a tattered hat and scraggly beard guzzles beer from a 40-ounce bottle wrapped in a brown paper sack. Inside the battered green station wagon he leans on, a young girl probably no older than six plays in the front seat as the two wait for the girl’s mother to finish her therapy session at the Centro Ayuda Mental Health Clinic on North Broad Street.
Moments later, two women push strollers up the long ramp leading to the clinic’s front door. Minutes after that, a burly man in a plaid shirt walks up the ramp, followed soon after by a woman with two small children.
Business is booming on this sunny mid-September morning at the clinic, conveniently located just two doors down from a branch office of the city welfare department that many of the clinic’s clients visit before or after their session.
By all outward appearances, Centro Ayuda is a success, run by a woman some in the community have called a tireless worker on behalf of the city’s Latino population.
But there are other words for Carmen Bolden, who describes herself variously as the chief executive officer, president or executive vice president of Centro Ayuda.
Words like convict.
Misappropriator of public funds.
Intimidator of employees.
Centro Ayuda is Carmen Bolden’s third attempt at running a social service agency in the Latino community.
The other two resulted in her arrest, conviction and dismissal.
And for nearly a year, Latino activists have been wondering how it is that Bolden, who still owes nearly $25,000 to the last agency she was found guilty of ripping off, is able to have control of a clinic like Centro Ayuda, which has taken in more than $300,000 in taxpayer money so far this year.
One reason is that Carmen’s name appears nowhere on the documents creating Centro Ayuda. Her husband James — a carpenter by trade — is listed as the chief executive officer in documents given to the state by the clinic.
Bolden claims to be only a consultant. Visits and phone calls to the clinic in an effort to seek comment from Bolden were rebuffed. Wilma Morales, manager of clinic operations, said that Bolden could not comment about the clinic “because she is only a consultant.”
However, detailed complaints to the state’s Office of Mental Health (OMH), which oversees the clinic, charge otherwise.
The letters — including one from the Philadelphia district attorney’s office — raise concerns that it is Carmen, not her husband, who is running the operation. The letters also point out that it is against the law for her, as someone convicted of theft of public funds, to have any administrative responsibility for Centro Ayuda.
Regardless of those complaints, state mental health officials approved the clinic’s operations by issuing a six-month “full” license in March. That license — an upgrade from the original six-month “provisionary license” — was set to expire Thurs., Sept. 21. OMH officials, who say they are investigating complaints about the clinic, add that the clinic will remain open even after the license expires, “until they hear otherwise.”
Bolden’s attorney, Obra Kernodle, says that his client has done nothing wrong and is entitled to earn a livelihood — no matter what her track record involving public money might be.
But that livelihood, like Bolden’s previous careers, may soon end.
After several months of seemingly making no progress with OMH, a group of Latino activists and former clinic employees —who charge that the clinic has been providing questionable care, operating without a psychiatrist and playing fast and loose with billing records in addition to misrepresenting Bolden’s position to the state — are making one last-ditch effort to get someone in state government to pay attention to Centro Ayuda.
Their effort may yet pay off.
Agents from the state Attorney General’s office, in response to questions from City Paper during the research process for this article, began conducting preliminary interviews last Friday to determine whether complaints warrant a full-fledged investigation.
Sometime in the not-too-distant future, it is very likely that the clients visiting the offices of Centro Ayuda will be joined by men and women with badges.
The public saga of 48-year-old Carmen Bolden — the strongest-willed of 11 children — begins in August, 1969, when, as a 22-year-old, she helped form an organization called the Council of Spanish Speaking Organizations.
The Concilio, as the organization was called in the community, was created to provide Latinos with job training, job placement and English language classes. According to published reports from that time, the charismatic Bolden was largely responsible for turning the start-up into the city’s largest Latino service organization.
Slowly, things started going wrong for Bolden.
In early 1977, long-simmering frictions within Concilio erupted into a full-blown civil war for control of the organization. The 25-member board, according to published reports, voted to fire Bolden for “insubordination.”
Her firing led to a walkout by her supporters, who picketed the Concilio for two weeks in an unsuccessful effort to have Bolden reinstated.
Eventually, Bolden gave up the fight and started a new Latino service organization called Congreso de Latinos Unidos.
But not before making a big mistake.
Bolden created a secret bank account in which she deposited a $21,000 check from the William Penn Foundation. The money, according to published reports, was supposed to have been used to conduct a full audit of Concilio’s accounts so that the group might qualify for United Way funding.
Instead, Bolden began taking out the money for her own use.
In July, 1979, Bolden admitted to 11 counts of theft, totaling some $6,000. Prosecutors said Bolden used the money to pay credit card bills and loan payments. In court, she admitted taking the money, but said that it was for back salary and vacation time owed to her by Concilio.
Assistant District Attorney Michael Mustokoff, however, told the Inquirer, “There is no question that some money was owed to her at the time she was fired from the organization. Legally, however, she had an obligation to seek the money through proper channels.”
Bolden, as a first-time offender, was given probation.
But she was far from contrite.
“I handled millions of dollars, and there was never any question of what happened to the money,” she told the Daily News. “And all that for a lousy six thousand dollars.”
Nor was she finished with social service.
Months after being fired from Concilio, according to published reports, Bolden joined with Ralph Acosta — then the state’s only Puerto Rican legislator — to form Congreso, an agency designed to provide low-income Latinos with substance abuse counseling and, perhaps most notedly, health and counseling services for those with AIDS.
With the help of the old-boy wing of the Latino political power structure, Bolden forged Congreso from a start-up operating in her living room into the city’s most influential Latino service organization. Starting from scratch, Bolden built up Congreso to the point where it had 90 employees and a $3.5 million annual budget — made up largely of state funds and private grants.
Bolden was lauded in the press as a comeback kid and hailed in the community as a rare Latina able to buck the machismo and make a tremendous difference in the community.
But then Bolden made another big mistake.
In February, 1991, according to court records, she wrote a memo marked “confidential” ordering that Congreso place on the payroll a man named Miguel Rios.
Rios, however, never worked a day for Congreso.
He couldn’t.
Rios, Bolden’s brother, was living in Opalocka, Florida. The only times he even visited Philadelphia were his twice-a-month sojourns to pick up his checks.
The payments to Rios concerned Congreso’s fiscal director, William Novak. As soon as Novak saw the memo ordering Rios’ hire, he began snooping around and even raised the issue with Congreso board members. But he quickly dropped his inquiries.
In court records, Novak says he stopped looking into the Rios matter because he thought he might be barking up the wrong tree. But he also testified that he was routinely intimidated by Bolden, who became angry once she learned that Novak was investigating her brother.
Novak told the court that he was “continually threatened both orally and in writing by Bolden.” Novak said she constantly threatened to fire him “in an effort to prevent any questions whatsoever being raised” by Novak about her brother.
Novak, apparently, wasn’t the only Congreso staffer Bolden tried to intimidate in an effort to hide the ghost payments to her brother.
Rebecca Barragan, who supervised an AIDS services unit at the time, testified in court that Bolden ordered her to lie to investigators looking into the payments to Rios.
Auditors from the city inspector general’s office — acting on a tip about fiscal irregularities — began looking into Congreso in August, 1991. Bolden, Barragan said, told her to tell the auditors that Miguel Rios was not in the office because he was ill with HIV and on leave.
“Well, I was dumbfounded,” Barragan testified.
There never was a Miguel Rios working for her.
Barragan testified that she told Bolden she didn’t know how she could say Rios was working in her unit when there were no records of him having done so.
“She just said to call him. To call the auditors,” Barragan testified when asked what Bolden said when she balked at lying to investigators. “She gave me their number and [said] ‘just let them know that [Rios] was working’” for Congreso.
Bolden, according to court records, told Barragan “that her job would be in jeopardy” if she refused to lie to the auditors.
Bullied into complying, Barragan finally did call the auditors.
Even while investigators were combing through Congreso records, the agency was issuing Rios checks. All told, between Dec. 27, 1990 and Dec. 31, 1991, Congreso wrote Rios 24 checks totalling $25,000.
Though Bolden managed to cover up the payments — which were actually signed by her sister, Norma Blanco — the noose was closing around her neck. By February, 1992, with Congreso being visited regularly by investigators, the board asked Bolden to resign. She refused. On Feb. 11, she was fired. Two months later, she was indicted by a grand jury.
The investigations and charges were taking their toll.
On Oct. 12, 1992, Bolden filed a Workman’s Compensation claim against Congreso, claiming that she was “mentally fatigued” and “burned out” from 60-hour work weeks. In her claim, Bolden stated that her doctor, Ronald Rosillo, began prescribing muscle relaxants. Another doctor began prescribing medication for clinical depression, including valium.
Bolden’s testimony in her Workman’s Comp claim reads like a blueprint for the creation of Centro Ayuda.
Dr. Rosillo became the clinic’s first psychiatrist.
And the clinic became a haven for treating people with ailments like those described by Carmen Bolden.
On Feb. 22, 1994, Carmen Bolden pleaded guilty to paying her brother $25,000 for nothing. On May 16 she was sent to jail, where she served three months out of a four-to-24-month sentence. She was also ordered to do 500 hours of community service and repay Congreso the amount she stole from the organization.
Bolden’s attorney had argued for leniency.
Bolden, said Obra Kernoble, did not personally benefit from the theft. She committed the crime, he said, because her brother was out of work and had a family to feed.
Assistant District Attorney Mark Winter said no dice. This was Bolden’s second time stealing public money. Anything less than jail time would be a travesty.
Besides, added Winter, Bolden did personally benefit. She helped her brother without “digging into her own pockets.”
Bolden served her time in jail, where sources say she began developing the plan for Centro Ayuda.
But she has repaid just $500 of the $25,000, and in April was found to be in violation of the terms of her probation as a result. Though that issue was disposed of with no sanctions against Bolden, she has a hearing in Common Pleas Court next month to determine if she should go back to prison for a second instance of violating her probation by not repaying Congresso.
It’s bad enough that Congreso is still owed the $24,500, says Alba Martinez, the woman who replaced Bolden as Congreso’s executive director in May, 1992. But far worse, she says, is the ruined reputation suffered by Congreso.
The agency, she testified at Bolden’s sentencing, almost folded. Key funding was withheld. Important services to those with AIDS and to drug and alcohol abusers were halted. The organization lost nearly $100,000 over the embezzled funds in legal fees and other costs. It was left with a $43,000 deficit.
“The organization was literally on the verge of collapse,” she told the court. “It was not clear if it would survive.”
More than a year later, Congreso is thriving once again.
But the difficulties created by Bolden’s scandal have left a bad taste in the mouth of Martinez and others who have worked hard to revive Congreso.
Which is one reason Martinez and others are so irate about Centro Ayudo.
“Our community has really scarce resources available,” said Martinez in a phone interview last week. “It is really unacceptable that public resources are entrusted to someone with not one misappropriation of public funds, but two. It is really a major failure of the system, and if what happened at Congreso is any indication of what can happen again, it is a serious threat.”
How serious?
“Many other people are qualified and able to use the public funds to help the community,” says Martinez. “By having access to those dollars, she is denying access to people who do have a track record of utilizing the money properly.”
Centro Ayuda came into being on Sept. 20, 1994, when the state Office of Mental Health issued the clinic a provisional license. The principals of the corporation listed on that license were a familiar cast of characters.
Aside from James Bolden, president and CEO, the cast includedBolden’s friend and physician Dr. Rosillo as vice president and director of medical services; Norma Blanco, Bolden’s sister and unindicted co-conspirator in the Congreso case, and Jose Galura — no stranger to a federal investigation — as chief operating officer.
Galura, former executive director of Philadelphia Health Services (PHS) — a non-profit, federally funded organization running clinics like Centro Ayuda — was mentioned by the city’s inspector general’s office in a 16-page report released in August, 1992.
In addition to his salary of $94,900, the report, according to the Inquirer, shows PHS paid “$33,910 in lease and related payments for a Mercedes-Benz for the sole use of the executive director, $37,702 for undocumented expenses for the executive director and $33,334 paid to the executive director for unused vacation time.”
In addition, the report found that Galura received a personal loan of $4,000 from PHS in 1991. He also rang up a $3,000 bill on the agency’s credit cards. Both of those debts were repaid.
As a result of those and other findings, the auditors recommended that PHS and its federal funds be placed under more rigorous scrutiny.
Questions concerning some of the Centro Ayuda board members apparently did not faze OMH.
Neither, apparently, did a letter, sent on Dec. 19 to Jack O’Hara of the Philadelphia office of OMH, outlining in detail the Latino community’s concerns about Centro Ayuda.
A copy of the letter was also sent to the DA’s office.
The confidential letter — a copy of which was given to City Paper on the condition that its author’s name not be revealed — included the grand jury presentment and Bolden’s guilty plea in the Congreso scandal, a transcript of Bolden’s Worker’s Compensation hearing, copies of newspaper articles reporting on Bolden’s problems with the law, articles in which she proclaims to be an official with Centro Ayuda, articles reporting on Galura’s problems, and Centro Ayuda correspondence in which Bolden identifies herself either as CEO, executive director or executive vice president of Centro Ayuda.
According to the letter, “It seems that the licensing application may have been filed in a manner that purposely avoided the state’s scrutiny into Carmen Bolden’s past criminal history, to avoid its denial. In any case, the organization is now under her control. The Latino community’s needs are too severe to have public funds administered for their benefit by individuals or organizations who are not qualified to do so.”
City Paper made several phone calls to O’Hara, asking what, if any, action was taken in response to the confidential letter. O’Hara did not return the calls.
Three months after O’Hara received the letter, OMH approved the six-month full license in March, 1995.
OMH spokesman Mark McGaffin says that during the relicensure inspections, charges that Bolden was running the show “could not be substantiated.”
By June, OMH received another complaint, this time from clinic employees who claimed that the clinic was involved in a number of unsavory mental health practices.
These practices, according to the complaint, were as follows:
employees charged that they were ordered to see upwards of 25 clients a day — twice the maximum allowed by law. To get around requirements, the employees — who have requested anonymity — claim that Bolden ordered them to keep two sets of records, one for inspection purposes and another for billing purposes.
employee of Centro Ayuda routinely visited welfare offices, promising that if welfare recipients came to the clinic for treatment, they would be given diagnoses that would allow them to collect Social Security disability payments within six months.
Once a month, the clinic holds well-advertised raffles offering the winner a round trip ticket for two to Puerto Rico. The letter claims that those entering the raffle are forced to sign a voucher which the clinic then uses to bill the state, claiming the signatories as clients.
two months, the clinic operated without a psychiatrist, as required by law. The letter charges that the clinic used invoices with Rosillo’s name even after he quit. The invoices, according to the sources, were used to bill the state. Rosillo, who is not listed in the phone book, is said by sources to be aware of this story, but vacationing in Florida and unavailable for comment. However, City Paper has obtained copies of the invoices stamped with Rosillo’s name.
clinic submitted claims to the state charging more time than was actually spent with some clients.
In July, sources say, O’Hara began visiting some of the clinic employees who had complained to OMH. But O’Hara is not talking about what problems, if any, he uncovered.
McGaffin will not comment on the specifics of the complaints, other than to say they involved “poor management.” But he does acknowledge that “as we were looking into things, we got more and more complaints and we were doing more and more investigating. It seemed to escalate as we went along.”
In August, the heat on Centro Ayuda was turned up another notch.
Assistant District Attorney Karen Grigsby wrote a letter to John Pedrazzani, OMH community service manager, raising questions about the clinic.
“I am writing to share with you this office’s concerns about the propriety of licensure of Centro Ayuda,” wrote Grigsby.
Grigsby repeated the concerns raised in the Dec. 19 letter to O’Hara, which she mentioned.
“Although these concerns were brought to our attention for possible criminal prosecution, they should also be brought to your attention for investigation and consideration in your decision whether to renew Centro Ayuda’s license.”
Pedrazzani did not return a phone call to his office.
Though OMH had failed to act on the information presented by Grigsby and others, state officials were well aware of the problems, according to a source in state government familiar with the case.
“This is outrageous,” says the source. “She has ripped off the community every time she has been associated with a community-based center. She is using the people as a mill to make money.”
The fact that OMH has taken no action against Bolden “certainly raises serious questions about the quality of care given to people who need it,” says the source.
Investigations were not the clinic’s only problems.
Bolden has had trouble meeting her payroll.
Those troubles led to her frantic calls for increased productivity among therapists.
On an almost monthly basis, Bolden issued memos explaining to staff why their paychecks were delayed.
“In anticipation of your anticipation as to whether or not any of us can expect to receive a salary payment soon, is why I am addressing this memorandum to you to provide a much deserve[sic] update respecting our finances,” Bolden wrote on Jan. 26.
In that memo, she explained that because payments from the state had a 21-day turnaround, cash flow was impaired.
“I realize and recognize the financial pressure we all find ourselves under,” Bolden wrote. “There is not one person in the corporation who feels that any stronger than I do.”
A major cause of the cash-flow shortage has been the clinic’s inability to find a health maintenance organization (HMO) willing to authorize Centro Ayuda to receive payments.
Addressing the cash flow issue again in a March 14 memo, Bolden told the staff that they had to decrease the number of HMO patients they were seeing and increase the number whose bills were paid by the state.
“Those that can handle an increased number of [state-paid] clients will be made known to Mr. Toledo so he can refer clients recruited daily to whatever therapist or therapists need to have more [state-paid] clients,” she wrote. “Until we can successfully execute one or two contracts with representatives of HMOs… we need to significantly increase our [state-paid] insurance card holders. Absent of this, we will continue to experience cash shortfalls and this, naturally, affects all of us as employees of this corporation.”
On April 19, Bolden wrote a memo to “disenroll” clients who belong to the Greater Atlantic Health Services, Caring Foundation, Keystone East, Blue Cross/Blue Shield and Personal Choice HMOs.
The reason?
“Recognizing our strong inability to meet this criteria (there is currently not one staff member that meets this criteria), you are encouraged to advise those patients holding one of those insurance cards to disenroll. If they cannot disenroll then, we must, discontinue providing services.”
Among the criteria the clinic and its employees did not meet, according to an attachment to Bolden’s memo, are that professionals must have a “membership in a national professional association which ascribes to a professional code of ethics…”; must hold a “current license in their speciality”; and a “letter of professional reference from a facility or hospital with which the provider is associated.”
Obra Kernodle, Bolden’s attorney, says that the money problems faced by Centro Ayuda are typical.
“This is a start-up corporation created on paper-thin capital,” he says. “It has no more and no less problems than those faced by other public service organizations.”
Beyond the money woes, Kernodle is reluctant to comment about the charges against Bolden, other than to say he is “not aware” that his client is chief executive officer of Centro Ayuda.
“I am not familiar with the day-to-day activity of the clinic,” he says, adding that he is advising his client not to comment for this story.
Kernodle does have this to say about Assistant District Attorney Grigsby’s letter:
“I would think that the district attorney would be way out of line in offering a comment about how a citizen can make a living. I am not aware of anyone in the district attorney’s office who would have the unique capacity to advise community boards as to whom they should employ and in what fashion.”
When reminded that the employment in question concerns public funding — funding which Bolden has stolen in the past — Kernodle says that it is “nobody’s business” what Bolden does for a living.
“Should Carmen Bolden be a service station attendant?” he asks angrily. “A check-out girl at the Acme? That is ridiculous.”
Is it ridiculous to expect that those who oversee public funds will refrain from misusing them?
“Every day, taxpayer money is spent with the hope of returning past criminals to gainful employment,” he says.
Bolden, says Kernodle, has paid her debt to society.
But what about the 24 grand she still owes Congreso?
“Token restitution is being made,” he says. “It does not make a difference if it is $500 or one dollar. She has been making only token restitution because of her inability to obtain a stable revenue stream. “
Bolden may soon find her revenue stream drier than a local reservoir.
State Rep. Ben Ramos, who had to deal with the aftermath of the Congreso mess as deputy mayor in 1992, says that he is going to meet with the heads of the various state agencies overseeing funding to clinics like Centro Ayuda.
“I have been very angry about this because of the past history behind Carmen Bolden,” says Ramos. “She is kind of doing the same thing like nothing ever happened. I will talk to the Department of Health and related departments and I will inquire as to their relationship with her organization.”
Ramos adds that Centro Ayuda is not the only mental health clinic meriting closer scrutiny.
“There has been a proliferation of mental health outpatient services,” he says. “I think that the city has not had the opportunity to be more stringent about who applies and who they grant applications to and I think the state has been even worse at it. There is not enough follow up and scrutiny. Some people are making a hell of a living doing this.”
State officials maintain that they are doing something about Centro Ayuda.
OMH’s McGaffin says that if his agency finds Centro Ayuda not in compliance with state regulations, “we could go in there and shut the place down immediately.”
And even if Centro Ayuda is closed, that may not be the end of the story.
Last Friday, Deputy Attorney General Susan Antonelli and investigators Kenneth Sadler and Kevin Cobourn met in City Paper offices with two sources willing to come forward and testify against Bolden.
Antonelli told the sources that, if the AG’s office decides to launch a full-fledged investigation, it would supersede other investigations and could result in criminal prosecution.
Which would be just fine with community leaders like Ben Ramos.
“We cannot afford to have people who are jeopardizing funding and services to the community,” he says. “In light of the funding cuts on the state and national levels, this whole thing does not smell good.”
