Yo Ho Ho! It's Beckles Watch

How To Avoid Deportation

2012-01-24T18:03:00.001-05:00

I can't help wondering what fate awaits #3.

Will he be stabbed?

Or attacked with a stiletto heel?

She's older and wiser now.

He'll probably just be served with a restraining order to stay away.

Or maybe the fun of attack will prove irresistable...

$2.5bn DAC Suit Against LAUSD Vies With Yolande & Lydia Spat With George For #1 In L.A. Xmas Yawn Charts

2011-12-19T10:57:00.002-05:00

It was with some reluctance that the crew of Beckles Watch aborted their Christmas parcel wrapping yesterday and put down the Scotch tape in order to investigate exciting news that had recently arrived in the form of an email from Lydia Grant. For those unfamiliar with this militant Board Member of Parent Revolution, the $1m-funded front organisation for privately-owned charter school operators backed by an assortment of billionaires, Lydia Grant is a long-time community activist from Sunland-Tujunga formerly recognized with LAUSD's 'Beyond the Bell' award and the President's Volunteer Gold Level Service award, as well as being a well-known local slapper (the colloquial acronym for a member of the Saving Los Angeles Project, S.L.A.P.).

It was exciting news indeed. Lydia was writing to distance herself from just about everyone - the billionaires funding her protest organisation (from whom she claimed to receive not one cent in financial support), LAUSD (an organisation she claimed to have dedicated her life to fighting), Yolande Beckles (whom she described as a "wolf in sheep's clothing") and Arne Duncan heckler George Buzetti from the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) (whom she accused of inaccuracies, misreporting and upsetting behaviour).

When we reached the part about a $2.5 billion lawsuit being filed by The District Advisory Committee (DAC) against LAUSD for alleged misuse of funds, after local committees and activists were banished from the city's Parent Centers and other LAUSD premises recently, we were beginning to get excited. Even more so when we learnt that the announcement of this legal challenge had been made to the world's media at a press conference organised by none other than Yolande Beckles.

Unfortunately for Yolande, the world's media doesn't appear to have expressed much interest in her announcements. The Los Angeles Times and KPCC both reported that Deasy would be filing a lawsuit against the State of California to prevent mid-year funding cuts, but neither reported the threatened DAC action and nor did LA Weekly, leaving nothing more than the odd blog with virtually no readers to post attorney Robert A. Brown's press release.

One sentence in attorney Brown's press release caused raised eyebrows at the BW office, it must be admitted. "In some instances, DAC members were visited at their homes and pulled out of meetings by LAUSD police, while others were threatened by District administrators with deportation." Well, I wonder whose US immigration status might have led to possible threats of deportation? I simply can't imagine.

Gun For Hire

2011-12-04T13:55:00.003-05:00

They say that all publicity is good publicity, but I'm not sure that even Yolande Beckles, with a media image as bad as hers, will be welcoming the rabid attentions she's been receiving recently from extreme right-wing anti-union Harvard graduate and all-round nutter Anthony Krinsky.

Writing in one of his blogs under the banner: "Outing Teacher Union Replicants: How To Spot A Fake "Parents" Group, Operative, Or Outfit", Krinsky attacks the teachers' unions for setting up "fake 'parent' groups that waive the banner of parent advocacy but which actually promote the teacher union agenda... and enlisting parents in proxy-armies to fight reforms which are clearly in the parental interest."

Top of Krinsky's hit list are Carl Campanile and the NYC Parents Union", described by the hysterical anti-union ranter as nothing more than "a teacher union front group". At least he gives Parents Across America credit for having attempted to disguise its true backers, referring to it as "a 'parent' front group... for the Economic Policy Institute", as if the EPA was the Russian SVR, rather than a liberal non-partisan think tank with a degree of union funding.

But our ranter saves some of his most poetic venom for you-know-who: "...in communities like Los Angeles, the teacher unions have allegedly hired 'education activists' like Yolande Beckles to embed themselves into communities. Beckles has already talked her way onto the Greater Echo Park Elysian Neighborhood Council and leads a CTA front-group called 'California Title I Parent Union.' A friend of mine calls her 'quite impressive' personally, which did not surprise me in the least. How many hired guns are sneaking into the fabric of America's neighborhood councils where they will powerfully present teacher union dogma as 'good for families?'"

Wow! It's Clint Beckles - The Woman With No Name.

Poor old Krinsky. Eyes so inflamed with the red mist of anti-union loathing that he can't see the self-serving wood for the co-operative trees. Let me explain it to you, Anthony. Yolande isn't a servant of the unions, nor of the multi-billionaire private charter school operators, nor even of the investment bankers and hedge-fund managers of Democrats For Education Reform. Yolande Beckles exists to serve the interests of only one master... or I should say mistress. Yolande Beckles.

Holding Onto Eachother On The Astroturf

2011-11-13T07:30:00.002-05:00

"The best thing to hold onto in life is eachother", declared Linda Serrato, Deputy Communications Director of Parent Revolution at her Oak Creek Palo Alto engagement party in May last year. A tender and loving thought addressed to her fiancé Matt, with whom she is pictured here frolicking in the hotel fountains. Not, however, a sentiment that the community activist is aiming at Yolande Beckles these days.

In an angry message to this blog a few days ago Ms. Serrato declared: "I wanted to clarify that Parent Revolution has absolutely no affiliation (formal or otherwise) with Ms. Beckles or any of her work in Southern California... We have never had any affiliation with her. We do not currently have any affiliation. We will never want any affiliation with her." So, sounds like the engagement between Parent Revolution and CTIPU arranged by George Buzzetti isn't progressing quite as lovingly.

"We are about empowering and educating parents and developing real grassroots organizations", the irate PR manager continued. "She isn't about these things... She doesn't disclose to parents how she is funded or how she has misled parents in the past."

Quite right. And quite unlike Parent Revolution of course. There's nothing secret or misleading about the funding or commercial motives of Linda Serrato's employers. Parent Revolution is a $1m-funded front organisation for a set of privately-owned charter school operators backed by an unashamedly open bunch of billionaires including Bill & Melinda Gates, Casey Wasserman, Eli & Edyth Broad, William and Flora Hewlett and Sam & Helen Walton.

Behind all of this we find the hand of Democrats For Education Reform, the political action committee run by investment bankers and hedge-fund managers that was responsible for the parent trigger legislation in the first place and an organisation which Linda Serrato came to know through her previous campaign work for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. DFER presents its interests as the interests of children, specifically America's mainly urban, non-white public school children. DFER pits the interests of these children against the interests of unionized teachers who, according to DFER, are ultimately responsible for high student dropout rates and abysmal performance on school tests.

DFER refuses to admit that lack of school funding or poverty is an important determinant of academic performance, citing academic outcomes at KIPP and Harlem Children's Zone as evidence of what great instruction can do. DFER's critics point out that the PAC has a stake in undermining the pull of teachers' unions, the largest single source of funding for the Democratic Party, in order to wrest power and political influence in its favour. There is nothing left-wing about this agenda - it was effectively authored by George W. Bush. Such organisations are known in political circles as "astroturf" bodies – groups that adopt the populist guise of a grassroots organization in the interests of parties that are neither populist nor grassroots. Independent bloggers at Solidaridad have been calling Parent Revolution "astroturf" for years.

So, where does this leave us? Well, for ordinary parents with kids in public schools in deprived neighbourhoods and for rank-and-file teachers struggling to educate under-privileged students in the face of inadequate and shrinking budgets, there's little choice. American astroturf billionaires or British swindlers on the run. You pays yer money...

Here is Linda's email in full:

My name is Linda Serrato and I work communications for Parent Revolution. I wanted to reach out personally regarding your most recent post about Yolanda Beckles. I wanted to clarify that Parent Revolution has absolutely no affiliation (formal or otherwise) with Ms. Beckles or any of her work in Southern California.

Our organization helps parents organize and form Parent Unions at their local school around various initiatives. Some of our chapters focus on parental initiatives such as improving attendance at their school while others demand changes to their children's schools when the status quo has failed their children. Additionally, we train parents to develop steering committees and help to educate parents about ways that they can take a real role to change their child's educational destiny.

I want to make it clear that we do not take any money whatsoever from our parents.

While Ms. Beckles stole the Parent Union name, she does not reflect any of this grassroots organizing or knowledge spreading.

This year, our organization has been fighting to protect the Parent Trigger that empowers parents to have a real voice in their children's education. Every State Board meeting, Parent Revolution organized parents to take a 6 hour overnight bus up to Sacramento to get parent-friendly regulations passed surrounding the law, in which the parents gave their own time to do.

At the July meeting, after seeing how eloquent and successfully Parent Revolution parents were about defending Parent Trigger, Yolanda Beckles organized a bus of parents (funded by CTA) to go up to Sacramento under the Title I Parent Union flag and try to tear down the Parent Trigger law and take power away from parents. The results were disastrous. The Title I parents were unaware of the Parent Trigger law and boarded a bus to talk about school funding. A number of parents were quite confused when they spoke and even at one point the President of the Board had to ask the speaker to address the Parent Trigger law and NOT talk about school funding.

In another case, a parent we were working with, got over 300 parent signatures in support of the Parent Trigger law. She gave the petition to Yolanda (without knowing where Ms. Beckles received funding) when Ms. Beckles promised to submit the 300 signatures. At no point did Ms. Beckles submit the signatures. Instead, she betrayed the parents trust and effectively threw away the petition.

After the trip, she returned to Los Angeles and lied out right to parents. As a parent recounted to us, Ms. Beckles claimed that our organization offered her hundreds of thousands of dollars to get her to work for us but that she denied our offer.

I cannot emphasize enough how false that is. We have never had any affiliation with her. We do not currently have any affiliation. We will never want any affiliation with her.

We are about empowering and educating parents and developing real grassroots organizations. She isn't about these things. In fact, we have been following your website and have been trying to make parents aware of her background. She doesn't disclose to parents how she is funded or how she has misled parents in the past.

I wanted to email you to clarify the situation and to prevent any instance of her using this as evidence that she works with us. You can learn more about our organizing from this video when we were featured on “Nightly News with Brian Williams.”

If you have any other questions, please feel free to reach out to me directly.

Thanks,
Linda

Follow The Buck

2011-10-28T20:34:00.001-04:00

The big news in the world of LA education this month was the much-discussed early walk-out of U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan on parents invited to a meeting at the town hall in Pico Rivera - an event designed to engage community leaders from across the Los Angeles region in meeting President Barack Obama's challenge to lead the world in college completion by 2020.

Media and bloggers were quick to pick up on the words of heckler George Buzzetti, who followed up on Duncan's exit by shouting: "He has no respect for students, parents or teachers, he is now on his way to get money." Much applause from a frustrated audience of parents and teachers.

Having initially declared his outburst to be impromptu, Buzzetti later confessed that he had actually been instrumental in securing invites for much of the audience and setting the agenda for protest through the organisations he chose to engage: "I am the one who originated opening up a closed meeting to all comers through Lydia Grant, Board Member of the Parent Revolution, and Yolande Beckles with the LAUSD Parent District Advisory Council (DAC) and new Parent Union. I am with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) of California... Monday I called Lydia and Yolande to send in requests on their letterhead, they did. Within several hours both received phone calls, from officials representing Duncan, asking them to bring every student, parent, teacher and community member they can so they can be listened to by the Secretary of Education... From San Diego to the edge of L.A. County they came including a bus load paid for by The California Teachers Association (CTA) who helped parents go to this supposedly important event for the public to be heard."

Eagle-eyed readers will have picked up on Buzzetti's description of Ms. Beckles as being with "the LAUSD Parent District Advisory Council (DAC)" (of which I've written at some length on this blog) and the "new Parent Union". Aha. So that's what Yo has been doing during these past months of relative silence.

Yes - Ms. Beckles has been busy setting up yet another organisation, the California Title I Parent Union. The new venture has no office of its own, but shares premises, phone and fax with the CTA (California Teachers Association - the state's largest professional employee organization, representing more than 340,000 public school teachers, counselors, psychologists, librarians and ESPs) at the Wilshire Blvd headquarters of its state affiliate UTLA (United Teachers Los Angeles - the union of professionals representing 45,000 public school teachers and health and human services professionals in LA).

Things must be getting tight financially, because not only does CTIPU not have its own office, nor does it yet have its own website. Even the proposed domain name has yet to be purchased, leaving an opportunity for someone more mischievous than Beckles Watch.

Still, lack of financial resources didn't prevent Yo organising and funding a bus to Pico Rivera with refreshments on board, as her letter to members confirms. Presumably not the same bus that was hired and paid for by CTA according to George Buzzetti.

So the next question is inevitably about the relationship between CTIPU and Parent Revolution. After all, when noisy George Buzzetti goes looking for troops, he calls both organisations to the barricades. Well, at first glance Parent Revolution looks just the sort of outfit that Yolande would associate herself with. Its mission is "to transform public education rooted in what's good for kids — not grown-ups — by empowering parents to transform their own children’s low-performing schools through community organizing." It organized a massive and successful grassroots campaign to have a law called the Parent Trigger pass through the California State Legislature, empowering parents at any failing school in California to transform their school through community organizing. Just the sort of words that will ring bells with anyone familiar with the preachings of Ms. Beckles.

Chair and CEO of Parent Revolution Reverend K.W. Tulloss describes himself as "a leading advocate for children and communities of color throughout Los Angeles". His CV reveals that he was born and raised in South Los Angeles, has taken on countless leadership roles to fight for the members of his community and is the leader of National Action Network Los Angeles, the CEO of the Making a Difference Foundation, a founding member of the Latino/African American Leadership Alliance, Pastor of the Historical Weller Street Missionary Baptist Church in Boyle Heights, a youth mentor, gang mediator and a board member of the Watts Learning Center. Pretty impressive stuff! You'd wonder why any frustrated parent in Los Angeles wouldn't support the parent-power organisation. A clear case of David and Goliath, as previously unrepresented but radicalised parents take on the twin conservative mammoths of the state and the unions.

The contrast between privilege and despair couldn't have been put into sharper relief than last January, when Uprising Radio's Sonali Kolhatkar hosted Gabe Rose, Deputy Director of Parent Revolution in a debate with A J Duffy of UTLA over the Parent Trigger law and the state of public education in LA. Just look at Duffy's crisp Italian suit and tie and compare with Rose's crumpled, open-neck shirt. One of these men is backed by some serious financial interests with hidden agendas.

Yeah - I expect you got it. The Chair and CEO of Parent Revolution back then was one Steve Barr, founder of Green Dot Public Schools, operators of several charter schools in the city of Los Angeles and with virtually inexhaustible funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Wasserman Foundation, the Eli and Edyth Broad Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation. But don't feel sorry for the low-paid former President of United Teachers Los Angeles. He stepped down in June to become Executive Director of Apple Academy Charter Public Schools. Poor Yolande. She made a fortune in her early business ventures, but nowadays she never quite seems to get onto the wonga bandwagon in time.

Yolande Beckles Threatened By Maria Casillas

2011-07-08T15:11:00.002-04:00

Parents in Los Angeles are unhappy with the new LAUSD Parent and Community Services Branch administrator, Maria Casillas, writes Tony Hicks in examiner.com. According to Hicks, at the recent LAUSD School Board Meeting over 10 parent leaders spoke regarding what they feel is the disrespectful and unprofessional treatment towards them by the new PCSB administrator.

Leading the defence of the parents under attack is Yolande Beckles, 1st Vice-President of the District Advisory Council, who said that she believed Superintendent Deasy had allowed the new PCSB administrator to threaten parents because they wouldn't allow her to control their parent run group. Ms. Beckles also objected to decisions to suspend operation of the DAC, restrict parents' travel to conferences and reduce their food and refreshments for meetings.

So, that'll be complaints about personal threats, suspended operations and reduced food handouts from a woman accused of four separate incidents of attempted murder in the UK and US, the near-bankrupting of several individuals and organisations in the UK and bankrupting of one family in Los Angeles and the corrupt obtaining of food from the Cathedral Center of St. Paul.

They didn't have black or female police officers in the days of Charles Penrose. But Yolande Beckles defending the local community suits his caricature so perfectly. Oh ho ho ho ho ho ho. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Ho ho ho ho ho ho ho. Ha ha ha ha ha ha....

Equal Partners?

2011-04-10T03:10:00.000-04:00

Just received my copy of the Final Report from the Los Angeles Unified School District Parents as Equal Partners Taskforce, "Parents as Equal Partners in the Education of Their Children". Glad to see that Yolande has been gainfully employed these past few months, doing something useful. Unless, of course, you know different...

M'Learned Friend

2010-12-06T10:20:00.003-05:00

Only a very special few live on in the collective memory long after they pass on from this mortal coil to another place. Such people have their curriculum vitae chiseled in stone and archived for posterity in the great Library of Alexandria, scribed in papyrus and hidden away in the vaults of the Library of Herculaneum or carefully printed on a Gutenberg press and filed in environmentally-controlled cabinets at Oxford's Bodleian Library. These days, of course, technology has moved on and our great repositories of human knowledge are to be found right here, on the web.

Yolande Beckles has long been the proud owner of a page on the world's most famous internet encyclopaedia, Wikipedia. But today I can announce that she has been admitted to the world-wide web's most prestigious data bank of human knowledge - The Museum Of Learning (TMoL). This massive and authoritative database runs on a proprietary system known as Cloud10 and features what is known colloquially in the information world as "mashed data" - about specific topics from a variety of sources including Wikipedia, Twitter, various other social media outlets, together with news and commentary from authoritative sources.

Those privileged to be entered into TMoL's hall of fame do so under a specific section header, such as "Politicians", "Musicians" or "Heroes". In Yolande's case, the section is "Judgment Debt":

It's a splendid entry, which eloquently summarises the career of Miss Beckles and those attributes for which she has rightly become famous across the planet. With this online acknowledgment of her importance, nobody will henceforth ever think of court decisions about personal and corporate debt without thinking of Yolande Beckles.

Sssshhhh!

2010-12-03T05:49:00.000-05:00

Head down... allow no photos... keep self and children away from the internet... remove profile pic from new GEPENC website... register with President Jose Sigala's P.O. box address and Lisa Baca-Sigala's PR office phone number. Sounds like time for someone to pop up and let Beckles Watch know where our shy little Miss is hiding herself these days...

Fully Equipped

2010-10-19T08:03:00.001-04:00


	Yolande's iPad and laptop. Not bad bits of kit... for someone who is not an employee of LAUSD. Submitted by a genuine LAUSD employee who is not at all happy about our friend...

Meetings, Meetings And More Damned Meetings

2010-09-23T16:12:00.001-04:00

When you're unemployed and living off state benefits, you have to find some way to occupy your time. Sitting around at home delving through thousands of pages of school reports in an attempt to become a hero as a result of uncovering corruption and administrative incompetence in schools administration across the city of Los Angeles is one way to fill your time.

Getting out and about visiting school meetings across the city might seem like a more useful way to use up those vacant hours. But that assumes that you behave yourself when you're there, of course. As opposed to bad-mouthing staff and management and generally making a total pr**t of yourself.

One thing's for sure, however - and it's impossible to avoid no matter how embarrassing it might be. Sitting down all summer rustling through paperwork and occasionally pushing a pen - like sitting on cross-city metro buses and then spending time sitting in meeting halls - does no favours whatsoever for a woman's figure.

Pots And Kettles

2010-09-15T16:11:00.005-04:00

Anyone who Googled 'Yolande Beckles' during the past couple of months, only to discover absolutely no trace of someone who can hardly be called publicity shy, could be excused for concluding that she'd been interred incommunicado all summer in a Los Angeles institution. Well, if you were hoping for the Mira Loma Detention Center you'd be wrong, but not necessarily a million miles from the truth. Yo has been head down beavering away for LAUSD or, to be more accurate, for the LAUSD Compensatory Education Advisory Committee (CEAC) of which she is a volunteer Executive Officer, rather than a paid employee.

A stern warning was posted here in April by an anonymous contributor: "there is no way that LAUSD will hire or pay anyone who cannot be verified via an I-9 or e-verify which LAUSD is mandated to use - providing false documents will subject the offender to serious Federal jail time and big money fines". Quite right, but this doesn't apply to volunteers and Yo has been working unpaid on behalf of LAUSD all summer. Moreover, according to a friend of Beckles Watch, "she's been a very busy little bothersome bee".

So what has she been buzzing away at all summer, you ask? Well, the answer was provided two weeks ago when Lupe Inabu, LAUSD Administrator of Instruction issued an email to the Principals of elementary, middle and high schools in the District about a CEAC report that was being compiled by a team including Miss Beckles. With LAUSD facing massive budget cuts this year, schools short of staff and a host of other problems facing the city's education services, you might have thought Yolande would have been developing programs to help address the problems faced by kids in Los Angeles. Not a bit of it. She's launched a witch hunt, looking for corruption and administrative incompetence in schools administration across the city.

Apparently, Yolande requested and received the Assurances & Justification Pages for every one of the nearly 400 schools in LAUSD and combed through the reports for every one of the schools, looking to see whether the signature of the corresponding committee chair matched that on each report. As you can well imagine, this was not an easy task and occupied a significant part of Miss Beckles' summer holidays. The outcome was a set of letters to schools across LA stating that investigation of their affairs was needed and demanding an explanation for the signature discrepancies by this Friday.

What makes all of this even more extraordinary is that Yolande has been engaged in these activities at a time when she continues to be under a disruptive parent notice issued by the Principal of her youngest child's school and is not allowed on the school campus other than for the child's drop off and pick up. Hardly a sound basis from which to investigate the integrity of the other 400 public schools in Los Angeles!

It will be interesting to see how the schools respond to Yolande's quirky demand at this worst of all possible times, now that the new academic year has begun. And how LAUSD reacts to the news that one of its most disruptive parents is conducting investigative audits of the city's schools. Watch this space for an answer.

I've Got You Under My Spell

2010-06-09T06:13:00.002-04:00

Three months ago I wrote about the appearance of Yolande Beckles in the Title I Office at Hollywood High School, as part of the school's Parent Volunteer Programme. I questioned at the time whether a Title I office was the most appropriate place to find a serial misappropriator of funds - especially one who had only recently been thrown out of another Hollywood school as "a disruptive influence" and who had been the subject of a recent two-page exposé in a national Sunday newspaper alleging serial fraud and theft.

That office was at the time run by parent Kimberley Smith, listed on the school website as Advisor, Categorical Program. An insider informs me that the two initially failed to strike up a totally positive relationship. Actually, that's me putting it politely. The actual words were "when she [Yolande] first showed up at HHS, Smith did not like her". Mind you, that shouldn't be taken as an indication of Ms. Smith's lack of warmth for, as my observer added, "neither did anyone else". Any doubts were in any case dispelled over time, as the relationship between Ms. Smith and Ms. Beckles blossomed, with Yolande spending many happy hours in Kimberley's office entertaining herself on the computer. It began to look, to quote from Casablanca, like this could be the start of a beautiful friendship.

However, all good things eventually come to an end. And in this instance, it appears that HHS Principal Jaime Morales has decided that it might be best to avoid certain problems experienced at Rosewood Avenue Elementary and separate the two bosom buddies. The official explanation for Ms. Smith's sudden and unexpected departure from the Title I Office makes no mention of these little difficulties. But then it wouldn't, would it?

GEPENC Swearing In... Well I'm Damned!

2010-05-31T04:24:00.002-04:00

Sorry chaps, BW has been away on vacation. Back now and time to report on the action.

A month ago I questioned whether the relocation of Yolande Beckles from East LA to the West side of town might be one factor behind the conspicuous failure of the Governing Board of the Echo Park Elysian Neighborhood Council to hold its post-election inaugural meeting. When I cheekily suggested that the newly-elected representative for District 4 might have seduced other members away to even more elysian fields out west, a reader was quick to point out that the personal absence of our friend was less due to her ability to attract rats and children with her pipe-playing skills and more to the fact that the cross-town public omnibus service is not a model of good timing - a matter of import to those sans voiture. Nonetheless, I took this as a cynical retort and remained convinced that Yolande's days in Echo Park had come firmly to an end.

So blow me down with a garden leaf vacuum when, last Tuesday the Board met for the first time, following the well-publicised disruptions caused by internecine warfare between board members and the unsuccessful contesting of the election results. According to The Eastsider LA (sorry for stealing your photo guys, but I simply can't afford a photographer), the meeting came as a surprise to many residents as the agenda had not been posted on the usual neighborhood message groups. The community blogzine went on to report that even some members of the Board claimed not to have been notified of the meeting, "where newly elected officers - including a woman who has been dogged by the British press – were sworn in".

So, that answers that question. Yolande Beckles is back in Echo Park, albeit after a long and tiring bus journey from wherever it is she currently lays her hat in West LA, ready to serve the people of East LA. I look forward to plenty of exciting news to come.

LAUSD - Cowards, Administrative Incompetents Or Just Plain Stupid?

2010-05-15T08:55:00.002-04:00

Three weeks ago I wrote of the possibility that Yolande Beckles could be offered the full-time post of $60,000-a-year Director of The Parent Center at Hollywood Senior High School, a public school administered by Los Angeles Unified School District. If I thought for one minute that Yolande had reformed and was now genuinely seeking to repay her debt to society by devoting her valuable talents to the service of the community, I would laud such an appointment.

On the other hand, how on earth she could be seriously considered for such a post when the law requires employers to verify the identity of all new employees and their legal right to employment via a CIS Form I-9 still remains a complete and utter mystery to me. Especially when LAUSD is mandated to use e-Verify to check new employee status.

In any event, having conducted an enquiry into events at Rosewood Avenue Elementary, LAUSD has decided not to authorise such an appointment. To what extent that decision has been influenced by what I've collated and published here I have no idea of course, although I can report that users on the LAUSD computer network have visited the blog 268 times and spent some 308 hours and 57 minutes here in total so far... doing something or other.

So - given that LAUSD are well aware of issues around Yolande's employment, integrity and immigration status - I can't help wondering why they have acceded to Yolande's request to be granted "homeless" status and thereby granted her and her children free bus passes, school supplies and personal hygiene items. Especially when they know full well that Yolande has a history of dishonesty when it comes to her place of residence. After all, it's many months now since her former landlady wrote: "I've contacted the Los Angeles Unified School District to tell them she's using our address for her children's schools without our permission."

Back in January, I published a photo of Yolande's then $1,830-a-month Hollywood residence at #228 Poinsettia Apartments, 1530 North Poinsettia Place, Los Angeles, CA 90046:

And last month I reported that Miss Beckles had relocated to West LA, although at the time I withheld her address. Well, just in case LAUSD can't identify the premises for themselves, here's a picture of 1825 Purdue Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90025:

1825 Purdue is a 4,055 ft² complex built in 1961, with average household income $48,000, household size 1.9 people, average age 31 and 58% of its occupants college graduates. It's in a very young neighbourhood, with several elementary and pre-schools in the vicinity. Certainly not the most expensive pad in town, but not exactly cheap. Definitely not a homeless hostel.

Of course I can't be certain that Yolande is actually living at this address. Given her past record of deceit, it could just be one that she's borrowed or stolen. But what I am certain of is that this is the address she has used recently in several official communications and registrations. Either way, if I were being asked to provide welfare or charitable benefits based on "homelessness", I'd have a very careful look at the applicant's residential status before acceding to the request.

Incompetence could be the reason for LAUSD's extraordinary decision to part-fund Yolande's itinerant but exciting lifestyle, but one reader has furnished me with a far more convincing explanation. In their opinion, LAUSD was desperate to get rid of someone who had caused public disquiet and disrupted the peace of its schools by asking awkward questions about allegations of long-term misappropriation of funds at Rosewood Elementary. I just wonder...

Missing Inaction

2010-04-29T04:55:00.002-04:00

"Echo Park Neighborhood Council Goes Missing In Action", trumpeted LA's neighborhood blogzine "The Eastsider" yesterday. The article informs readers that the Neighborhood Council's Board of Governors has not met at the new office or anywhere else for that matter since February, and even that month's meeting was halted numerous times due to lack of a quorum as members walked out in order to sabotage voting. Last Saturday I reported the reason for the absence of one recently elected representative, who has moved to the other side of the city. I can't help wondering whether, like The Pied Piper of Hamelin, she has taken all the little GEPENC children with her, with promises of a better life in Santa Monica...

Movin' On

2010-04-24T14:05:00.002-04:00

Despite not having been fortunate enough to have the opportunity to attend a single quorate meeting of GEPENC since being elected, it's been time for Yolande Beckles to wave a fond goodbye to Echo Park and its quirky representatives and move onwards and ever upwards - which was largely the reason for the blissful peace and quiet of the past few weeks.

I won't reveal the exact location, because Yolande would like a little more peace and quiet before flitting on to pastures new once again. As always, however, Yolande's address is available to all victims, their lawyers and law enforcement officers - just email a request. I couldn't help observing the recent planting activity alongside the 110 Freeway to the north of Sunset Boulevard and wondering whether it isn't a municipal floral tribute to one of East LA's most interesting, albeit challenging, short-term former residents.

Yolande's new neighborhood across the other side of the city in Santa Monica is a very different one from Echo Park. It's an area populated by young, well-educated middle-class parents, with several elementary and pre-schools in the vicinity which should provide plenty of employment opportunities for someone with experience in managing Title I funds, should current plans fail to work out. Not the most expensive part of the city, but not exactly cheap and with crime levels below average it should prove ideal. Mind you, it might prove a bit of a slog to travel the six or seven miles to and from Hollywood High School each day should the Los Angeles Unified School District enquiry exonerate Yolande of any wrongdoings and thereby allow her to step up from her part-time role as CEAC Representative at Hollywood High (with alternative name spelling) and take on the full-time post of $60,000-a-year Director of The Parent Center at HHS.

I never did get to hear how Bishop Bruno reacted to the revelation that Yolande was actively involved in the Cathedral Center of St Paul Food Bank Mission, but I'm sure he took the news calmly and professionally and thanked her for her services. After all, the fact that the Inventory Control & Volunteer Coordinator of the Mission sponsored a non-Episcopalian Brit of dubious migration status and un-Christian past to stand as a Neighborhood Council candidate in an area in which she wasn't resident, with a letter of reference approved by him and written by a Roman Catholic janitorial employee on Bishop Bruno's headed paper, was hardly Yolande's fault. However genuine or otherwise her voluntary activities at the food bank may have been, and regardless of the fact that volunteers received generous food parcels themselves, I'm sure Yolande didn't deserve this "Supersize Me" parody cartoon that an anonymous reader sent me:

Universal Happiness

2010-04-21T04:56:00.002-04:00

It's so blissfully peaceful and quiet out there. No furious tales of the latest misdoings, no emails from distressed victims, no angry denial comments. Just how life should be. Utterly serene. To celebrate, here's some gentle, poetic background music for you. Have a truly beautiful day!

Peek-A-Boo!

2010-04-09T17:18:00.003-04:00

Now, it's absolutely no fun at all when you turn up, armed with a camcorder and SLR camera, only to find that everyone from GEPENC is in hiding.

By the way, I don't like to be pedantic, but I think you'll find that's "quorum".

Hollywood Fame At Last

2010-04-06T11:51:00.004-04:00

Many thanks to the anonymous person who visited the Echo Park filming last Thursday and sent in the PR link below from the production company website. Apparently Yolande Beckles plays the part of a woman arrested for fraud and theft in Los Angeles and set to Lynwood, where some very unpleasant warders taunt her constantly about her unpaid debts.

Echo Park Filming Starts

2010-04-01T12:26:00.005-04:00

Wanna be in the movies?

Then hotfoot it down to Echo Park Avenue, where film company Smuggler started shooting a few hours ago on their latest production - "Axe".

Meet the crew at their basecamp location in Elysian Park, or come and watch them filming out on the sidewalk. You'll find the film crew in Delta St. from Echo Park Avenue West to the dead end, or from the West side of Echo Park Avenue from Delta St. to Grafton St., any time from 07:00 to 22:00.

Some of Hollywood's most famous faces started as extras - Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Brad Pitt, Clint Eastwood, Dennis Hopper, Keanu Reeves, Sly Stallone, Renee Zellweger, Megan Fox and Sunset Boulevard's own Gloria Swanson to name but a few - so you never know your luck.

And you just never know who you might bump into on a Smuggler Inc. location shoot for "Axe"! Yes - I know it's April Fool's Day today, but this is absolutely genuine. Honest.

Kicking Bishop Bruno Up The Arse

2010-03-27T07:23:00.016-04:00

British and Irish television viewers over 30 years of age will recognise the (slightly modified) title of this post instantly. First shown in April 1998, "Kicking Bishop Brennan up the Arse" was an episode of Father Ted, a sitcom widely regarded as one of the best ever.

Having cheated in the All-Priests Five-a-Side Over-75's Indoor Challenge Football Match, the manager of the Craggy Island team Father Ted Crilly is set a forfeit by Father Dick Byrne, manager of the opposing team from Rugged Island - to kick his bishop.

What makes this an especially terrifying challenge for poor Father Ted is the fact that the Bishop Leonard 'Len' Brennan character is a man characterised as "a foul-mouthed, lecherous, hypocritical and sometimes even violent narcissist", not averse to exacting the most painful revenge on those who cross him.

But, of course, Len Brennan is a fictitious Catholic bishop... so bears absolutely no resemblance whatsoever to any real-life prelate of the Episcopalian church.

That being the case, I'm sure the Bishop Diocesan of The Cathedral Center of St. Paul pictured in the aerial shot below is a servant of God who will look kindly on all those involved in the story I'm about to relate and who will - in true Christian spirit - offer the other cheek to be kicked...

We are, of course, discussing Yolande Beckles here - though I hasten to add that she's not the Bishop Diocesan. I'll introduce him in a minute. She isn't even a newly-elected Bishop Suffragan in this most liberal of churches in the worldwide Anglican Communion. What I mean is that Yolande is at the heart of my story. I've not got so bored waiting for her arrest and deportation that I've started to watch old television comedies about Irish priests. Rather, I've discovered a brand new real-life comedy taking place in Echo Park that I simply have to share with you.

My story focuses on the Cathedral Center of St. Paul, the administrative and ministerial hub of the six-county Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles. Located on the banks of Echo Lake at the junction of Echo Lake Avenue and Laguna Avenue, the Center houses the congregation of St. Athanasius, formed in 1864 as the first Episcopal church in Southern California, with parishioners worshipping in English, Korean and Spanish.

St. Paul is also home to a variety of community outreach programs ranging from youth services and a Federal Credit Union to the Cathedral Center Grants Program and Scholarship Program; plus the offices of the bishops and Center staff. It hosts retreats, daytime meetings, and a variety of other events for Episcopal-affiliated and community groups including The Family Preservation Program, which creates an alternative to foster care in 22 families by providing in-home counselling for parents and children; offices for the diocese's AIDS ministry; and, last but not least, a food distribution program providing 60,000 bags of groceries per year and employing 25 former clients as workers. I'll return to that in a bit.

Most importantly, The Cathedral Center houses the Episcopal Bishop Diocesan of Los Angeles, The Right Reverend Joseph Jon Bruno... who is currently being kicked up the proverbial by some of his trusted flock... and one Miss Yolande Beckles.

I'm not claiming that Miss Beckles isn't a God-fearing woman. It's just that her theological beliefs tend to wander in the direction of the next open door - especially if that door houses financial opportunities (somehow I just can't see Yolande Beckles joining the Hare Krishnas, unless it's to take up the role of the person who collects the worldly goods given up by new recruits and converts them into cash). Back home in England, she was a devout member of the happy-clappy New Testament Church Of God, formed to address the specific needs of the Caribbean immigrant community. Several members who encountered Yolande ended up spiritually renewed, if financially impoverished. Shortly after fleeing to Los Angeles to escape her creditors, Yolande was introduced her to a very different ministry - Michael Beckwith's sect, the Agape International Spiritual Center. "The worst thing", wrote landlady Mrs Goodson-Shields, "is she wanted to get involved with a church here and I introduced her to dear friends who attend Agape. She moved right in trying to worm her way into another con... She is an evil woman." When devout Christians start referring to you as "evil", you know you've got something of an image problem. You'll need a very convincing reference if you want a job... or to get elected.

And what better place to turn than The Cathedral Center of St. Paul? A departure towards the more liberal end of the theological and social spectrum... and an organisation with loads and loads of wonga. In particular, funds devoted to the Center's food bank. Of course it may simply be the case that Yolande is now down on her uppers, having been forced to flee several addresses in the city by landlords seeking their rent, unhappy flat-sharers, angry schoolparents and the prospect of arrest on charges of fraud and theft.

Maybe, facing the prospect of starvation, she's just after a meal and the thought of financial misappropriation has never crossed her mind. Informant JAFO tells Beckles Watch that Yolande has been found from time to time at the food bank on Friday mornings as a volunteer handing out sustenance parcels. Her appearances on Thursday afternoon, when the food is delivered and sorted, may be a genuinely altruistic act. On the other hand, it may be because the Thursday volunteers are usually offered the perk of an under-the-counter bag or two of canned produce along with "spiffs" - chicken, fish, pork, candy and ice cream - not usually offered to the public at large on Fridays. Maybe we should feel really sorry for Miss Beckles.

All entirely plausible, were it not for "just one more thing", as Lieutenant Columbo would say. And that is that the Inventory Control & Volunteer Coordinator of the Cathedral Center of St Paul Food Bank Mission is one Francisco Torrero, Treasurer and Vice President Elect of the Greater Echo Park Elysian Neighborhood Council and sponsor of Yolande Beckles as an Action Coalition slate candidate in the GEPENC elections.

And then there's the letter he arranged for her.

The letter in question is a reference to the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment (DONE), affirming Yolande's eligibility to stand in as a candidate in last Saturday's GEPENC elections. It gives her address as 840 Echo Park Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90026 (the address of the Cathedral Center) and describes Yolande's good deeds not only as a volunteer at St. Pauls but as their "grants administrator". It's a letter written on Cathedral Center letterhead, attesting to Yolande's important job at the Center and the fact that she is a member of the congregation. Strange, as JAFO points out, as "no church member can recall seeing her at Mass". Even stranger as the letter was not written by a priest or other clerical official, but apparently by the person who runs the maintenance and janitorial crews at the Center. A man who is hardly in a position to communicate officially on Episcopal Diocese notepaper... as he is a practicing Roman Catholic. The US Episcopal Church describes itself as "Protestant, yet Catholic", but somehow I doubt that Bishop Bruno's liberal ecumenical views extend as far as issuing spare keys to his escritoire to the local Rabbi, Mullah or Cardinal.

Still, at least a group of local parishioners did the dutiful thing and wrote to The Cathedral Centre questioning Francisco Torrero's support for Miss Beckles, given her dubious past. Those who wrote received the following email (slightly redacted in order to protect the identities of recipients and others mentioned):

So there you have it. Kindly cease and desist any enquiries as to why GEPENC Treasurer Francisco Torrero might have sponsored a non-Episcopalian Brit of dubious migration status and very un-Christian past to stand as a candidate on the slate for his Action Coalition in a Neighborhood District where she doesn't live or work and is virtually unheard of except for the odd appearance at the Food Bank run by him, with a letter of reference approved by him and written by a Roman Catholic janitorial employee on Bishop Bruno's headed paper.

Right now entire world's media is reporting allegations that, in his former role as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Pope was personally involved in a cover up by remaining silent in the case of an American priest who admitted the sexual abuse of 200 boys at a deaf school in Milwaukee. And that as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and Archbishop of Munich, he kept silent over the case of pedophile Father Peter Hullerman who molested many local children. So whatever one's church, perhaps this isn't the best of times to explain to concerned members of one's congregation: "since there are some very personal and sensitive matters, I will reserve the right of silence".

Oh dear! I'm sure all this is just a dreadful administrative error that will soon be resolved by Bishop Bruno - a man whose mission is to "plan and prepare for God's service, work for abundance and care for the community as we would care for Jesus." I'm sure the fact that the Bishop was formerly a tough police officer in the Burbank Police Department who once shot and killed an armed man suspected of drug-dealing and kidnapping will have no bearing on the way he views fraudsters, thieves and political conspirators operating in his mission.

Clowns, Nuts, Sumo Wrestlers And Yolande Beckles Sweep Into Office

2010-03-23T15:07:00.009-04:00

The Greater Echo Park Elysian Neighborhood Action Coalition is extremely proud to leak the results of Saturday's GEPENC elections and announce a clean sweep by its candidates. All 20 of the 20 Action Coalition candidates were elected by the neighborhood - some with majorities that would have made Brezhnev blush. Although President José (Sumo) Sigala scored a mere 61.1% of the poll, his wife (PR consultant and Torres-clan member) Lisa D. Baca-Sigala gained a more impressive 77.7% as Chief Information Officer. Vice President Francisco Torrero registered an outstanding 96.2% of the total ballot and Treasurer Gustavo Moreno was returned with an even more impressive 97.1% of votes cast. Vice President Torrero will be featuring in our next post. It is believed that some of these local public servants were so popular that people flooded in from adjacent neighborhoods, determined to register their support, while some opposition candidates forgot to vote for themselves.

With the lowest of the three Action Coalition slate votes in District 4, but elected nonetheless, was Miss Yolande Beckles. Does being an elected member of a Neighborhood Committee result in one being granted immunity from deportation? Perhaps there is a constitutional lawyer out there who can help us to address this pressing issue.

Echo Park Candidate "Haunted By Her Past"

2010-03-19T13:16:00.003-04:00

As reported here last week, tomorrow is the big day for Yolande Beckles, when the electors pass judgment on her suitability as a candidate for the Greater Echo Park Elysian Neighborhood Council of Los Angeles. The local blogzine The Eastsider LA yesterday published an article about Yolande, showing all the hallmarks of a media outlet with a large team of conservative lawyers and a strong desire not to suffer the penalties associated with breach of local election law. The article refers to "surprise", "misfortune" and "involvement at local schools" and goes on to give Miss Beckles a time-honoured and thoroughly decent right of reply in which she defends her record of selfless volunteering, philanthropy and mistakes, mostly in the public domain.

Well, Beckles Watch does not propose to deal in euphemisms or censored verbiage. Yolande Beckles' mistakes are in the public domain because we - working together with some incredibly courageous victims and a few decent and honest journalists - put her there.

Yolande Beckles has a past riddled with accusations of misrepresentation, fraud, embezzlement, theft, assault and even attempted murder. She has been taken to court for attempting to poison a partner and got off only by hiring expensive barristers whom she never paid. She has taken money from desperately poor, largely ethnic minority, families for overseas trips that never took place. And everywhere she has been she has left victims facing massive debts with no hope of recovering their money.

But, of course, all this is behind her. Having moved to America, Yolande Beckles is now living the life of a saint, with "nothing for me to hide".

According to denial extracts published in The Eastsider, Yolande "...continues to work to repay some debts. Meanwhile, she volunteers at local schools and raises funds for programs to help disadvantaged students and support arts education."

What a load of bulls**t! The only debts Yolande Beckles is struggling to repay are the personal ones that she can't get away with by declaring her businesses insolvent. And as for her transformation on arriving in America, don't believe a word of it. Take this email that I received from a Los Angeles auto dealer last October: "This woman should be on the FBI's most wanted list! She tried to buy a car from our dealership and her paperwork was completely false... it wasn't even her information it belonged to someone else." And, far worse, the testimony of the woman who took Yolande into her house when she first arrived - only to be left with her house and car repossessed, hugely in debt due to fraudulent use of her credit cards, with her necklace stolen and strong evidence to suggest that Yolande had attempted to kill her daughter by poisoning.

Vote for whom you like tomorrow. If you want to be represented by a murderer, swindler, thief and all-round bad guy... vote for Al Capone. Or if he's not available, the next best choice.

Dodgers, Misfits, Clowns, Nuts And Sumo Wrestlers - Welcome To GEPENC

2010-03-10T08:59:00.009-05:00

With the best will in the world, it would be difficult to describe the Greater Echo Park Elysian Neighborhood of Los Angeles as a desirable residential area. Mind you, the neighborhood boasts some major league attractions, not least of which is reigning National League West champions The Los Angeles Dodgers, who migrated here from Brooklyn in the late 1950s. And it's home to the City of Los Angeles' finest young recruits, none of whom should be confused with Carey Mahoney, Eugene Tackleberry, Moses Hightower or Laverne Hooks.

That deals with the dodgers and the misfits. To find the clowns, nuts and sumo wrestlers, we need only turn to the Greater Echo Park Elysian Neighborhood Council, known locally as GEPENC. Last week The Eastsider, a blogzine based in the Echo Park area, published an interesting insight into the forthcoming neighborhood elections. "Who would willingly subject themselves to serve on the neighborhood council for Echo Park?", it enquired rhetorically. "The residents who serve on the unpaid, advisory board have to sit through some unruly - albeit entertaining - meetings, fight off grievances and also rely on one of the most criticized city departments for support."

'Unruly - albeit entertaining - meetings'? I wonder what they could possibly be referring to. Perhaps it was a reference to this report of a 'sumo wrestling match' last June when alternate council member Luiza-Padilla Mavropoulos alleged that she was assaulted in sumo-like fashion by the Council President following a meeting at an Echo Park church: "President Jose Sigala bellied me like a sumo wrestler causing me to lose balance...". According to The Eastsider, Mavropoulos also claimed that Council Treasurer Francisco Torrero called her a 'whore' during a heated argument. "He called me a whore. I'm no ones whore," she wrote in an apostrophe-free complaint filed with the city's Department of Neighborhood Empowerment. The blog goes on to report that, backing Mavropolous in her case against Sigala is council member Augustin Cebada, "a former Sigala ally who attracted attention early this year for his rants against Jews and Whites".

Elections for GEPENC take place on March 20 and, as in previous years, the local 'Action Coalition' is putting up a slate of candidates. The group currently holds 7 of the 21 Council posts, including President Jose (sumo wrestler) Sigala, Vice-President Francisco Torrero, Treasurer Gustavo Moreno and Information Officer Lisa Baca, along with David Rosen, Jorge Prado and Stephen Stickler. "Our coalition of candidates", reads their manifesto, "reflects the diverse, progressive and active spirit Echo Park is known for and proud of. Each one of us cares deeply about our community and has a personal stake in its well-being. We have all contributed in some way to making our community a safe and enjoyable place to live. Together we have organized neighborhood clean ups, removed graffiti and blight from our streets, promoted and preserved our parks/open space, assured the preservation, promotion and designation of historical landmarks in our neighborhoods, funded important children and youth programs in our libraries, schools and recreation centers and opened the new GEPENC Office and Community Center in Echo Park to bring people together."

Not everyone in the local community appears to have been brought together by this message of peace and love, however. "What a JOKE!!!!", wrote one anonymous resident. "Take away the money, and see who the real community volunteers are. All these wanna be power mongers will go away, hopefully to another "hood"." A second contributor observed: "More like the Neighborhood Assclown Coalition... The only benefit of neighborhood councils is that they keep the neighborhood's nuts busy on meeting nights." And a third plaintively declared: "Echo Park was better off without a Neighborhood Council." Oh well, you can't win 'em all!

It may be the home of dodgers, misfits, clowns, nuts and sumo wrestlers, but when it comes to funding, GEPENC is not exactly Fort Knox. Last year's fiscal budget was a mere $133,087 and $83,087 of that was roll-over. The smallest of the five districts in budgetary terms is District 4, where last year's miniscule $9,900 was increased to a paltry $11,000 for the current financial year. So it's not somewhere that would attract a potential fraudster or diverter of funds, unless of course they had greater designs on the $37,000 General Funds budget. And even then it would hardly attract Al Capone. So money is clearly not the motivation for one particular new face in District 4, standing on the Action Coalition slate for GEPENC in 10 days' time:

PS. If any cynic concludes that this weary, uninspiring and gramatically awful presentation must mean that I've made it up as a piece of mischief, just click on the candidate statement above to visit the LA City Clerk's Office public filing.

On The Money - Yo'Nicked

2010-03-08T09:39:00.000-05:00

Here's Yo...

2010-03-05T09:54:00.005-05:00

The 82nd Annual Academy Awards - March 7th 2010

Best Actress in a Leading Role, for her performances in "Parent Center, Rosewood Avenue Elementary" and "Title I Funding, Hollywood Senior High"...

Yolande Beckles Moves Base From Rosewood Avenue To Hollywood High

2010-03-02T20:11:00.002-05:00

Those familiar with the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (20 U.S.C. 6301 et seq.) will know that it is a US Federal Statute and part of the progressive "Great Society" program of the 36th President of the United States, Lyndon Baines Johnson. "Title I" of the Act is a set of programs set up by the United States Department of Education to distribute funding to schools and school districts which typically have 40% or more of its students coming from low-income families. Schools receiving "Title I" funding are regulated by federal legislation, including the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. Details of the Act, including its associated federal funding appropriations, can be found here. I guess quite a lot of Title I funding has found its way to Hollywood Senior High School, judging by the logo "Home Of The Sheiks". Hollywood High even has its own Title I office, supervising the way in which those funds are managed and distributed.

A Title I office is hardly the sort of place you would expect to find a misappropriator of funds. Especially one who had only recently been thrown out of another Hollywood school as "a disruptive influence" and who had been the subject of a two-page exposé in a national Sunday newspaper alledging serial fraud and theft. So perhaps someone would like to call the Title I number on the school website and ask Miss Yolande Beckles just exactly what she's doing there.

Good Thai Girl And Her Toys

2010-02-28T10:15:00.001-05:00

No - I didn't get so bored that I deliberately went porn surfing. Admittedly it has been quiet this week, waiting for an arrest, a deportation or perhaps a brand new fund-raising adventure in a far-off town. But I was conducting genuine internet research into Ms Beckles when, searching for references to her defunct "Think Global Kids" website, I found "The World's Most Unique Thailand dating website", Goodthaigirl.com. And there was an advert for Yolande's TGK promo video:

It took me a while to spot the connection. It is, of course, Ideal Toys and their donation of maths puzzles and learning games to Think Global Kids. Only a pervert or the Google search engine would link Ideal Toys to Good Thai Girl. It was, of course, the Google search engine.

More Fun With Chantal

2010-02-23T16:51:00.004-05:00

It's been very quiet and boring lately, with Yolande having fled her apartment on North Poinsettia Place and the Think Global Kids website being closed down. No ranting emails and blog comments. No new support groups springing up. Even the County of Los Angeles Office, who spent a lot of time here last Thursday, seem to have retreated into a soporific state. So I thought we could have some more fun with Chantal Boccaccio. Not just because she directed the Think Global Kids promotion video. Not even because she's a director of Think Global Kids...

No - the reason Chantal Boccaccio came to my attention again this week was that it was to her little apartment that Yolande fled recently to escape the clutches of the law (allegedly).

And, of course, because Chantal Boccaccio is a whole bundle of fun. Take the photo opposite, for instance, in which she celebrates the joys of being the former Governor of Alaska and Republican candidate for the Vice Presidency. Just the sort of thing that would encourage you to take an active interest in state and national politics. Especially if you were a spotty 14-year-old boy with a PC in your bedroom. Or indeed, given Chantal's orientation response on myspace, a spotty 14-year-old girl.

Chantal Boccaccio's resumé shows the impressive breadth of her repertoire. As well as being a Naughty Schoolgirl and a Girl of 1000 Faces, Ms Boccaccio has advertised Barcardi Mojito to help get the party going, Nivea cream to disguise those nasty teenage facial zits and Dyson vacuum cleaners to help clean up the mess afterwards. Wow, what a gal!

Chantal believes in having fun. "Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body", she states on her YouTube profile, "but rather to skid in sideways - body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming, "WOO HOO, What a Ride!" Just the sort of message we need to get the nation's kids off their lazy butts and up doing something exciting and creative - such as playing an active role in Think Global Kids.

Having advertised such sexy products as Casabella Lingerie (not to be confused with Cosabella Lingerie), Sure Deodorant, Speedo Swimwear and Clairol Hairspray, along with such zit-inducing offerings as Wendy's Hamburgers, McDonalds, Heineken and Pringles Potato Chips, Chantal has turned to more challenging roles. In the photo left she promotes "bed head", whatever that might be, and on the right we see her in the role of "sperm nurse", whatever one of those is.

In fairness, we all do silly things when we're young and no-one would criticise a budding actress and filmmaker for the odd professional indiscretion in the dim and distant past. Which is why Chantal's latest venture is so important. She's working with Dr. Steven Greer to make a TV show called The Disclosure Project (Because The Destiny of the Human Race Hangs in the Balance).

The Disclosure Project is a nonprofit research project working to fully disclose the facts about UFOs, extraterrestrial intelligence, and classified advanced energy and propulsion systems. Dr. Greer has amassed over 400 government, military, and intelligence community witnesses who have testified about their direct, personal, first hand experience with UFOs, ETs, ET technology, and the cover-up that keeps this information secret. Greer has personally briefed some of America's top Government insiders and is considered by the US Intelligence Community to be the foremost authority on Extraterrestrial Intelligence. ET phone home. Woo Hoo, what a ride in your spaceship!

This is more like it. Just the sort of thing to promote in Think Global Kids... or perhaps it should be renamed Think Intergalactic Kids. Just think of the possibilities. It could be advertised as promoting equal opportunities for little white people, little black people and little green people.

Is the state school system letting your children down? Can your kids not read and write? Do their teachers offer them limited horizons of ambition? Bring them to Think Intergalactic Kids. We'll teach them to speak Cardassian and to count like a Vulcan. And our horizons are boundless.

The Rosewood Story

2010-02-19T12:30:00.002-05:00

It takes extraordinary courage to stand up and whistle-blow against someone powerful and dangerous, when that act could potentially result in great personal cost. But at least one parent at Rosewood Avenue Elementary School did exactly that. Putting aside any risk to their children and themself, this particular parent wrote a letter to the LA Unified School District demanding that Yolande Beckles be immediately barred from the campus. And the parent brought that whistle-blowing into sharp focus by writing to tell me: "I think she [Yolande Beckles] is crazy". It wasn't a give-away line in the heat of the moment - I asked. This person really meant C*R*A*Z*Y.

Although Beckles Watch has a copy of the LAUSD letter, we can't publish it in full as that would compromise the identity of the author, who is scared of possible retribution. But let me just give you a flavour of what this parent told the education authorities, with an edited extract:

"As time went on, my encounters with her [Yolande Beckles] became more and more disturbing as her behavior towards me became increasingly more aggressive and alarming... If I did not do exactly as she asked, she would lecture and yell at me... Her brutish behavior has alienated parents and teachers. I not only think she has done nothing for the school in any positive or concrete manor but that she is a detriment to school morale and possibly a real danger to parents, teachers and our children. I fear retaliation by her were she to discover I am one of her detractors and if she is allowed to return to Rosewood in any capacity [we would] be forced to place our [children] in another school."

Of course, this is only one person's testimony and that person could be mentally unstable or bear some personal grudge leading to false accusations. All I can say is read the above and come to your own conclusion as to who is telling the truth... and who is very, very dangerous.

The Screenwriter's Tale

2010-02-16T10:50:00.012-05:00

Several people have pointed out, quite correctly, that this blog has been replete with hearsay and reportage and relatively bereft of original contributions and personal testimony. As was stated clearly from the outset, my mission was to bring together the information already in the public domain. Today all that changes. I am delighted to report the most original and personal contribution since this blog began. Dear readers, let me introduce you to Andy Conway.

Six hundred and fifty seven years ago, an Italian humanist's tales of people fleeing Florence to escape the Bubonic Plague inspired one of the greatest story-tellers of the Middle Ages to pen his own set of allegorical tales. Just as the poetic words of Giovanni Boccaccio inspired Geoffrey Chaucer in those dark days, so the sensuous tones of Chantal Boccaccio have inspired scriptwriter Andy Conway more than half a millennium later, with the C14th threat of Black Death now replaced by a very different public nuisance. Step aside, Giotto, Buffalmacco and Saladin. Close The Decameron and open up The Canterbury Tales. It's time for The Screenwriter's Tale!

Based in Birmingham (that's Birmingham England, not Alabama), Andy Conway is an up-and-coming British screenwriter with a feature film and two TV drama series currently in development. He is also a fiction writer, magazine contributor and university lecturer in scriptwriting and creative writing. But it's not his creative skills to which I seek to draw your attention. It's his first-hand testimony about Yolande Beckles. As Andy says: "I'm actually the man who closed down her former company, Global Graduates. Spare the applause and prepare yourself for a tale of femme fatale treachery and double crossing that would make Raymond Chandler moist."

What follows is jaw-dropping. To read Andy's story of Yolande and the city of Birmingham, "where you'll find most of the skeletons in Miss Beckles' closet", click on the picture of his website above. You'll be transported to a surreal world that even the most creative writer couldn't invent. Enjoy.

Yolande Beckles - The Saint Valentine's Day Massacre

2010-02-14T02:03:00.007-05:00

From the Los Angeles correspondent of Britain's Independent on Sunday newspaper.
Dateline: 14th February 2010.

Read it by clicking on "Read more..." below, or read it at the IoS website by clicking here.

Read more...

To Hell With Teachers - Let's Make Education Sexier

2010-02-12T19:39:00.004-05:00

Looking back now, I can see that I didn't do full justice to the multi-talented Chantal Boccaccio when I featured her on this blog six weeks ago. It was all too easy for me to dismiss the producer/director of Yolande Beckles' Think Global Kids promotion video as a bit-part actress, soft pornographer, quirky video maker and pioneer of sex with skateboards. But play the demo clip above and just listen to that voice. After all, "At Think Global Kids we do not rely on what teachers say about our children" as it states in the TGK Vision Statement. "Our intention is to create a learning environment that is demonstrably different from that associated with school", as it says elsewhere on the website.

Now I can see what Yolande meant by these statements. After all, I don't remember my teachers sounding like that. So let's get all the boring teachers with monotonic voices out of the schools along with the neurotic ones with the squeaky tones and replace them all with teachers who sound like Chantal. In fact, why don't we go that extra step, get rid of the over-weight tutors and replace them with ones who look like Chantal. We could even save money by teaching kids self-assertion and communication skills at the same time as zoology lessons, using attractive, naked tutors equipped with armadillos. Now that would definitely outperform my expectations!

Oh Lordie, Lordie...

2010-02-09T18:01:00.004-05:00

I've seen some happy-clappy prosthelytizing in my time, but nothing quite like some of the recent comments on this blog. Even as an English tutor, I'd have difficulty criticising this comment, as it comprises 469 words (2,662 characters) without a breath in the middle. More importantly, it rambles on about some alleged business fraud that Yolande is definitely not responsible for... which doesn't surprise me in the slightest as it is something about which I know absolutely zilch.

Let's get back to reality. First off, read "About Me" in the sidebar. I'm not a parent at Rosewood with some strange - or worse still, racist - grudge against Yolande Beckles. I'm simply the friend of someone in London from whom she embezzled a large sum of money.

Now read the rest of this blog, post by post. It will tell you the details of all the businesses this woman has run that have collapsed, leaving creditors in massive debt. Type "Yolande Beckles" into Google and see the stories for yourself. After all, that's all I've done. As I keep explaining, "I read more about Miss Beckles in the media, on blogs and elsewhere on the web and I thought I'd bring all the information together in one place." Read this article, and this one and this one and this one and this one and this one and this one and this one and these and this one and this one and... it goes on and on. Also read the first-hand evidence from at least three people who claim that Yolande Beckles attempted to grievously assault or murder them.

For those able to read English, my motives are spelt out clearly on this blog, as is the fact that everything here is sourced from articles on the internet and submissions from first-hand witnesses. After that, you are free to make up your own minds. And to sing and clap if you want.

Imagine Proper English Like Wot Yolande Beckles Rite's, Init!

2010-02-05T16:52:00.004-05:00

"Imagine a world where every child has fulfilled their dream. Adults who understand their purpose, goals and ambitions and wish to build a better society for all its citizens. At Think Global Kids we feel that this is our purpose to facilitate and support those families who wish to help their children dream big! This is no mean feat and we understand that we have to convince all the stakeholders to play their role in our 21st Century education vision. Our work involves being hands-on in the public education school system, working and influencing policy makers in education to see the future that expects excellence and brilliance from all its members, parents who drop their children off at the gate and wonder why their child never made it to college, children who looked to adults and the experts for help, guidance and support and still didn't graduate. We say this no longer can continue. The rest of the world is passing us by, becoming more skilled and leading in areas of science and math's where we once led. America it's time to wake up and truly invest in the future of education for ALL."

Yolande Beckles, Think Global Kids website Mission Statement.

Now imagine a world in which correct English is taught and understood. A world in which each of the above eight sentences was grammatically correct and unambiguous, employed appropriate punctuation and capitalisation and demonstrated sound knowledge of plural nouns, multi-clausal construction, slang expressions and the apostrophe and its proper usage. A world in which crooks were unable to exploit parents, take their money and leave their children with a lower probability of achieving a college education than they had previously.

You can help to create such a world in Los Angeles. All you have to do is report Yolande Beckles and her Think Global Kids organisation as an educational fraud, campaign for the termination of her employment within the US education sector and demand that she be deported from the United States and returned to face justice in the British courts. Whatever.

Yolande Beckles - A Husky Voice At Rosewood Elementary

2010-02-03T02:30:00.002-05:00

When the DNASat personal tracking systems first generated a mapping circle for Yolande Beckles I clicked on 'Yes' and the satellite homed in on her apartment. What I missed was a second circle to the southwest, indicating traces of her presence around Beverly Boulevard in West Hollywood. I've just had the computer process this new data and... it's come up with what looks like Yolande's place of work. So, somewhere else for lawyers to visit, armed with writs.

Welcome To Chez Beckles

2010-01-31T11:24:00.002-05:00

According to the final mapping data from DNASat, you are now looking at the Hollywood home of Yolande Beckles, international serial swindler extraordinaire. Not the most exclusive location in Los Angeles, but hardly an urban slum either. If you'd like to speak to Yolande about money she borrowed from you but didn't return, services you provided that she omitted to pay for or money you gave her for services that failed to materialise, you and/or your lawyers can contact her at:

Yolande Beckles
Apartment 228
Poinsettia Apartments
1530 North Poinsettia Place
Los Angeles
CA 90046
Tel: +1 213 909 4255

Have a nice day, y'all.

She's Right, You Know...

2010-01-29T18:48:00.004-05:00

Support is pouring in for Yolande Beckles and her Think Global Kids video promotion. On launch day, no fewer than three different people commented positively on YouTube. "My Daughter did Yolande's program this summer. She had so much fun, she didn't even realize she was learning! I'm amazed at the change I see in her - she's so confidant and has retained so much of what she learned. She was totally more prepared to go back to school." said person A.

Commenter B was equally supportive of Yolande's efforts, to the extent of using almost identical words and the same unusual capitalisation: "My Daughter did Yolande's program this summer. She had so much fun, she didn't even realize she was learning! I'm amazed at the change I see in her - she's so confidant and has retained so much of what she learned. She was totally more prepared to go back to school. And commenter C praised the same wonderful results of Yo's special techniques: "I spent a fortune on my daughter's education and she still couldn't read. Yolande taught my daughter how to read in SIX WEEKS! Thanks Yolande! You're an angel!"

On behalf of those of us who have genuinely learnt a few things and retained some scraps from our schooling, the repeated use of spelling error "confidant" tells a tale. Yes - it's Yolande's confidant - the confidently illiterate Chantal Boccaccio, aka. LASO63, Girlof1000Faces and HeliGirl - director of NaughtySchoolGirls and No Fly Zone Pictures and producer/director of Yolande's latest scam organisation video. The fourth comment comes as a breath of fresh air. "Bu**sh*t", they wrote. "For the truth about this woman, search her out on the web and read about the trail of misery she's left behind her wherever she's popped her head up." Oh yes. That must be me.

Getting Closer

2010-01-27T18:27:00.002-05:00

The satellite data is now showing North Poinsettia Place and an apartment block that appears to house a large pool with plenty of recliners. A great place to relax while waiting for a writ to be served. And the phone number is coming up as 213 909 425x. I reckon by Saturday...

Yolande Beckles Think Global Kids Video Is Launched

2010-01-25T17:14:00.002-05:00

As previously announced on this blog, the Yolande Beckles Think Global Kids documentary was launched earlier today. Watch it and marvel at how such a small group of inter-related people can appear to be an independent cast of dozens. Yolande Beckles, her video producer, her daughter, her son... I'll leave you to work out who everyone else is. And be impressed by how spacious an $1,830-a-month two-bed apartment can be made to look by a talented film director.

Once you've enjoyed watching the 10-minute Think Global Kids video, why not contribute to the Yolande Beckles "Help Send My Daughter To Harvard" campaign? In a few days' time I'll give you the address to which to send donations. You can be one of hundreds of lucky donors helping to make the life of one woman and her family so much better, at only a modest expense to yourself. Extra donations may even be able to fund their ultimate dream of travelling into outer space.

Narrowing Down The Search

2010-01-23T06:02:00.001-05:00

Here's the latest map data from DNAStat. Just as they promised, the data is now presented in photographic format and I'm really impressed with the clarity achieved by the satellite lenses. Yolande's phone number is now showing as 213 909 42xx.

Latest Data From DNASat

2010-01-21T13:41:00.002-05:00

The latest map data from DNASat has just arrived in my email box. Here's the new map showing the location of Yolande Beckles. The phone number is now showing as 213 909 4xxx.

Even Better - DNASat Generating Yolande's Phone Number

2010-01-20T05:43:00.002-05:00

When I subscribed to DNASat, I thought all I'd get was an address. But it turns out that the system is even more clever than I'd realised. If your subject has a landline phone, the system is able to identify the area code, the local code and eventually the full number by analysing all the data for the geographical area selected, parsing its data through a reverse number database and identifying the most likely number group for the subject. What does all this mean? Well, so far it's turned up with 213 909, which I guess isn't too exciting as it covers most of LA. But over the next week or so, I expect more digits to be identified. Wow! I'm excited.

DNASat Homing In On Yolande

2010-01-19T20:07:00.002-05:00

Thanks to a miracle of technology, I can at last report that I'm homing in on the whereabouts of Yolande Beckles. A previous attempt that located her somewhere around Mulholland Drive probably owed more to my informant's passion for David Lynch than to their passion for good detective work. But I've now subscribed to DNASat - and it's already come up with something.

For those unfamiliar with the DNASat commercial tracking service, their computer systems analyse masses of data from the company's satellites, looking for minute traces of DNA evaporating into the atmosphere as people perspire. Over a period of time, the computers recognise the same DNA pattern focused in a given area and by comparing multiple results they can eventually track down an individual's home. All I had to do was provide a sample, which a previous contact of Yolande was kind enough to supply me with. And would you believe it? Bingo! DNASat has already produced its first map, showing the rough area in which Yolande is based. Not too far away from the earlier map that someone emailed me, but a bit to the south-east. Here it is:

Hopefully, over the next few days the satellites will pick up more signals and be able to refine the area gradually until they have identified Yolande's house. If I understand the service correctly, it switches from topographical format to aerial format as it narrows down the search. So in a week or so I should be able to publish a satellite photo of the Beckles residence.

Catch Me If You Can (Redux)

2010-01-17T05:57:00.003-05:00

It's Bromley in Kent in the 1960s. School leaver Yolande Abagnale Jr. idolises her mother, who's in trouble with Inland Revenue. Yolande takes up a fast-track management post at Sainsbury's, vowing to set the family on a more sound financial footing. Eventually she is forced to leave after being accused of financial misdeeds. She sets up a dance company and an education & training company, but both fail leaving massive debts. Despite this, Yolande is able to purchase a detached house in Chislehurst and drive a top-of-the-range Mercedes. She moves in with the CEO of a marketing & communications firm, but is evicted after more financial misconduct.

Yolande ends up living rent-free in a refuge hostel in Streatham, after masquerading as the victim of domestic violence at the hands of her partner in Tulse Hill. It's her first successful acting role, earning her the nickname 'Bashy' and leading on to several further acts of violence and subterfuge. Yolande relocates to Northamptonshire where she is alleged to have assaulted her new partner by stabbing him with the point of a winklepicker shoe, leaving him with a severe head injury. Fearing arrest, she flees back to London where she finds a new partner, but several years later she faces charges of his assault and attempted poisoning. A trial is arranged at Bromley Crown Court, but during a break in proceedings, Yolande manages to stand on the shoulder of her barrister and escape through a lavatory window, leaving the barrister behind with egg on his face and substantial unpaid bills.

Yolande runs away to Hackney with just £25 in the bank, but following an interview on GMTV she is talent-spotted by Riete Oordinary, a film producer who offers her a TV series on BBC2. "Sometimes people say her behaviour is inappropriate, but that's just her Caribbean background", explains Oordinary, wiping the lipstick from his face. "She likes to hug and kiss people."

Abagnale is able to make a comfortable living by obtaining money from various individuals including the sad and pathetic Woody Alan, who hands over thousands of pounds in Hackney council taxes to the fraudster. Despite generous donations from Alan and numerous local parents, Yolande's lavish life-style soon results in her company Global Grabbers facing collapse. She closes her company centre in the West Midlands, leaving behind a trail of creditors including the presenter of the BBC's 'Gospel Show'.

With help from her mother, Yolande is able to establish an offshore banking corporation called Global Grabbers Education (Offshore) Ltd., siphoning funds from the collapsed business and leaving a bunch of angry creditors penniless. After defrauding several more individuals in Hackney, she organises "one-in-a-lifetime" holidays to the Caribbean for the children of poor families. Seizing thousands in booking fees, she flies off to visit The Reverend Moon in Korea.

Things are looking good for Yolande until she is exposed as a fraudster in the London newspapers, whereupon the creditors start closing in. Determined to escape the angry mob and at the same time to revive her flagging acting career, she has her head shaved, dons a Ben Sherman shirt, gathers up her children and heads off to Hollywood. Nobody is quite sure where the fraudster is hiding, or where she might pop up next...

Open Your Wallets - The Campaign Is Coming

2010-01-14T18:41:00.003-05:00

She is smart, she is bright, she is brilliant... and as soon as she's figured out what she's about and discovered her vision, she'll let us know. Yo's welcome. Oh yeah? Watch this space.

Follow Your Dreams, No Matter How Many People You Have To Take Out On The Way Down

2010-01-06T18:38:00.004-05:00

A more appropriate epitaph for Yolande Beckles you'd be hard-pressed to find. After all, she took out a lot of people (in both literal and metaphorical senses) on her way up - and carried on taking them out during the long slide downwards after the collapse of her empire.

It's clearly not a mantra you'd offer to children, though. There's no way you'd want to associate kids with this sort of egomaniacal and merciless view of life, even if it was tongue-in-cheek. Any more than you'd associate them with people who advertise themselves as having "killed their actress, kidnapped a kid and set fire to iFilm.com", or have their development activities promoted by the "sexy, deep, soft, seductive, flirty, girl-next-door" who "does a great Wicked Witch" and who lists Dirty Harry, Taxi Driver, Cape Fear, In Cold Blood, Night of the Hunter, Who's Afraid Of Virginia Wolf, Carnival of Souls, The Brain That Wouldn't Die, Diva and Betty Blue amongst her favourite movies. And if you were concerned for the safety and welfare of children, you might chose to stay well away from the nightmare Perfect Choice Internet Dating Service.

And I'm sure you wouldn't consider marketing youth development services using someone whose related videos on Funny Or Die include one about Adolf Hitler getting upset on hearing of Sarah Palin's resignation and another in which the former Alaskan Governor "struts that ass". Someone who describes one of their own videos as "a total piece of crap, but a piece of crap with a message: Don't be afraid to whore out your hampster for YouTube hits! If you're six, you'll love it!" and who once performed what might be perceived by many to be a simulated orgasm with the mechanical aid of a 32" piece of varnished plywood in a skateboard advertisement (see left).

Or would you..?

It's time for me to introduce y'all to Chantal Boccaccio.

Before I go any further, let me make clear that the 29-yr-old who penned the satirical title of this blog post is a comedienne, or at least that's her self-description. She's not pro-violence, a supporter of child kidnapping or other abuse and nor is she a pornography model. To suggest any of these would not only be false but almost certainly libellous. But Chantal Boccaccio has produced and published material which employs all of these themes within a comedic context. And you must decide whether that makes her a fit and proper person to be engaged in the promotion of children's services.

So, why would I have the remotest interest in this oddball independent short film director, script-writer, bit-part advert actress and voice-over queen? What has the self-styled "Girl Of A Thousand Faces" (Funny Or Die), "Guerilla Filmmaker" (No Fly Zone Pictures), "Naughty Schoolgirl" (YouTube) and "Swinger" (MySpace) got to do with Yolande Beckles?

Well, for a start, she likes writing messages in support of our international fraudster. "This summer", she wrote, "I worked with Yolande Beckles and saw for myself how amazing she is at teaching children. Amazing is too soft a word. These are underprivileged children who'd have been completely forgotten by our deplorable school system, were it not for Yolande. From 6 to sixteen, what these children experienced, learned and retained was nothing short of remarkable. US parents consider Yolande a godsend, and have showered her with letters of gratitude."

More recently she sent me the following message of support for the funds diverter: "Yolande Beckles is a tireless champion of American Education. If you're unconvinced, I'll be happy to send you my documentary, as well as hundreds of letters from the grateful American parents who call Yolande an angel. You've never seen anything as heartwarming and hopeful as Yolande's children, who would have been forgotten were it not for her heroic efforts."

If you're so deeply cynical that you've already started to head down one particular wrong path, let me assure you that (as far as I know) Chantal and Yolande aren't having a lesbian relationship. No, it's far more sordid than that. It's a commercial partnership. The Yolande Beckles Think Global Kids documentary is about to be launched... and here's the promo:

"One British woman is fighting for the future of America's children", reads the risible tagline. I guess we all know who that British wonder woman is, even without her daughter Diandra appearing 51 seconds into the video. "Yolande Beckles came to America from the UK so her daughter could go to Harvard and fulfill her dream of becoming an astronaut. While here, she realized our school system was in deplorable condition, and vowed to do something about it. Now she's fighting for the future of our children. Parents are thrilled with Yolande's program. In the words of one mother: "I spent a fortune on my daughter's education, and she still couldn't read. Yolande taught my daughter how to read in six weeks!" Thanks to Yolande and Think Global Kids, one hundred more American children have a chance at graduating." Chantal Boccaccio's children's violins are tugging at my heart-strings. Even more than her pert breasts are tugging at my G-strings.

There's another organisation that may be more than a little bit interested in the launch of Think Global Kids in Los Angeles. I mentioned Global Kids way back in my first blog post, as a group that could just consider Yolande's latest venture as involving the tort of passing off. Quite apart from the name and objectives, take a look at the NYC-based organisation's main registered trademark image and now take a look at this frame from the TGK promo video. If, like me, you are busting yourself waiting for the full launch of Think Global Kids... keep watching this space.

Yolande Beckles Gets Her Head Down

2009-12-17T14:40:00.002-05:00

No - it's not another Alan Woods exposé, although from time to time I do hear interesting stories about Yolande and "white men of a certain age" in positions of power. No, this is the story of good, sound PR advice. "Get yer 'ead down, girl", as Max Clifford might have advised. And so she has. After weeks of ranting and raving via comments on this blog, Yolande has decided that the best bet is to ignore it. She still pops on every few days to give it a look over, but the underlying principle is "leave it alone and hope it will go away".

And so it would, if I didn't know anything about website promotion. But fortunately I do. So whatever has been published here is still very visible on the internet and will continue to be so. Take some examples. Try pumping the following phrases from some of the earliest Beckles Watch posts into Google:

"the amazing Miss Yolande Beckles", from The Story So Far...
"the chap in the gold suit at the back", from Welcome To Hollywood.
"gullible suckers with open wallets", from I'd Like To Thank.
"a dance teacher, an educational trainer", from Catch Me If You Can.

Yes - they all show up top of the Google search results. And that's the way it will continue. Just as this blog will home in immediately on any new internet presence by the woman who made it to Hollywood on other peoples' money. So, if your American version of Max told you that if you kept schtum it would all blow over, I'm afraid he's taken your money under false pretences. Mind you, what am I saying? You won't have paid the invoice, will you?

Oh Daddy - This Wasn't Part Of Your Vision When You Emigrated, Was It?

2009-12-13T17:13:00.002-05:00

Immigration from the Caribbean islands to the UK was encouraged by the British Nationality Act of 1948, which gave all Commonwealth citizens free entry to Britain. That year an advertisement had appeared in a Jamaican newspaper offering cheap transport for anybody who wanted to come and work in the UK. There was plenty of work in post-war Britain for everyone and industries such as British Rail, the National Health Service and public transport recruited almost exclusively from Jamaica and Barbados. African Caribbeans were encouraged to come to Britain through immigration campaigns mounted by successive British governments.

The symbolic starting point of migration to the 'mother country' was the journey of the SS Empire Windrush from Kingston, Jamaica, to Tilbury, Essex, in June 1948. Mass migration continued until 1962, when Britain passed the Commonwealth Immigrants Act restricting the entry of immigrants. The Antilles arrived in Plymouth in August 1960, not long before that period of mass migration was brought to an end. It brought a cargo of human beings who wanted just one thing - an opportunity to lead decent and law-abiding lives, to work hard and to earn an honest living.

Little did some of them imagine how their offspring would turn out.

Sporty Spice

2009-12-02T19:24:00.003-05:00

Having been castigated by at least one self-righteous US citizen for employing a telescopic sight logo (a strange accusation, coming from a land where people "defend the right to bear arms and the right to arm bears"), I'm sure as hell not going to dig a very large hole for myself by writing anything accusatory about the offspring of Miss Beckles. As far as I'm aware, neither sprog has committed any criminal offence, or for that matter any civil offence. And even if they had done so, they would deserve the right to the anonymity afforded to minors.

But there comes a point where no self-respecting chronicler can keep the lid on his or her inkpot. Especially when reports abound on the internet of a classic case of "like mother, like daughter". Yolande, you'll remember, made a habit of running very quickly when accused of misdoings. Past lovers have accused her of aiming dangerous objects at them and several commercial ventures have ended in organisations rolling or flopping. So what a delightful surprise to discover that Yolande's daughter has been excelling at sprint, shot put and high jump events, representing Hollywood Senior High School. You simply couldn't make this stuff up.

Gosh - There's A Few Of Them In West Hollywood

2009-11-23T18:05:00.006-05:00

When in the UK as CEO of Global Graduates, Yolande Beckles sometimes called herself Yolanda Beckles. Well, the precise format of one's name is a matter of personal freedom, whether a deliberate act or due to spelling difficulties. I've not been looking for any Yolanda Beckles up to now, but a brief search turns one up just a few blocks south east of the residential Area of Nichols, Runyon and Wattles where Yolande supposedly is resident.

She appears to be Vice President of the PTA at Bancroft Middle School, located at 929 N. Las Palmas Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90038. Nothing notable about that. But she is also proudly declared in the January PTA Newsletter to be Chairperson of Fundraising. Oh no! Say it ain't so!

Homing In

2009-11-22T04:39:00.002-05:00

The Multiple Funding Trick

2009-11-20T18:01:00.004-05:00

One of the really smart ways to make money is to appeal for funding for an event or a specific expense. And then to appeal elsewhere for the same funding. And, with a bit of luck, to convince the service supplier to waive their fees altogether - leaving you with the entire fundraising pot.

Let's go back to the summer, when Yolande Beckles launched her aptly-named Think Global Kids Summer Enrichment Program. Still don't get it? You're misreading the title - the adjective "enrichment" doesn't apply to the noun "kids", it applies to her organisation "Think Global Kids". Aaah! Now you're beginning to get the picture.

The Enrichment Program was advertised (free of charge, of course) for the sum of $120 per student (with a discount for the low-waged and unemployed). The advertising catch-phrase for the event - Think Global, Act Local - was happily purloined without risk of challenge under intellectual property law, as at least eight individuals lay claim to origination of the phrase.

The press release was interesting inasmuch as it displayed what I referred to in an earlier post as "the tell-tale malapropisms and dyslexic markers normally associated with Miss Beckles". Click on the copy to enlarge and spot children being nutured (neutered?) rather than nurtured through a continuos [sic] learning development program becuase [sic] parents are determined to see their children succeed. Yup - that's Yolande, OK.

Of course it would be improper of me to criticise Yolande Beckles merely for her obvious difficulties with grammar and spelling. But I shudder to think how a group of white people would be received if their idea of empowering, motivating, inspiring and facilitating the brilliance of black children included teaching them the skills of sports and rapping.

All of this aside, the issue here is finance. Luckily, Hollywood Hills West Neighborhood Committee was able to fund the rental of the Community Room at the Will and Ariel Durant Library for five days in the sum of $1,250, despite rejecting an earlier appeal for $4,500 through the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment due to earlier payments to the same library and financial discrepancies that showed up in audit. So that's the library fees paid by the local council and the parents. What I'd like to find out is whether those fees were eventually charged and paid and, indeed, whether anyone else contributed to the costs of this summer event.

Yolande Beckles In Birmingham

2009-11-12T04:04:00.010-05:00

No - don't get over-excited. Yolande hasn't fled Los Angeles to surface at the Jefferson County spiritual home of the African American civil rights movement. Sorry to disappoint you, but this Birmingham is the spiritual home of the English Industrial Revolution and Yolande is long gone. But what I didn't know until today was the extent to which the Beckles tsunami had left a trail of unpaid bills behind it in England's second city, the nasal capital of the West Midlands.

Until, that is, I read the latest update of The Stirrer - a Midlands-focused politics and consumer rights webzine edited by Adrian Goldberg, columnist on the Birmingham Mail newspaper. Adrian is a former BBC 'Breakfast Show' and 'Politics Show' presenter, reporter on the BBC consumer show 'Watchdog' and current presenter of 'talkSPORT'.

More importantly, it was Adrian Goldberg who first exposed the misdoings of Yolande Beckles in a series of Birmingham Mail articles several years ago, leading eventually to her outing in a string of national and weekly newspapers and to the extensive coverage of her fraudulent activities by Robert Mendick in the London Evening Standard in 2007.

According to The Stirrer, Yolande established a second centre for Global Graduates in Birmingham around the year 2000, but when the company went bust in 2002 she pulled out leaving behind a trail of debts. Creditors included former teacher and BBC West Midlands' 'Gospel Show' presenter Nikki Tapper and scriptwriter Andy Conway.

From the tone of today's report in The Stirrer, it sounds as if there's a lot more than just a couple of creditors in Birmingham. Maybe others would now care to step forward and reveal more of the damage left behind in the West Midlands.

Pragmatic Ideology

2009-11-10T15:14:00.003-05:00

One might be forgiven for assuming that, while working actively with black youth to help them develop their self-esteem, confidence and aspirational horizons, Yolande Beckles would have a fairly liberal attitude to issues around racial integration and co-operation. She is, after all, the mother of two mixed-race children. So I was more than a little nonplussed to read a noticeboard comment from one of her former protegées.

Now it must be stated from the outset that this anonymous contributor is, by his own admission, only seventeen years of age, an ex-Pentecostalist and now an angrily homophobic member of the Reformed Baptist Church. So perhaps not the best qualified person to impartially judge the finer points of someone else's belief system. But he does appear to genuinely believe that he was subjected by Yolande and her now-defunct Global Graduates Black Leadership Programme team to attempted indoctrination into the theology of James Hal Cone.

"I went into a program called the Black Leadership Programme, run by a lady called Yolande Beckles. This woman was (and presumable still is...) steeped in this theology [the Black Liberation theology of James Hal Cone], of course I didn't know it then. All she could talk about was the freedom of the Black Nation, and I was sat there, thinking, "What is she on?""

For those unfamiliar with the ideas of James Hal Cone, take a look at this recent interview by Bob Scott of Trinity Institute, the on-line education arm of the United New Testament Church. You might be a little unnerved, especially if you are the parent of one of the children who took part in the Black Leadership Programme.

Even more so, perhaps, to discover that your child is one of several named in this film production document available on-line, the youngest of whom is only 13 years old.

Personally, I'm more than a little confused. Yolande Beckles has always told interviewers that she was a member of the New Testament Church, although apparently since moving to Los Angeles she has involved herself with Michael Beckwith's sect, the Agape International Spiritual Center. Now I'm no theologian, but Agape is about as far from the New Testament Church in its beliefs as Martin Luther King was from Malcolm X. I'll leave you to decide whether any of these organisations would welcome James Hal Cone as a member. And to wonder just what lies at the root of Ms. Beckles' very pragmatic shifts in ideology.

Black Parents and Their Children's Education

2009-11-08T19:06:00.004-05:00

An interesting paper. Anyone out there recognise all or part of it as having been written by them, but never knowingly published on the internet? With or without the capital "B" for Black.

Make education number one on your agenda

For all parents the education of their children is very important. However, because of pressures at work and elsewhere in their lives, Black parents often feel isolated when it comes to approaching schools for support for their children. We therefore urge parents to seek help and advice where necessary from local community organisations, other parents at your child's school, friends and relatives.

2.	Make yourself known at your child's school
	When parents need to find out how their child is progressing, they should contact their child's tutor to discuss this. Where possible visit the school to speak to teachers about your child's progress. It is important that you do not feel that you only visit the school when a problem arises with your child. You should also attend parents evenings and other events to discuss your child's development.
3.	Question critically the way you parent your child
	Parenting is the only job we have for life, but it is also a job that changes throughout life and is different under different circumstances. As Black parents, we have to remember that if we have been parented in a culture which is different from the one in which we are bringing up our own children, then there are likely to be additional stresses.
4.	If you are a single parent, ask a friend to be a role model or mentor to your child
	As a parent you are your child's main role model. If there is an absent partner it is worth seriously considering having a mentor for your child who could assist in helping them to develop a strong and confident self-image.
5.	Link up with a parent support group within your child's school
	Many Black parents within schools are beginning to meet together within a supportive environment to discuss their needs and the needs of their children. However, these groups cannot begin if parents do not make the decision to start them up themselves. Talk to other Black parents whose children attend your child's school to explore whether they would like to sety up such a group. You can contact local community organisations or the Race Equality Council (REC) in you borough for information on other support groups for schools in your area. It is important for Black parents to set up such initiatives themselves so that their interests can be met and their voices heard.
6.	Consider becoming a parent governor in your child's school
	Black parents should take an active role in the running of their child's school. One way to do this is to participate in the decision-making of the school. Once a year, schools try to encourage parents to become governors. It is therefore important that you seek such a position in the school or in the local LEA governor section. Black governors may feel isolated once in these positions, so our advice is to join a support network especially for Black governors.
7.	Attend as many parents' evenings as possible
	If you want to find out how your child is doing at school, it is vital for you to attend parents' evenings. You as a parent need to find our how your child is progressing. It is important for your child to see that you are interested. Attending parents' evenings gives you the best opportunity to voice your concerns to teachers, particularly in view of the busy lives many parents now lead which makes it difficult for them to ring or visit schools during the day.
8.	Respond to disagreements that may arise with the school
	Parents often receive reports and letters about their child and become angry if they disagree with them. Should this happen, do not remain silent or voice your anger to your child. Rather, go back to the school and discuss your concerns with the teacher. Ask your child about the problem, inform them about any planned meetings and monitor the situation as appropriate.
9.	Become familiar with school policies and procedures
	Some parents may feel intimidated when they do not fully understand the information sent to them by schools in prospectuses and newsletters. Read this information thoroughly and seek to understand the school procedures. Do not be afraid to ask question about information and policies. There needs to be a dialogue between parents and schools, and parental opinion to important to schools.
10.	Encourage your child to read more at home: make reading part of your leisure activity
	If you want your child to get excited about reading, make sure you read! Parents are often busy and tired by the time they get home but try to make time to read with your child. For reading to be fun for your child, you might need to develop a set routine for when and where it takes place.
11.	Check your child's homework
	You should have a visible homework diary for your child, so that you are clear when your child needs to be doing homework. Agree a time and suitable place for homework. You may want to have a place in the home where your children can leave questions or problems they may have about their homework. Above all, give as much encouragement and praise as you can to your child.
12.	Ensuring fair treatment
	When you believe your child has been treated unfairly by any school procedure, be this an hour-long detention or an exclusion, it is always important that you let a senior teacher know of your concerns. When you attend an appeal it is always wise to bring a representative from a local community organisation, or a friend who can give you support and advice on educational matters., Parents often feel isolated when their child is excluded and they are required to attend school to appeal the decision. Try to have as much support as possible. Schools are required to listen and consider appeals.
13.	Get second opinions around issues such as special needs
	Whenever a decision has been made which you are not completely happy about concerning your child, always try to get a second opinion. Try to meet with Education Welfare Officers, Special Needs Co-ordinators or Educational Psychologists in order to discuss your child's particular needs. Also contact local agencies who may be able to identify cultural issues involved in special needs assessments.
14.	Using Black Supplementary School and Homework Clubs
	Black Supplementary Schools are vital in providing additional educational support and development opportunities for your child. Some organisations have long waiting lists so put your child's name down early to ensure a place. Homework Clubs allow children to do their homework with additional tutor support, especially if their parents are working full-time and can't give direct support after school.
15.	Develop a career track or action plan for your child
	Setting targets and devising action plans should not be something restricted to the school environment. Parents and their children can also set targets, which involve not only the child's progress at school but also at home, in areas such as homework, studying, helping out around home – as well as planning for the future. Career tracks and action plans are a useful guide for parents and children. They should be started at primary school and updated regularly.
16.	Be aware of Government priorities
	The Government wishes to consult with parents about educational issues; they have published papers such as "Excellence in Schools". Sometimes these papers are available in doctors' surgeries and supermarkets. If you have concerns or comments about Government papers, express them to your local MP or the Department for Education and Employment.
17.	Talking to your child about their day in school
	Using mealtime as a time for enjoying conversation and sharing ideas is a good place to start. It is also important to listen to your child without judging. This is a unique opportunity for parents to demonstrate their interest in the 'little' details of their child's life. It is often easier to do this with younger children but secondary age children need this type of attention just as much.
18.	Dealing with racism and bullying
	Coping with racial abuse and discrimination is painful for all who experience it, but it can be particularly difficult for children and young people. Black families have a long history of providing their members with support and techniques for surviving the harshness of racism, and Black parents are often best placed to give advice to Black children. When Black children experience bullying at school they may feel too anxious to approach their teacher for help (especially when teachers do not come from similar racial backgrounds). A child experiencing racist bullying at school may become withdrawn or respond by expressing anger at friends, family members and in the classroom.
19.	Encouragement and self-esteem
	Encouragement is a very important aspect of parenting. A child cannot grow, develop and gain an sense of belonging without encouragement. As parents, we often try to improve our children by concentrating on their mistakes. We can be experts at finding fault. This is discouraging to a child. Our society does not train us to encourage, but when we are on the lookout for effort and improvement, children begin to grow in confidence and make good strides. All human beings, regardless of ethnicity, need to develop a positive sense of self. The Black family plays a major role in assisting the Black child in developing a personal identity. This includes pride, selfesteem, positive feeling and self-confidence.
20.	Coping with adolescence
	As parents we may have a tendency to view the many physical and emotional changes that our young experience simply as part of growing up. Black parents need to draw on their own memories of their teenage years. Being an adolescent is made all the more complicated when you are Black in White society. Remember that your teenager may be feeling insecure and vulnerable and will need to know that there is a safe have in your home. You must also question yourself as a parent. Are you prepared for your child's growth into adulthood, their increasing independence, the possibility that they will be sexually active and that they may soon leave home? Try to deal with your own worries as a parent and show your teenager that you are supportive but not interfering. Through this you can help your child approach adulthood safely and will set in place the foundations for a long-lasting parent-child relationship.

OK, so switching grammatically from the imperative to the present continuous and back could be a sign of 'educationalist' Yolande Beckles. But the spelling is too good, the content too germane and there are none of the tell-tale malapropisms and dyslexic markers normally associated with Miss Beckles. Somebody else wrote it, despite the attribution. Anyone care to step forward?

Where's Yoldo?

2009-11-06T15:22:00.001-05:00

Los Angeles is the second largest city in the US, so there's plenty of room to hide from anyone who's searching for you. Do you know where Yoldo is? See if you can you spot her indulging in a feast of gluttony. There's a prize for the first person to write in and tell us exactly where Yoldo is.

Test Your Knowledge - The Morehouse Connection

2009-11-04T08:00:00.003-05:00

The mission of Morehouse College is to produce academically superior, morally conscious African American leaders for the conditions and issues of the day. Alumni include Martin Luther King Jr., David Satcher, Maynard Jackson, Donn Clenendon and Shelton 'Spike' Lee.

So what possible connection would such an honourable and noble Atlanta educational institution have with Yolande Beckles? Answers on a blog comment, please.

What The Critics Said...

2009-11-02T09:26:00.016-05:00

"This woman has neither training nor natural aptitude, hence the disastrous consequences." – Fiona Harrold, leading life coach.

"This is the hungry career black woman who will sell her own children to get where she wants." – Fred Black, educationalist and leading member of BNVillage, the African & Caribbean Social network.

"Ms. Beckles is a financial disaster area, with a reputation among many who have had dealings with her for failing to pay her bills or honour her debts." – Robert Mendick, Evening Standard.

"It is important for all involved to note that Yolande is a stranger to the truth." – Dr. Iva Gloudon, Director of Sport and Physical Education, University of the West Indies.

"This woman should be on the FBI's most wanted list. She tried to buy a car from our dealership and her paperwork was completely false. " – Los Angeles car dealer.

"I will not stop 'til she is behind bars."– Olivia Goodson-Shields, former landlady and creditor.

"I wonder how many GCSEs you need to become an 'educational motivator'?" – Jane Simon, Daily Mirror.

"The programme ['Don't Mess With Miss Beckles'] was dangerous and Beckles's behaviour completely inappropriate... She appeared to have little skill for mediation or conciliation, and she had no understanding of the cultural issues she was attempting to control." – Mary Jenkin, President of the Association Of Educational Psychologists.

"There she is driving around in a fancy car, living in a big house, sending her children to private school. We worked hard over time for her and did not get paid." – Kate Davies, creditor.

"Pictures of Yolande Beckles... are incredibly scarce on the web. Possibly because she's in hiding after last night's first in the series." – Mof Gimmers, TV Scoop.

"I found her approach insulting to the profession, damaging to the children and families who took part and quite repulsive. It frankly amazes me that the BBC let this piece of rubbish ['Don't Mess With Miss Beckles'] to air." – a school Deputy Head.

"...a woman who'd be welcomed into the bosom of any teacher or parent... or would she? " – Peter Curran, Teachers' TV.

"She sees (that some of her methods don't work) but she won't accept it. She thinks that her method is the right one. Because she's controversial, people react to her in the same manner. Some people absolutely love her and some people hate her." – Riete Oord, documentary film maker.

"Since Yolande's now a Beeb 'educational adviser', I think I might invoice the Director General, suggesting that he helps repay her creditors before she receives her taxpayer-funded fee." – Charles Lewington, creditor and former Managing Director of Media Strategy.

"The techniques of self-styled 'educational entrepreneur' Yolande Beckles have left the BBC accused of putting children's welfare at risk." – Amelia Hill, The Observer.

"She is effectively on television teaching children about trust and honesty and yet she ran a business that went bust and got away with paying a pittance to people she owed large sums of money to." – Andy Conway, creditor.

"I worked six days a week. She always shouted at us." – Bart Gujski, creditor.

"Her methods have caused outrage among child psychologists and parents". – Yvonne Roberts, The Guardian.

"This is the reason why Beckles cocks up. She never ever listens. To anyone. At all. Ever." – Mof Gimmers, TV Scoop.

"It ['Don't Mess With Miss Beckles'] is highly exploitative." – Mary Bousted, General Secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers.

"Miss Beckles is an expert con artist and is so convincing - no wonder there have been so many victims over the years. Perhaps now it is time for Yolande Beckles to spend some time in custody so we the public feel safer in our beds." – a blog commenter.

"If this series ['Don't Mess With Miss Beckles'] rings the final bell for the TV busybody, Miss Beckles will have served one useful purpose, at least." – Jane Simon, Daily Mirror.

"The overbearing Yolande Beckles managed to get herself a series on the strength of being an 'educational entrepreneur' (heaven help us all when that starts to happen)." – TV reviewer, The Mail On Sunday.

"I had the misfortune to have to deal with Yolande last year when she was trying to get more involved in local networks in Hackney. By co-incidence, my boyfriend also worked for her in the 90s and never got paid." – a creditor.

"In short, Lorrine Marer [star of 'The Teen Tamer'] is the new Yolande Beckles... but without the lunacy and lawsuits." – Mof Gimmers, TV Scoop.

"Despite the title ['Don't Mess With Miss Beckles'] something - or someone - really was messing with Miss Beckles. What started as Supernanny for teenagers became a full-scale parent v child war." – Steve Pratt, Entertainment North East.

"The self-styled 'education expert' is being sued by her children's private school after failing to pay their fees." – Anna Davis, London Evening Standard.

"There is another side to her. She has done the dirty on a lot of people, and has the bare-faced cheek to go on national television." – Jo Allen, teacher and creditor.

"More gimmicks like the entrepreneur Ms Beckles let loose in our schools? 'No thanks' is what parents and teachers will say, I hope." – Bob Cottingham, The Morning Star.

"I went into a program called the Black Leadership Programme, run by a lady called Yolande Beckles. This woman was (and presumable still is...) steeped in this theology [the Black Liberation theology of James Hal Cone], of course I didn't know it then. All she could talk about was the freedom of the Black Nation, and I was sat there, thinking, 'What is she on?'" – blogger 'truthintheselastdays', on Independent Conservative.

"Bring Yolande Beckles to America!" – 'Ripclawe', blogger self-styled as 'megalomaniac genius with severe God-complex'.

"There is now a considerable queue of people wishing to kick Miss Beckles's own mauve behind." – Julia Stuart, The Independent.

"Don't mess with Miss Beckles. Or she'll destroy your life." – Mof Gimmers, TV Scoop.

England 1 USA 0

2009-11-01T07:50:00.013-05:00

Come on America. You've been well and truly bumped by the Brits! Thanks to an anonymous contributor, we now have address details for Yolande Beckles' parents:

Gloria and Seaford Beckles: [address and phone number supplied on bona-fide request]
[such a handy address for a couple, with Pentonville mens' prison and Holloway women's prison both within a short distance - see map]

and her sister:

Hermione Beckles: [address and phone number supplied on bona-fide request]
[a handy address for visiting Snaresbrook Crown Court and for hiding in Epping Forest - see map]

So who's going to score for the USA with a current address and phone number for Yolande? We're waiting...

Catch Me If You Can

2009-10-30T06:24:00.012-04:00

With release of Yolande Beckles' latest movie imminent and hotly tipped for this year's best film Oscar, a Hollywood insider has sent us a preview copy of the filmtrack CD, although we are still waiting for a full-size copy of the accompanying film poster. For those unfamiliar with the story, it features an investigator who tracks down and eventually catches Frank (Bashy) Abagnale Jr., a con artist who successfully impersonated a management development executive, a dance teacher, an educational trainer, a diversity consultant, a marketing and PR officer and a TV broadcaster, cashing more than $100 million in fraudulent checks in various countries.

The plotline in more detail:

It's Bromley in Kent in the 1960s. School leaver Frank Abagnale Jr. idolises his mother, who's in trouble with Inland Revenue. When his parents separate, Frank takes up a fast-track management post at Sainsbury's, vowing to set the family on a more sound financial footing. Eventually he is forced to leave after being accused of financial misdeeds.

He sets up a dance company and an education/training company, but both fail leaving massive debts. Despite this mishap, Frank is able to purchase a detached house in Chislehurst and drive a top-of-the-range Mercedes car. He moves in with the CEO of a marketing and communications firm, but after financial misconduct is forced out onto the street.

Frank ends up living rent-free in a refuge hostel in Streatham, after masquerading as the victim of domestic violence at the hands of his partner in Tulse Hill. It's his first successful acting role, earning him the nickname 'Bashy' and leading on to several further acts of violence and subterfuge. In 1996 Frank relocates to Northamptonshire where he is alleged to have assaulted his new partner by stabbing her with the point of a winklepicker shoe, leaving her with a severe head injury. Fearing arrest, he flees back to London where he finds a new partner called Colleen, but several years later he faces charges of her assault and attempted poisoning. A trial is arranged at Bromley Crown Court, but during a break in proceedings, Frank manages to stand on the shoulder of his barrister and escape through a lavatory window, leaving the barrister behind with egg on his face and substantial unpaid bills.

Frank runs away to Hackney with just £25 in the bank, but following an interview on GMTV he is talent-spotted by Riete Oordinary, a film producer who offers him a TV series on BBC2. "Sometimes people say his behaviour is inappropriate, but that's just his Caribbean background", explains Oordinary, wiping the lipstick from his face. "He likes to hug and kiss people."

Abagnale is able to make a comfortable living by obtaining money from various individuals including the sad and pathetic Woody Alan, who hands over thousands of pounds in council taxes to the fraudster. Despite generous donations from Woody Alan and numerous Hackney parents, Frank's lavish life-style soon results in his company Global Grabbers facing collapse, but with help from his mother Gloria, Frank is able to establish an offshore banking corporation called Global Grabbers Education (Offshore) Ltd., siphoning funds from the collapsed business and leaving a bunch of angry creditors penniless.

Things are looking good for Frank, until the creditors start closing in. Determined to escape the angry mob and at the same time to revive his flagging acting career, Frank has his head shaved, dons a Ben Sherman shirt, gathers up his children and heads off to Hollywood. Where a private detective tracks him down and brings him to justice. And that's where we came in...

I'd Like To Thank...

2009-10-28T03:55:00.026-04:00

...all my partners, many grant-funding bodies, the parents of under-privileged children, BBC2 Television, Teachers' TV, Watchdog, The University of the West Indies, several credit card holders, Alan Wood and his Tender Loving Care, Morehouse College, several county courts, a few indebted landladies, the banking self-certification system, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP, Chris Boothman, my agent and mother Gloria, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and gullible suckers with open wallets everywhere... for making me what I am today.

Read more...

Welcome To Hollywood

2009-10-27T16:55:00.021-04:00

The Amazing Miss Yolande Beckles – The Story So Far...

2009-10-25T13:05:00.233-04:00

"I wonder how many GCSEs you need to become an 'educational motivator'?" mused the Daily Mirror's Jane Simon, reviewing the UK BBC2 TV series 'Don't Mess With Miss Beckles' in 2006. "Yolande Beckles arrives at Fortismere School in North London full of incoherent bluster about making these lazy middleclass kids knuckle down", she continued. "It's the kind of school where parents pay for extra private tuition - exam results are well above the national average - so her meddling might have been put to better use almost anywhere else. Still, she zeroes in on Josh, Luke and Tom who are more interested in electric guitars than electrons... They'll probably be playing Glastonbury when their more swotty classmates are employed as charity muggers or waiting to hear how their interview for that job at the call centre went. 'Ditch your girlfriend!' Yolande commands Tom, who sensibly ignores her. 'You've got the next 20 years of your life to party!' she lies to Luke (how many 37-year-olds do you know who still have sleep-overs?). 'Take charge!' she orders Luke's mum - whose response is to kick her son out of the house entirely. If this series rings the final bell for the TV busybody, Miss Beckles will have served one useful purpose, at least."

Reading that review three years on, one doesn't know whether to laugh, cry or run away and hide. Laugh because Ms. Simon unwittingly hit the nail smack on the head with her implication that Yolande Beckles might be something less than a genuine, qualified motivator of children. Cry because during that intervening period the "charity mugging" has been performed not by the spotty swots of Muswell Hill, but by Miss Beckles herself, leaving families on two continents bitterly regretting having engaged with a serial swindler who not only made off with their hard-earned cash, but dashed their dreams in the process. Or hide, because more than one person has come forward to accuse the woman of serious assault and even the attempted murder of those she regards as a threat to her criminal activities.

This is the story of The Amazing Miss Yolande Beckles.

The documentary series met with mixed reactions, mostly negative. "Her methods have caused outrage among child psychologists and parents", claimed Yvonne Roberts in The Guardian, while Amelia Hill in The Observer wrote "How Miss Beckles Messed Up My Son" – reporting how a "teenager's mother attacks the BBC and its tough-talking 'educational entrepreneur' after the show was allowed to film a destructive family row." Similar attacks appeared in a raft of newspapers.

Despite the criticisms, Yolande - who by that time had adopted the nom de guerre "Yo!" - had become a recognised name in the British education sector and on this basis was invited to take part in the Teachers' TV series The Bell, in which a live audience of teachers were entertained by the celebrity educational motivator. Introducing Miss Beckles as "a woman who'd be welcomed into the bosom of any teacher or parent", Peter Curran went on to qualify his comment with a spookily predictive: "or would she...?"

Inevitably, both the original TV series and this guest appearance were soon forgotten and nothing more was heard of Yolande Beckles for a year and a half.

Then, on 21st August 2007, she burst back onto the celebrity scene once again when she featured in a two-page exposé in the London Evening Standard. According to Standard journalist Robert Mendick, TV education guru Miss Beckles had taken thousands of pounds from deprived schoolchildren in the London Borough of Hackney for a trip to Trinidad and Tobago and then cancelled it at the last minute, leaving the kids behind while she flew off to a Moonies' religious cult conference in the South Korean capital.

The families of a dozen London teenagers, according to Mendick, each paid hard-saved money to Miss Beckles' company Global Graduates to send their children off on a Caribbean educational holiday that was "too-good-to-be-true". And so it transpired. The parents heard nothing more and each family ended up £1,000 out of pocket. Miss Beckles' protestations that the last-minute cancellation resulted from her son suffering an epileptic fit turned out to be completely untrue. Investigations failed to show any sign of flight bookings to Port of Spain nor any hotel reservations for the Hackney children. Yolande's personal booking on Virgin Atlantic from Gatwick to Seoul and back, on the other hand, proved easy to trace.

Quoting from Dr. Iva Gloudon, Director of Sport and Physical Education at the St. Augustine campus of the University of the West Indies in Trinidad, Mendick wrote: "It is important for all involved to note that Yolande is a stranger to the truth." It reminded me of that Churchillian expression: "a perpetrator of terminological inexactitudes", or as President George Bush less eloquently described his own verbal errors, someone who "has misspoken". Yolande Beckles is certainly someone who has misspoken - with consummate perfection of the art.

The following day, a satirical lampooning political blog, purporting to be edited by Hackney Council Labour Group Chief Whip Luke Akehurst, but actually penned by some unknown alter ego, published a lengthy post entitled Blackwashing Hackney History:

"Yesterday's Evening Standard filled almost two entire pages with an exposé of alleged con-artist Yolande Beckles and her disappearance with £12,000 of cash raised by black parents in Hackney to send their children on an educational holiday in Trinidad last month", declared Luke Akehurst's doppelgänger. "As of this evening there is nothing of this story to be found on the Hackney Groveller [Hackney Gazette] website, suggesting either that they were hoping for a scoop or that nobody has told them the news. According to The Standard, Miss Beckles - CEO of motivational company Global Graduates - promised to take the children on a trip to boost the confidence and self-esteem of black youngsters, but instead absconded with the cash to South Korea where she attended meetings arranged by the religious cult 'The Moonies'.

"The paper went on to state that Yolande Beckles was sacked in 1999 from Hackney charity The Windsor Fellowship for allegedly misusing a credit card and other financial misdemeanours including contracting the services of her own mother for excessive fees. It noted that at least one of Miss Beckles' previous businesses has failed, leaving debts of £125,000.

"The Evening Standard made reference to the fact that this woman had starred in a three-part BBC2 series entitled 'Don't Mess With Miss Beckles', leading veteran Guardian journalist Angela Neustatter to comment: 'I wouldn't have put [her] in charge of a little-favoured houseplant' and a distraught parent to write: 'The programme was atrocious and a total fix... When I saw it, everything I had objected to they left in... [she] was terrible and her behaviour was wholly inappropriate.'

"Of far more direct relevance to Hackney, however, amongst the treasures of this carefully researched piece of investigative journalism, was that Yolande Beckles had earlier this year allegedly managed to extract grant funding for 10 sessions on student leadership skills from Alan Wood, CEO of The Learning Trust and the man responsible for all education services in the Borough. Apparently she had little difficulty convincing Hackney's gullible education supremo to part with £50,000 to fund these educational activities, for reasons some have unkindly suggested may be connected with her alleged propensity to excite white middle-aged men. Whatever the real reason, The Learning Trust has now distanced itself by a short mile and Alan Wood is declining interviews, preferring to entrust a deputy to brush off questions.

"As a representative of financially hard-pressed Hackney council tax payers, I do hope that this affair is not being blackwashed and the full truth will be revealed. I can only hope that matters are resolved rapidly and any money found to have been obtained fraudulently and/or used inappropriately is returned to the Borough's coffers or those of The Learning Trust. Especially before any warrants are executed upon Miss Beckles by any as yet unnamed foreign governments, leading to the possible sequestration of her UK assets."

This blog post resulted in a postbag of comments and, according to its author, several private emails offering information and advice. One of the first commenters pointed out that, despite having been defrauded of a large sum of money by Miss Beckles, The Learning Trust website still listed her as a 2007 Trailblazer. Although this was subsequently rectified, even today the site continues to promote the "motivational education speaker" as a guest speaker at the 2007 Trailblazers morale-boosting event at the Hackney Empire theatre.

A couple of months later, an anonymous source provided an invaluable clue as to the location of the errant Miss Beckles: "I had the misfortune to have to deal with Yolande last year when she was trying to get more involved in local networks in Hackney", she wrote. "By co-incidence, my boyfriend also worked for her in the 90s and never got paid. A quick Google search reveals she is now stateside trying to set up a company called "Think Global Kids." Is anyone actually trying to hold her to account or press charges in the UK - or has she got away scot free? I don't know how to take this forward so I am posting on any blogs I can find."

The informant provided this link which, although short on detail, confirmed that Yolande Beckles had transported herself to Los Angeles, with plans to "go big" in the State of California.

The fake Luke Akehurst published a comment stating: "I believe that an arrest warrant has been issued for Ms. Beckles by the courts in Trinidad & Tobago. Here in the UK she is still regarded as a trailblazer by many in the Labour Party. But then so was Mark Trotter." [a reference to a paedophile former Hackney social worker, care home abuser and Labour Group Chief Whip, still defended by some in the local party today]. Whether any such writ was ever issued is uncertain, but it would be interesting to discover if this was true. Perhaps someone from T&T could confirm.

Various messages were exchanged on the spoof blog, offering opportunities for angry creditors to meet up, but hampered by the mistaken belief amongst many that they were conversing with the genuine Luke Akehurst. 'Anonymous' from Los Angeles threw doubt on the entire accusatory exchange: "As we all know, the internet is full of hyperbole, lies, urban legends and people venting their spleens on others... There doesn't appear to be much interest about Ms. Beckles on this site beyond a few of you. If so many people were harmed, I would think that there would be more folks interested in pursuing her. On the other hand, if what has been said about her in the press is false, why wouldn't she pursue slander or libel actions in your courts?"

The Doubting Thomas was met with the following response: "If anonymous from LA wants evidence, why not check with Companies House in London on Global Graduates Ltd. You can see there that this company, which was basically Yo herself, never filed accounts. You can also contact Clerkenwell and Hackney courts and ask about court judgements won against her. I know there are number of employment ones for unpaid wages. Again against GG, not necessarily her. Why not also contact some of her old customers and or sponsors such as the College of Law. I know they will have lots of info. Or why not contact Alan Wood, the Chief Exec of Hackney Learning Trust who employed her when she allegedly stole money off children in Hackney. I am sure his office will... explain why the police are investigating her on their behalf. Finally, why not put your name and number either on here or send to Luke and he can pass it on to others on this site who clearly have info. But trust me there is lots of real evidence as to this woman's criminality and moral lack. I know lots of good people who have been stung by this woman. Please do not trust her! She is dangerous."

It was clearly time for the lurkers to step forward - and the first of these was 'Avenger'. Readers whose interest in Yolande was confined to her alleged financial misconduct were shocked to see allegations of grievous bodily harm and attempted murder: "Well, Yolande Beckles is living in LA. Her 14-yr-old daughter Diandra is a student at Beverley Hills High School and has a listing on Facebook. BHHS have confirmed her as a student. Now for some history regarding Yolande Beckles. In 1995 Miss Beckles ended up living in a hostel in Streatham with her daughter after alleging she was a victim of domestic violence. The victim was in fact her former partner (her daughter's father), who suffered knife injuries at the hands of Miss Beckles at their former home in Tulse Hill. Later in 2006 he committed suicide after taking a drugs overdose."

Avenger continued: "She had previous companies called Moving Parts (dance teaching) and Three Circles Ltd (Education/Training) - both failed leaving debts. Miss Beckles also lived with and worked for Yvonne Thompson CBE (CEO ASAP Communications) but, after financial misconduct, was sacked in 1995. In 1996 Miss Beckles relocated to Northamptonshire with her child. However she again was alleged to have assaulted her new partner, leaving him with a severe head injury. After fearing arrest she fled back to London. Miss Beckles then reinvented herself and found a new partner, Mr. Colin Logier (father to her son), but several years later she faced charges of assault and attempted poisoning of this partner. A trial lasted several weeks at Bromley Crown Court circa 2006. However Miss Beckles managed to hire an expensive barrister and got off. Miss Beckles is an expert con artist and is so convincing - no wonder there have been so many victims over the years. Perhaps now it is time for Yolande Beckles to spend some time in custody so we the public feel safer in our beds."

What followed next made my blood run cold. The outburst from 'Avenger' prompted Hollywood landlady Olivia Goodson-Shields to step forward and tell her jaw-dropping tale. It's a lengthy diatribe, but one well worth reading in full:

"Yolande and both children arrived in Los Angeles December 24th 2007. They rented two rooms from my family in Hollywood... It is insane that we let it go on so long and trust me, we are blown away that even after we were sure she was a con and confronted her, she cried and begged and pleaded that under no circumstance would she ever do something like that. OMG! She really is evil and evil entered our home and a black cloud covered us for almost three months. If it could go wrong it did. I asked Yolande to leave our home March 17th with her two children. I would have kicked her butt to the curb long before that had it not been for the kids. The money was always on the way, and the tv show was within arms length, if only we would give it another few days... and days and days.

"We were not sure if her daughter was part of the con or a victim. Yes, she left our home and us $15,000 in debt. She never paid her rent, utilities or food bills. Colin found her through his son's phone calls and Yolande did receive maintenance money. She did also receive a large sum of money that her partner in the UK sent to her from some grant for her company. Instead of paying us the money she owed, she and her children went on a shopping and tourist spree of Hollywood and, $8,000 later, there was no money.

"She jumped on her visa which ran out on March 20th... has her kids in school in Hollywood and has been using my address for everything. I do have the L.A.P.D. working on it... Her daughter is not at Beverly Hills High but I can tell you which school she is at. I've been in touch with the British Embassy and they have revoked her passport so she and the kids can't travel anywhere except back to the UK... I'm contacting the US embassy this week at the suggestion of the UK embassy.

"She left us with a phone bill of $1,800 to the UK which took place over a 5-day spree of her trying to collect money. She may think she got away with the long con with us and yes, we were much much too soft because of the kids, but that woman ruined our credit and has put us in a position that now we may be evicted. We rented to her because we needed the income, not for a moment thinking we could be ruined in a mere 2½ months by this evil... I did know she tried to poison Colin. She came to our home because of a mutual friend from the UK who lives in Hollywood. She told me about Colin after I told about her to my daughter, who was now confronting Yolande regarding the long-con; my daughter became so ill she couldn't get out of bed at all the week before I told Yolande to leave. Yolande kept making food for my daughter. Later, we realized that because my daughter was confronting Yolande and I was beginning to realize she may be right, she had to shut my daughter up... Hell, if she killed her, I'd need comfort, right? Then she could move right in to help.

"She applied to 3 US banks for business and personal checking accounts and wrote a check to our landlord for the funds she owed us and that check bounced. We had to pay it back to them and it put us way behind financially. She is receiving overdraft notices from these banks daily for insufficient funds. I've contacted the bank to tell them she is a fraud. I've contacted the Los Angeles Unified School district to tell them she's using our address for her children' schools without our permission. I've explained she in our home as a vacation rental and left without paying. She's enrolled in educational classes for herself and the fee she paid to take the classes has bounced. She put her things in storage and those checks have bounced and they've locked her out of her storage locker.

"William Morris never asked her to come to the US [a reference to an earlier suggestion that the William Morris entertainment agency had invited her to the US after seeing her BBC2 series], her agent in the UK said WM would be interested in speaking with her if she were in Los Angeles. I took her to her appointment at WM and nothing has come of it as I know. There is sooooo much more if anyone really wants to make sure this woman spends time in jail and has the information to add to what I've got, let me know. I will not stop till she is behind bars.

"She is not a fit mother for those children. Her daughter is the primary care-giver of Euan. However her daughter, since enrolling in public school in Feb., has not made the best choices for her friendships. The worst thing is she wanted to get involved with a church here and I introduced her to dear friends who attend Agape. She moved right in trying to worm her way into another con... She is an evil woman. I'm on a mission... anyone want to get involved?"

If this wasn't spine-chilling enough, additional information that came my way shortly after this post listed no fewer than four cases of attempted murder - the alleged poisoning of two different victims, an attack using a high heel as a weapon and the multiple stabbings of yet another person. Knowing the source of that information, I have little doubt that the accusations are based in substance.

There were several calls at this time for those with information to collaborate in a concerted attempt to bring everything to the attention of the authorities, but for one reason or another this failed to materialise. Months passed, with occasional internet searches turning up little or nothing new about the activities of the resilient Miss Beckles.

"Yolande is now in hiding from a great many very angry people. Try searching the internet and you'll realise that she's very well-concealed", observed the spoof Luke Akehurst, "unless, of course, you know better. In which case I'd love to hear." The reaction came less than a week later: "Hello! Yolanda is very visible and worming her way into every available children's program in Los Angeles. Her youngest child attends Rosewood Avenue Elementary School located on Croft Avenue in Los Angeles. She is actively pursuing financial support for the 'Think Global Kids Summer Enrichment Program' within the Los Angeles educational community. STOP HER NOW!!!"

And it was that response that led to me launching this blog, specifically aimed at collating together all the available information about Yolande Beckles and providing a forum for the interchange of new information and the pursuit of justice in her case. For those who prefer, I've also established a Facebook page.

How much of the information posted to the Akehurst blog is true? I'm a facilitator rather than an investigator, but a few basic pieces of research proved very easy. Firstly, and perhaps unusually for someone who has spent the past few years avoiding various authorities and angry creditors, Yolande has her own Wikipedia entry, although admittedly it says relatively little:

"Yolande Beckles is a British educational motivator and entrepreneur. She founded Global Graduates in 1998 (which collapsed in 2003) and later had a television program called 'Don't Mess with Miss Beckles' which was aired on BBC2 in 2006. After Global Graduates collapsed, debts of around £125,000 were left unpaid and at least 19 County Court Judgments have been lodged against her. She was born in London in 1962 to parents of Trinidadian origin. She has two siblings, Brian and Hermione, and two children, Diandra and Euan."

A valuable clue to Yolande's present whereabouts lies in the final three words. The trouble with having children these days is that they tend to keep their heads very firmly above the parapet, even if mum would prefer them to maintain a more discrete profile. Daughter Diandra's Facebook page reveals everything one might wish to know about the family comings and goings, through the details of this popular girl's 162 registered friends.

Bromley High School features repeatedly amongst the earlier members of this friendship ring. This concurs with a comment from 'Web Researcher' a year ago, giving an address for Diandra's grandmother Gloria in a block of flats in Bromley, although a recent check suggests that she may have moved away. Diandra's more recent friends reveal her current educational establishment as Hollywood Senior High School. That accords with Mrs. Goodson-Shields' comment: "Her daughter is not at Beverly Hills High but I can tell you which school she is at."

What do we know about the whereabouts and activities of Yolande Beckles today? Well, she's certainly living in or around West Hollywood/Beverly Hills and engaged in various "educational" activities. Her business is Think Global Kids (no known website) and it ran a summer of fun, education, the arts, music and dance for children from 3-12 years old at the Will and Ariel Durant Library, W. Sunset Boulevard. Interestingly, Friday classes for toddlers are run by a Miss Yolanda. It's a smart choice of organisational name for anyone who might be seeking to enjoy the benefits of the good reputations of the unrelated Think-Global Kids based in Vancouver, the Global Kids Connect organisation based out of West Los Angeles and sponsored by UCLA, The Californian activity group Kids Think Global or the Global Kids organisation from New York.

Diandra is at Hollywood Senior High School and Euan attends Rosewood Avenue Elementary School. Yolande herself is Principal of Think Global Kids, a Los Angeles non-profit organisation (now there's a laugh!). The Hollywood Hills West Neighborhood Council hosted a meeting of The Women's Club of Hollywood this summer at which Miss Beckles appealed for $4,500 to assist in meeting the cost of the community room fee at the Will and Ariel Durant Branch Library. I can't help wondering whether her grant application was successful and, if so, whether the library meeting room bill was settled or if they are still waiting for payment?

As far as I know, no-one has yet been found floating face down in a Hollywood swimming pool. But in telling this story, I can't help thinking about a certain Billy Wilder film. Maybe, like Gloria Swanson's Norma Desmond, Miss Beckles is yet to have her most famous moment in front of the cameras. Like the arrest of that other occasional actor, O. J. Simpson, with millions of viewers glued to their television sets. Let's just hope that when that time comes - and it's surely when and not if - very expensive (but presumably unpaid) barristers don't secure a similar verdict.

So, where do we all go from here? I, for obvious reasons, shall remain anonymous. That will prevent Hollywood's most expensive law firms from incurring stacks of unpaid bills for work in pursuit of injunctions. Everyone else should be as open as they feel able on this website or on the Facebook page and can also exchange information via my email address should they wish to keep their own details confidential. I look forward to the episodes to come.

Postscript: Gloria and Seaford Beckles' new address in Islington can be found in a more recent post.