Seven years later, Cops for Kids turns up as a registered corporation (Part 2 of 2)

Last week, the N.C. Secretary of State’s web site had no record that Cops for Kids was ever incorporated. As far as the Secretary of State was concerned, Cops for Kids did not exist.

But by Thursday afternoon, several days after questions began to arise about the charity operated by Mooresville Police Chief John Crone, the Secretary of State’s Web site was now reporting that Cops for Kids was incorporated as a non-profit entity in June 2001.

All business entities incorporated or otherwise formally organized under state law are registered with the Secretary of State. The secretary’s web page includes a means by which business entities registered in North Carolina can be searched. Documents available through the web site for each registered entity typically include organizations’ articles of incorporation and annual reports.

On June 27 , Cops for Kids was not among the business entities listed on the Secretary of State’s Web site. Crone himself said in an email to the Gatton Report on June 30 that Cops for Kids was not incorporated and had never secured tax-exempt status as a charity under federal tax regulations. “We are not incorporated, nor have we ever been, nor have we advertised that we are a 501C charity,” Crone wrote in the e-mail. Click on the document below to see a larger version of the scanned June 27 print-out of the search for Cops for Kids on the N.C. Secretary of State's site:

However, Interim Town Manager Erskine Smith alerted town commissioners in an e-mail on Thursday that a search of the N.C. Secretary of State’s web site revealed that Cops for Kids had, in fact, incorporated as a non-profit entity in June 2001. “We have found that the Mooresville Cops for Kids is a non-profit corporation under the State of North Carolina,” he wrote to the commissioners. “It was incorporated by the State on June 29, 2001.”

A review of the Secretary of State’s web site on Thursday afternoon by the Tribune and Gatton Report found an entry for Cops for Kids that is not present on the June 27 print-out of organizations registered with the Secretary of State beginning with the word “cops.” Nor was such an entry present on the secretary’s web site as recently as the early part of this week, as it should have been if the organization had been incorporated in 2001.

On Thursday, however, when a search of all registered entities with “cops” as the first word in their names was conducted, the five organizations present on the June 27 print-out were still present. But so was a sixth entry that was not present on the June 27 list: Cops for Kids, Inc.
The new version of the Secretary of State’s web site states that Cops for Kids incorporated in June 2001, with John Crone as the organization’s registered agent. Here's a scanned copy of the July 3 search results:



While the web site appears to represent that Cops for Kids was incorporated in 2001, the page, as of mid-afternoon on Thursday, did not include any scanned versions of the documents typically available through the secretary of state’s web site, such as the articles of incorporation or the annual corporate reports. The page where such documents would typically be located was simply blank. But, by approximately 3:15 p.m. Thursday, articles of incorporation were posted on the secretary’s web site.

Local attorney Ben S. Thomas is listed on the articles of incorporation as the incorporator of the organization. Thomas said that he was the incorporator of the organization and that he contacted the Secretary of State on Thursday after hearing discussion in the community about the status of Cops for Kids and finding the organization was not listed on the secretary’s web site. “This is the first time in 20 years that I’ve ever seen that,” he said.

Certified articles of incorporation, which are returned to organizations by the secretary of state after incorporation is formalized, were not present in the Cops for Kids files made publicly available this week.

Also, there is no entry in the Cops for Kids’ financial records indicating that the required $60 payment was made to the Secretary of State in 2001 to cover the cost of incorporation. The secretary of state will typically reject articles of incorporation submitted without payment.
Crone could not be reached to explain why, as recently as the early part of this week, there was no record of Cops for Kids on the Secretary of State’s web site, nor why he previously said the organization was not incorporated.

George Jeter, director of communications with the Secretary of State, told the Tribune and Report on Thursday afternoon that he can’t explain why Cops for Kids was not listed earlier this week on the secretary’s web site but showed up later in the week. “It was clearly incorporated in 2001. I had them scan and put in the articles of incorporation. There’s no reason it wouldn’t have been up, not unless there was a ghost in the computer,” Jeter said.

In addition to the status of Cops for Kids as a business entity under state law, town officials are also revising their previous statements about the organization’s tax-exempt status. In an e-mail to the Tribune on Thursday afternoon, Smith stated that Cops for Kids “has not paid any taxes. The Chief has never represented that the organization was a 501(c)3.”

But later in the day, Smith said it was always the intention of Cops for Kids to file for tax-exempt status and that an oversight was responsible for the failure to secure the status. “The counsel for the corporation did not file the required paperwork to the IRS for a tax exempt status. (Chief Crone had signed the application and attached a check payable to the U.S. Treasury for the application fee.)” Smith said in an email.

A copy of the documents was not available by Thursday afternoon.

A search performed Thursday of the Internal Revenue Service’s list of registered 501(c)(3) charities still did not identify Mooresville’s Cops for Kids as a tax-exempt organization.

Be sure to read Part 1 of 2 Cops’ charity: Questions, but few answers (Part 1 of 2)