Is also known as alleged Charity Scammer
By Chuck Ross The Daily Caller
Texas Insider Report: WASHINGTON D.C. Black Lives Matter activist Charles Wade is a financial scammer" says a lawyer for a St. Louis real estate developer who
lost more than $10000 after Wade skipped town last year without paying rent.
Wade 33 drew national attention earlier this year when The Daily Caller reported he was arrested on April 25 on sex trafficking charges. Police in College Park Md. say that Wade pimped out a 17-year-old girl using the website backpage.com.
She told police that she gave Wade all of the money she was paid to have sex and that Wade knew she was only 17.
Wade has been charged with seven charges and could face up to 25 years in prison. He denies the charges saying that the girl who says
he was her pimp is lying and that he has been unfairly targeted by conservative trolls."
By some estimates Wade a former stylist for Beyonce Knowles sister Solange took in hundreds of thousands of dollars in online donations for a group called Operation Help or Hush (OHOH) that he co-founded in the wake of the Aug. 9 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown.
But the activist who went on trial in May has a history of making false and deceptive statements according to Edward Khatskin a Chicago-based attorney for Starke Inc. the St. Louis real estate firm that rented to Wade.
Wade was put in touch with the company in late 2014 through a St. Louis real estate agent who is also active in the Black Lives Matter movement.
OHOH which Wade co-founded with a woman named Tasha Burton called for donations on its website and on Twitter to help fund the housing project.
In a now-deleted entry on its
blog OHOH offered
guaranteed free housing" for 90 days to activists working in the area. During that period they were required to perform 20 hours of community service each week. At the end of that stint participants are required to pay between $100-$250 a month…to remain in the apartment."
It is unclear exactly how much money was donated to OHOH since the group has not disclosed that information. But according to some reports hundreds of thousands of dollars" has flowed to OHOH.
Wade did pay some rent at the beginning of the lease. He paid one or two months worth of rent in cash Khatskin told The Daily Caller. Another months rent was paid through a PayPal account. But despite taking in so much in donations Wade stopped paying rent on the four properties but did not move out. Khatskin ultimately filed suit for Starke Inc. and moved to evict Wade Burton and two other tenants.
All the while Wade was seemingly taking in money for OHOH which was not registered as a charity in the state of Missouri.
According to Khatskin Wade has made numerous false claims about the case on social media. A frequent Twitter user Wade has claimed on the site that he settled the case. Hes also wrote in a now-deleted Aug. 25 tweet that we came into court with all the rent
wed held."
But Khatskin says that Wade never paid any of the money he owed after absconding and still owes the entire judgement. In fact the lawyer says that after he filed the suit on behalf of Starke Inc. Wade attempted to reverse the lone PayPal payment he made to the landlord.
The real estate firm whose owner is liberal according to Khatskin was able to prevent that from happening by contacting PayPal.
Khatskin also says that when a courier first attempted to serve Wade with papers in August ordering him to appear at trial (Wade was in Maryland by that time) he falsely claimed that he was not Charles Wade.
But it was him" Khatskin told The Daily Caller.
Wade also misled his supporters and social media followers by concocting a false explanation for why transcripts of the trial were sealed. Wade claimed that the judge sealed the documents because the case was high security." He also warned that if anyone attempted to obtain audio of the proceeding the court will immediately have record of your identity."
But Khatskin says that the documents were sealed only because they included personal information such as social security numbers.
For Khatskin that raises questions about what other personal expenses Wade covered using donations to OHOH.
If this story prevents at least one person from falling victim to this scammer I think it will will have done a service" Khatskin told TheDC.
Government records show that Wade entered a deferred prosecution program in the Miami case several days after his arrest in Maryland.
Wade was detained in his hometown of Austin Tex. on Aug. 10 2014 just days before he would start a new career as a social justice activist. He was charged with making false statements to police. The Daily Caller has requested an incident report for that case but has not yet received it.
