During a three-day “recovery” operation that ended last month, volunteers with the nonprofit Saved In America said they would work to find 11 girls missing from homes in the Las Vegas area.
The aim of the effort was to find young women suspected of being victims of human trafficking.
It was also a fundraiser that was widely sponsored by Saved in America founder Joseph Travers, a former San Diego County police officer and private investigator. He said he needed $ 15,000 to cover the expenses.
“Can you help us today with a donation,” says the Saved In America announcement. “Only with your support can we continue to assist parents and law enforcement agencies in recovering missing and runaway children threatened by human trafficking in the United States.”
Although volunteers said they would contact the police if they found any of the missing girls, it is not clear whether girls were recovered.
The Las Vegas project was billed as a joint operation with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. It was not.
“LVMPD did not participate in a joint operation with Saved in America,” the department said in a statement last week.
Local TV channels broadcast news of the event describing how Saved In America volunteers used electronic surveillance devices, high-end cameras, walkie-talkies, and other investigative tools to track down potential traffickers.
“This is real,” said Travers in an interview with Fox5 in Las Vegas. “This is almost as common as drug trafficking. A drug dealer can only sell his product once, but he can sell a girl over and over again. “
This news may sound familiar to San Diego County law enforcement and others. Travers has said the same thing to politicians, donors, and reporters in the San Diego area for years.
In marketing videos and press releases, Travers regularly takes advantage of the fear and grief arising from the prospect of selling young girls to the sex trade to generate revenue for Saved In America, which is more than two decades old.
The Las Vegas action, which took place between April 29 and May 1, included a mobile command center and other equipment that was paid for with $ 305,000 grants from the San Diego County Board of Supervisors, the report said and the district officials.
As a result of the event, San Diego county officials want to know if the charity has violated the terms of these grants, which prohibit the use of public funds to generate donations, county spokesman Michael Workman said.
“We’re reviewing past grants to see if there is a remedy,” Workman said via email. “It is important to note, however, that SIA ran on a number of one-year contracts. These have now expired and have not been extended. “
Saved In America remains eligible for San Diego County grant funds, although the charity is not allowed to use the proceeds to raise funds, Workman said.
“SIA continues to provide irresistible material to the local media. Just like they did here. This development in Las Vegas is not surprising, ”he said.
Travers did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
He has told the San Diego Union-Tribune in previous interviews that his organization helped save children and that every public dollar he accepted was spent on equipment and other tools called for as part of the county grants .
As with other Saved In America promotions, Travers relied on the mobile command center San Diego County paid for to run the Las Vegas event. The vehicle is a motor home equipped with communications and other devices designed to help locate victims of human trafficking.
Kristin Gaspar, former San Diego County manager, one of Travers’s biggest supporters who served on Saved In America’s advisory board, made at least $ 105,000 in public grants to the organization during her only tenure in the county office, the company said San Diego Union-Tribune in 2019.
These funds and $ 200,000 in other county grants led by former overseers Greg Cox, Bill Horn, and Ron Roberts helped pay for Saved In America’s command center and other projects.
Gaspar also recommended that Saved In America operate $ 2 million protection for victims of sex trafficking. Gaspar wanted the district to open in 2019.
At the time, Gaspar did not reveal her seat on the charity’s advisory board or her role as chairperson of the gala fundraiser, the Union-Tribune reported. Her office said no disclosure was required.
Gaspar lost her re-election offer to Terra Lawson-Remer last November.
Last month, two weeks after surgery in Las Vegas, Lawson-Remer officially ended plans for Saved In America to manage proposed housing for victims of sex trafficking.
She said the county shouldn’t have bought an RV for Saved In America, and she was redirecting the housing money to fund park upgrades, infrastructure repairs, and other neighborhood priorities.
“I was reading the local investigation reports when I was running for office and I was extremely concerned about the ethical and financial consequences if the county continued to do business with Saved In America,” Lawson-Remer said, referring to reports from the company Union-Tribune and other local media. “You should never have received public money in the first place.”
The National Christian Information Center, based in Oceanside, is the nonprofit that operates as Saved In America. The charity has claimed to have saved 250 children since it was founded more than a decade ago.
Travers admitted in an in-depth interview with the Union-Tribune in 2019 that the majority of these rescues were young people who had left the home of the Casa de Amparo group for vulnerable teenagers.
Travis said the San Marcos facility hired his private security company to patrol the property and every time a child left the property – even for a few minutes – he counted their return as “rest.”
Tax filings filed by the National Christian Information Center show that Travers was paid tens of thousands of dollars by the nonprofit, which had reported annual sales of nearly $ 2 million through 2019.
Public records show that Travers formed a separate charity – Saved In America Inc. – in 2018. The newer nonprofit paid Travers $ 34,000 in 2019, according to federal tax returns.
The same records contain conflicting information about money transfers between the two organizations in the 2019 calendar year.
Specifically, Saved In America Inc. reported collecting $ 590,000 from the National Christian Information Center in the 2019 tax year. That same year, the National Christian Information Center announced it had transferred $ 463,000 to Saved In America.
The records also show that the two charities paid $ 360,000 in management fees to unspecified companies and over $ 200,000 to Travers and other board members, including Travers’ son Joshua, in 2018 and 2019.
Questions about the finances of the National Christian Information Center prompted a high profile donor to sue the tax-exempt organization for fraud in 2019.
The lawsuit brought by San Diego business leader and philanthropist William Lynch accused Saved In America of mishandling a $ 1.5 million gift from the family fund he managed two years earlier.
According to the legal complaint, Travers agreed to send half of the money to a separate charity and $ 240,000 to a special account that would allow Saved In America to host a professional fundraiser.
But the plaintiffs said the money was not properly invested.
“Neither SIA nor Travers have presented the plaintiffs with a statement of the use of the funds received,” says the lawsuit. Instead, the defendants “spent money that plaintiffs spent on purposes other than the charitable causes for which they were donated.”
Travers and other defendants countered, alleging, among other things, that Lynch mishandled trust funds.
The case and the cross-appeal were dismissed in a joint agreement filed by both sides last month. The plaintiffs and defendants’ attorneys did not respond to requests for comments.
