Christian Concepts Outreach leaves workers unpaid, angry
By DON
RAY and A.J. GARDNER
Staff Writers
VICTORVILLE — It was an opportunity Rufus Cotton wasn’t going to let slip away.
The flier promised him a full-time job starting at $10 an hour.
They’d throw in such perks as personal growth seminars, career development
courses, financial counseling, motivational speakers, access to the in-house
medical clinic and a day care program.
It even promised him his own personal tutor.
It seemed to be just the ticket the Victorville resident needed to finally get
his four children back. Until he found a good job and a suitable home for them,
the judge said, they’d have to remain in foster care.
Sure, he thought, it was a little strange he’d have to pay $150 — up front — for
the privilege of going to work. But the people at the Victorville-based
Christian Concepts Outreach assured him the fee was merely to cover the costs of
providing him with a badge, a work smock and CPR training.
What the heck, he figured, it beats the $8 an hour he was making at the local
golf course. So in May, he borrowed the $150, quit his job and joined about 160
other enthusiastic workers. For a month they worked together refurbishing the
interior of the one-story building near downtown San Bernardino — the
building that would house all the providers of the services Cotton was sure
would help turn his life around.
But after a month on the job, the long-awaited paychecks bounced. All of them.
It marked the beginning of the end to a seemingly well-intentioned, albeit
over-ambitious plan — a plan its energetic and inspirational founder was
convinced would snowball and spread from the High Desert into other
neighborhoods, other cities and even other countries.
Instead, what seems to be snowballing today is the anger and frustration among
many of those service providers, investors, real estate brokers and staff
members who never got paid — and as many as 400 of the very people Antoinette
Antone was sure her Christian Concepts Outreach would help.
Her failed program, it seems, has done much more harm than good.
To make things worse, the 32-year-old organizer seems to have upped and
vanished.
“I can’t find her,” Su-Hail Khoury said.
Antone rented Khoury’s commercial building on Anacapa Road in Victorville last
year for $2,000 a month. She was there 10 months, he says, and never paid
anything.
“I lost a lot of money from this lady,” he said. “She told me ‘today,’ then
‘tomorrow,’ ‘today,’ ‘tomorrow.’ ” He said she brought workers in to do
improvements, but, in the end, they caused damage to the plumbing and the
electrical wiring. He said he won’t sue her because he knows she has no money.
Les Wilson is in the same boat. The West Covina-based investor paid for more
than $60,000 in building supplies so Antone’s workers could configure the
offices in the building in San Bernardino.
Wilson held a second trust deed loan on the building.
“She supposedly had a $600,000 or $700,000 loan to buy the building,” he said.
“But she didn’t get the loan, and that’s that.” Wilson, as with Khoury, says
it’s senseless to sue Antone for the damages.
All her transactions with Wilson
involving the San Bernardino building were taking place during the time period
Antone was not paying rent on the Victorville property. And when she couldn’t
make the payroll for the 160-member work force Rufus Cotton was a part of in San Bernardino,
she asked Les Wilson to loan her even more money to cover it.
“You’ve shown extremely poor business judgment already,” Wilson recalls telling
Antone. “Why would I think I should help you any more?”
For a moment, he said he felt threatened.
“If I didn’t give her the money it was as if someone was going to tear the
building down,” he said.
Indeed, there came a time when her unpaid workers in San Bernardino were calling
for a mutiny, Cotton said. It happened last July when he says Antone called all
the employees to a large church auditorium in Pomona.
“She stood up on the stage and said, ‘Is everyone ready to get paid?’” Cotton
said. “I thought to myself, ‘We’re not going to get paid.’ ”
But they’d all have to go to the work site in San Bernardino that afternoon to
pick up the checks. When everyone arrived there, the checks were also there,
Cotton said, but no one had signed them. Everyone would have to come back the
next day.
The following day everyone received their checks — properly signed — but then
Antone asked everyone to wait until the following week to cash the checks,
several sources said.
Cotton says now he was even more convinced he wouldn’t see any of the money, so
he walked straight to the bank named on the check and asked to cash it.
“Wait a minute,” he says the clerk told him. “There’s only $75 in the whole
thing.”
When he told the others, he said, they were so angry they wanted to break all
the windows and tear up the place. Cotton said some young, former gang members
on the work team scratched the paint and flattened the tires on Antone’s car.
Meanwhile, Cotton said Antone was inside crying.
“I got a big old bucket and said, ‘Cry into this,’ ” Cotton said.
Eventually, Antone called the police to escort her out of the building.
Former employees estimate there were between 260 and 400 workers in all who
didn’t get paid. There were two cycles of employees, Cotton said. He and others
worked for two months.
Connie Casteneda of Victorville went to the state labor board, she said, but
Antone didn’t show up for the informal conference wherein many resolve the
disputes on the spot.
“They told me she should have been present,” Casteneda said. “She was there at a
hearing the day before.”
In fact, state officials confirmed that Antone has not appeared before the
agency since that day.
Casteneda is admittedly bitter. Antone had quickly promoted her to an
administrator level. She had been looking forward to working at the
24-hour-a-day day care center planned for the Anacapa building. And she said she
and her husband, Tino, drove many of the workers from the High Desert to the San
Bernardino job site and back each day. In fact, Antone appointed Tino as the
head of transportation.
As with Cotton, Casteneda’s husband gave up a good job to work with Christian
Concepts Outreach, Casteneda said. In the end, they would not even be able to
keep their home telephone from being disconnected.
The failed program also caused grief to a handful of men and women who worked
for Antone while they were staying at the High Desert Homeless Shelter in
Victorville.
“The people in the shelter have three months here,” said night manager Larry
McLaughlin. “If they don’t find a job in three months they must go. As far as we
were concerned, they were working.”
That meant, he said, that they wasted valuable time at the shelter — time they
could have used to be getting a legitimate job. Most of them, McLaughlin said,
threw in the towel.
“They’ve been through the mill so many times they just gave up.”
Despite repeated attempts, the Press Dispatch has been unable to make direct
contact with Antoinette Antone. Family members assured reporters they would pass
along the invitation for her to comment.
The mortgage holders foreclosed on Lisa Edwards’ San Bernardino house when
Antone failed to pay her. Edwards and her husband would have lost it if her
brother hadn’t bought it back for them.
Despite the loss, she says she believes in her heart that Antone’s intentions
were completely pure and that she’ll make every possible effort make things
right.
“She won’t stop till she pays everyone off,” Edwards said. “She was hurt by it
also. It took every dime of her husband’s retirement.”
Greg Beckett of Hesperia is even more optimistic. He put up the money to provide
CPR training to one of the groups of workers. He did the training as well.
And even though he never received any money from Antone, he’s sure she will pay
everyone back.
“I think Antoinette is going to be a lady of her word,” he said. “It may be a
year or two years or more, but she’s a lady of her word.”
Enthusiasm fails to save program
By DON RAY and ANDREA
GARDNER / Staff Writers
VICTORVILLE — All they could see was the incredible good it would do. It was an
idea the likes of which these ardent, enthusiastic supporters had never seen.
And if anyone could pull it off, it was the plan’s creator and head cheerleader
— Antoinette Antone. With her drive, enthusiasm and connections, the plan
couldn’t fail.
Or so they thought.
The plan to revolutionize foster care in the High Desert and beyond would
crumble before their eyes. And to make it worse, Antone would vanish and leave
her loyal supporters to foot much of the bill.
Press Dispatch reporters have tracked down key participants and obtained
original documents that paint an astounding picture — a detailed look at
unbridled ambition, false promises, blind faith, outright deception and utter
desperation.
In May, 1999, Antoinette Antone and her husband Derek, former foster parents
themselves, set out to create an innovative nonprofit program, Christian
Concepts Outreach, that she was sure would eliminate one of the most difficult
and frustrating aspects of being foster parents.
Under state law, a foster parent cannot leave any foster child in the care of
anyone who hasn’t undergone a background check, completed a CPR/first aid course
and passed a test for tuberculosis. The law makes it extremely tough for parents
of multiple foster children to handle unexpected situations where they cannot
watch all of the children at the same time.
Antone’s solution was to create a facility on Anacapa Road in Victorville,
Spectrum 7 — a facility she would staff 24 hours a day with qualified care
givers.
“Everyone who has seen the plans says it’s a great program,” said Carolyn
Buchanan, president of the High Desert Foster Parenting Association.
When she met Antone, Buchanan was in the process of converting a house she owned
in Victorville to a home for pregnant teens, she said. She put her own plans on
hold so she could help with Antone’s project. She even loaded up the furniture
she had acquired for her project and carted it over to Christian Concepts
Outreach’s Spectrum 7 building at 15180 Anacapa Road. Soon, she says Antone
offered her the position of chief administrative officer.
When Buchanan’s friend, Lorraine Olivas, began volunteering her time, Antone
made her the executive/office operations administrator. Soon, former insiders
say, Antone was handing out important-sounding titles as if they were lollipops.
These names and titles on brochures and business proposals would give
prospective participants and investors the impression the operation was a lot
larger than it really was, insiders say.
“She actually did have a business plan that she showed us that showed that she
put a lot of time, effort and thought into the process,” said Joseph W. Brady,
who brokered the lease agreement between Antone and the owners of the Anacapa
Road building. But the owners never received a single monthly payment, they
said.
This came more than a year after Dale Evans cut the ribbon at the building. Even
though Antone was not paying rent, she was fast at work negotiating to buy or
lease even larger buildings in San Bernardino, documents show.
Ernest Gaines of
Rialto says he loaned
her $76,000 to help with the center in Victorville. But instead he says she
spent most of it on a building in San Bernardino.
He’s calling for a criminal investigation.
“That was my whole savings. That’s why I’m going to the D.A.”
By last December - even though the Victorville center was still not operational
- Antone and her husband moved out of their 3,003-square-foot house in
Victorville and into a 5,315-square-foot house in Riverside. She agreed to pay
$4,500 rent each month until they could buy it, said Suzanne Habighorst, the
owner at that time.
"I had seen a lot of loan papers that were approved for her business," she said,
"and she was going to give me a certain amount of money within 30 days."
Habighorst said the price of the house was $800,000, but Antone never paid a
penny — not even for the rent.
She said she took the house off the market with the belief Antone would, indeed,
buy the house, but it never happened. Habighorst said Antone and her husband
moved out on August 1, 2000.
In the beginning, Habighorst said, she helped Antone with bookkeeping, and then
she introduced her to Stephen Blades, a Colton businessman she knew from church.
"Antoinette had this great idea," he said. "It seemed pretty pie-in-the-skyish,
but it seemed she had an inside track." Blades says he agreed to help her
organize her financial papers.
"I put numbers together," he said. "She had this mysterious $28 million and she
was going to purchase some building in San Bernardino and going to fund this
project. People were going to get paid a lot of money."
He said he started feeling uncomfortable when she offered high salaries at the
same time she was writing payroll checks that were not good.
"I told her, ‘You don’t need to pay these people that much money.’ I really got
nervous that something was not right," he said. "I knew she was robbing Peter to
pay Paul." Blades says she never paid him the $15,000 she had promised.
"I’m not going to say she scammed me. Part of me says she was sincere," he said.
Early this year, Antone put out a 30-page report outlining what she was calling
"Child Nation." It was similar to the Victorville plan, but it now had its
headquarters in San
Bernardino. In fact,
the report listed the Victorville operation as the first of 13 phases that would
cover areas as far away as San Diego, Ventura
and even Nevada — all to be completed this year.
Within the report, Antone addressed many of the people who had provided money or
services.
The report names 31 people who offered prayers, friendship, advice, services or
money. Among the people listed are the owners of the Anacapa Road building. It
reads:
"Suhil and Avit Khoury - allowed us to open our doors at the old homeless
shelter in Victorville until a funding source could be established. Opened April
1, 1999 - April 1, 2000. God Bless You."
Both Suhil Khoury and his broker, Joseph Brady, said they expected Antone to be
paying monthly rent, but she never paid anything.
"I lost a lot of money from this lady," Khoury said.
The report also blesses Robert and Catherine Coleman for their "donation of time
and services for the $3,000 worth of emergency door equipment," but Robert
Coleman tells a different story.
"I told her to buy the hardware and I would do the labor. Then she kept putting
if off, so I went out and picked up the hardware," he said. Although she
promised to pay him, he said, she never did.
Without his knowledge, Antone bestowed upon him the title of "Infrastructure
Security Intervention Director."
In May, Antone recruited people to work for $10 an hour on the Victorville
center and on a building in San Bernardino.
When the buildings were open, she told them, they’d get jobs there. But first,
she collected $150 from each of them - to cover the costs of CPR training,
badges and work smocks, she told them.
Former insiders estimate there were as many as 400 who paid to work but none of
them ever got paid. In July, workers said, Antone gave them bad checks. The
police had to escort Antone away from angry, unpaid workers after someone
vandalized her car.
It wasn’t as if she hadn’t tried to secure the payroll money. Investor Les
Wilson said she came to him for a loan to cover the payroll, but he was already
unhappy about money he had provided her earlier - money he was now sure he’d
never see again.
Since he had held a second trust deed on the 9th and D Street property in San
Bernardino, he says he had agreed to front the money for the building materials
Antone’s contractor would need to refurbish it.
"I thought I was looking at $15,000 or $20,000," Wilson said. "I spent more than
$60,000 on materials."
Ed Solomon said Antone also approached him for a $30,000 loan to make the
payroll, but it fell through when she couldn’t get family members to put their
house up as collateral.
Today, nobody once associated with Antone can find her. All of her phone numbers
have been disconnected. Her family members assured Press Dispatch reporters they
would pass on requests for comments, but neither she nor her husband have
responded.
Investor Les Wilson said he heard from her about six weeks ago. She described
another program she was working on.
"If I’d just borrow the money and give it to her, she’d give it back to me as a
down payment and she’d buy the building (9th and D streets)," he said. "She
thought she had a good solution. I couldn’t imagine a grown woman going around
like that."
About two or three months ago, said Soloman, Antone dropped off a packet for
another loan - a loan somewhere between $500,000 and $1,000,000. But he said he
tossed it out. It was to help pay off Les Wilson, Soloman said.
Today, when former associates contact each other, the first thing they ask is,
"Do you know where she is?"
From The Daily Press, November, 2000.