Fund-Raisers For Homeless Under Investigation

FEDERAL WAY - If you get a phone call from a group called Winter Help for the Homeless, they'll tell you the group is raising money to put homeless women and families up in motels.

But before you take out that checkbook, consider what they probably won't tell you.

They won't tell you the state attorney general's office is investigating the group based on complaints that telephone solicitors misrepresent themselves and push too hard for contributions.

They also probably won't tell you the organization's founder was a principal officer of a Utah telemarketing business shut down by that state's Division of Consumer Protection about a year ago.

Winter Help for the Homeless was started in Federal Way last October by David Pichcuskie, its president. The charity operates out of the same single-story house as Pichcuskie's company, Disadvantaged Work Program, which has sold light bulbs and garbage bags by phone.

Pichcuskie says he wanted to help the homeless "because I was homeless myself at one time and I know how hard it can be." He says most of the money raised by Winter Help for the Homeless goes to shelter the homeless and to pay many of them to solicit money for the program.

But before he came to Federal Way, he worked in Salt Lake City as treasurer of another telemarketing company, also called Disadvantaged Work Program. That company sold light bulbs and garbage bags by phone and was accused by the Utah attorney general's office of deceptive sales practices.

It was shut down last April because the company was not registered with the state, said Francine Giani, director of the Consumer Protection Division.

In June, based on an investigation of the company while it was still operating, the Utah attorney general's office filed a civil complaint against it and its president, Lanny Gray.

The complaint alleges company solicitors falsely claimed money raised from sales would go to disabled or disadvantaged people, and that the solicitors falsely claimed they were, themselves, disabled or disadvantaged. The case is pending in court.

Last April 13, less than two weeks after their Salt Lake City company was shut down, Gray and Pichcuskie opened the Disadvantaged Work Program in Federal Way, according to the Better Business Bureau in Seattle.

Gray and Pichcuskie are listed with the Better Business Bureau as partners in the company, which also goes by the name P & G Marketing.

Pichcuskie said this week that Gray is not involved in Winter Help for the Homeless. But Lorraine Lewis, a Washington attorney general's office investigator, said her office is investigating Disadvantaged Work Program because of the ties between the two men.

The office is investigating four complaints against Winter Help for the Homeless and one against Disadvantaged Work Program, said Assistant Attorney General Dave Horn.

He wouldn't discuss specifics about the case.

But he said, "generally the complaints are that they're very pushy, refusing to take `no' as an answer. There's one who complained they hung up on the caller, but the caller called back and was rather abusive."

Horn said an agency for the homeless complained it sent several people to Winter Help for the Homeless and all but one were turned away. Others, including the King County police, have complained solicitors falsely said they endorsed the program.