LOS ANGELES (CN) — The 173rd Airborne Brigade Association, a nonprofit that represents 10,000 former and current "Sky Soldiers," accuses its former treasurer of lying about his military background and stealing as much as $300,000 from the organization.
According to a complaint filed Thursday in Los Angeles federal court, Caleb Geller managed in 2022 to convince the association's elected officers that he was a veteran of the brigade and that his purported experience in the nonprofit sector would improve their ability to raise money to support U.S. Army veterans.
Geller, however, turned out to be a sheep in wolves' clothing, according to the association, because once he was appointed treasurer, he concocted several schemes to steal their money.
In one scheme, he persuaded the association to let him use his own PayPal account to collect registration fees for their 2023 annual reunion. But when the association was notified that they hadn't paid the deposit for the venue where the reunion was to be held, Geller told them that PayPal had blocked the account because it couldn't verify the association's nonprofit status, the group says in its complaint.
After the association provided the IRS documents to confirm their status, Geller continued to come up with reasons why PayPal wouldn't release the $200,000 in registration fees that were sitting in his account, the group says in its complaint.
The association says it had to create a separate PayPal account to which Geller had no access to handle the registration fees for the reunion.
In a second scheme, the group says Geller claimed he knew a wealthy business owner who was willing to donate three new vehicles for an online raffle that could raise as much as $600,000 for their work. Once the association agreed to the raffle and its members started buying tickets, Geller and his fictional associate refused to provide the association administrative access to raffle's website or give them the registration numbers of the vehicles, the association says.
The association, by now alarmed by their treasurer's behavior, retained counsel to investigate him. The investigation, according to the complaint, revealed that Geller wasn't his real name and that he was born in 1986, which made it impossible for him to have served in the Army in 1997 as he had told the association's officers.
According to the association, public records showed Geller used a different name to solicit donations under the false pretense that he was a transgender male with ovarian cancer who desperately needed money to pay for his treatment. Other public records revealed that he and an associate received over $90,000 in PPP loans during the Covid pandemic by falsely claiming it was for educational support services, the group says in its complaint.
"While acting as treasurer, Mr. Geller converted, stole, and/or misappropriated over $300,000 from the association and its members without their knowledge or consent for his personal benefit," the group says in its complaint. "This action seeks to hold Mr. Geller and his co-conspirators accountable for their brazen and callous financial crimes against veterans who have risked their lives to defend our country."
Geller didn't immediately respond to a request for comment sent to his LinkedIn account.
The 173rd Airborne Brigade was the first U.S. Army unit to arrive in Vietnam in 1965, and it sustained heavy losses in the Battle of Dak To in 1967.
In the 1979 Francis Ford Coppola movie "Apocalypse Now," the lead character Capt. Benjamin Willard, played by Martin Sheen, is a member of the 173rd Airborne Brigade.
The association accuses Geller of breach of fiduciary duty, fraud by intentional misrepresentation, conversion, and claims money had and received. It seeks an injunction to prevent Geller from transferring the association's funds, disgorgement, and treble damages among other relief.
Margarette Mow of Mow Law Firm in South Pasadena, California, represents the association.
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