The May 2015 historic civil suit alleged that CFA, CSS, CCFOA, and BCS had collected more than $187 million in donations from consumers and that a majority of the money went to "the perpetrators, their families and friends," and for-profit fundraisers contracted by the charities.
Reynolds' and associates contracted about ten of these for-profit solicitors who "earned more than 80 cents of every dollar donated" [to CFA] for a total of $80.4 million."
Jim Reynolds Sr. was described by the Times/CIR report as a "a former Army medic with no college degree who worked his way up to lead the Knox County, Tenn., chapter of the prestigious American Cancer Society."
[4] In 1989, a dozen states sued Cancer Fund of America along with other charities with a fine of $2.1 million for "running sweepstakes that promised winners thousands of dollars but handed out checks for pennies.
"[4] In 2011 alone the salaries for the Reynolds network of cancer charities, drew over $8 million, which represented "3 times more than patients received in cash".
[4] In 2002, Rose Perkins, their son, James Reynolds Jr. and other CFA board members "transformed space in a telemarketer's phone room in Michigan into a brand new charity" called "Cancer Support Services".
The Times/CIR called CSS a "boiler room operation" where "hundreds of callers solicit[ed] donations, then send the cash to Cancer Fund to make its fundraising costs look lower.
[7][8] The Times/CIR investigation identified "America's 50 worst charities based on the money they divert from the needy by paying professional solicitation companies."
By 2013, about a dozen of these professional fundraisers had "multimillion dollar operations in Florida, Louisiana and Pennsylvania" that had "built networks of multiple charities, some with interlocking boards or family connections.
"[4] Of the "hundreds of thousands of nonprofits that operate in the United States", "[o]nly about 6,000 charities hire for-profit fundraisers"[4] according to the IRS.
Following a lawsuit in 1989, Reynolds said he planned on ending his contracts with the for-profit professional fundraisers and their "direct mail campaigns".
A civil suit was initiated by the Federal Trade Commission and all fifty states plus the District of Columbia[12][13] in May 2015, claiming that "most of the money collected through donations from 2008 through 2012 went to pay the telemarketing companies, and the operators of the charities then kept most of the rest of the funds for themselves".
The sham charities deceptively made their operations appear to be larger and more active through an "accounting device that involved pharmaceutical shipments overseas".
James Reynolds Sr. had to "surrender an unspecified portion of his personal assets and stay out of charity business for life.