HOLLYWOOD Fraud case reveals celebrities' take from charity performances

Ray Charles was paid $75,000 for singing four songs at a charity benefit.
LOS ANGELES TIMES
Almost any night of the week around Los Angeles, one charity or another holds a glitzy fund-raising benefit, backed by a Hollywood star.
But many celebrities appear at these events not solely out of the goodness of their hearts. They come to line their pockets.
Actor David Schwimmer, who has made many millions of dollars starring in NBC's "Friends," received a pair of Rolex watches worth $26,413 in advance of a 1997 charity gala that had among its intended beneficiaries the John Wayne Cancer Institute.
Singer Engelbert Humperdinck, as partial payment for a 1998 benefit appearance at the Friar's Club, received two Cartier watches priced at $8,500 each.
Piano legend Ray Charles picked up $75,000 for a four-song appearance at a 2002 SHARE gala in Santa Monica, Calif., which was to benefit developmentally disabled children.
All three events were among more than a dozen organized in recent years by Aaron Tonken, a Los Angeles event promoter, who in November was charged by federal authorities with two counts of fraud related to charitable fund raising. He is expected to appear Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.
$7 million missing
Meanwhile, federal authorities and their counterparts in California State Attorney General Bill Lockyer's office are trying to figure out what happened to as much as $7 million in funds that were raised at Tonken-organized events but never made it to designated charities. According to those familiar with the inquiry, little of the money was kept by Tonken himself.
Rather, it was spent on -- and sometimes demanded by -- those who needed it the least: the rich and famous, and their hangers-on.
It is a practice, say those familiar with the Hollywood fund-raising scene, that the Tonken case has exposed but is hardly limited to those events with which he was connected.
"Stars know they can literally steal from charity," said Steven Fox, a Monterey, Calif., businessman who worked with Tonken on a 1995 fund-raiser for the Tommy Lasorda Jr. Memorial Foundation. "Otherwise, they don't perform. They don't appear."
State and federal law-enforcement officials say it isn't clear whether the celebrities who appeared at charity benefits in exchange for cash and perks did anything illegal. Stars maintain that they considered what they received to be gifts or compensation to perform.
Celebrities' explanations
A publicist for Schwimmer declined to comment on an invoice that documented the giving of the Rolexes. Humperdinck's representative declined to comment. Charles' spokesman confirmed the $75,000 payment. He added that the singer usually gives the money he makes from performing at charitable benefits to his own philanthropic foundation, but SHARE was an exception. That time, he kept it.
Indeed, some celebrities even draw up formal contracts for their charity-circuit appearances. For example, the William Morris Agency sent Bill Cosby an agreement guaranteeing him a $75,000 fee and $10,000 in expense money to receive "the Humanitarian Award" at a University of California, Los Angeles, cancer research benefit set for early this year. Tonken's business collapsed, however, before the gala was held.
A Cosby spokesman said the comic instructed his agent to tell the charity he would donate his fee to the group if the event had gone forward. The spokesman said he didn't know why Cosby didn't simply forgo the fee.
Sometimes, Tonken-connected charities did well in the end. For instance, the SHARE event raised $1.3 million. Nonetheless, authorities and event participants note that every dollar spent wooing a celebrity is a dollar that could have gone to the needy.
Some doubt that the stars are worth what they often cost.
"We could have tripled the number of kids we support each year," said Marsue MacNicol, volunteer administrator with the Corie Williams Scholarship Fund, if the famous hadn't bitten into her group's share of the $1.5 million collected at a Family Celebration.