This story was originally published on LincolnChronicle.org and is used with permission.
An Otis man already accused by the state of stealing hundreds of thousands in donations for victims of Labor Day 2020 fires was indicted Tuesday by a Lincoln County grand jury on two counts of aggravated theft from the American Red Cross.
The indictment charges Marcus Brooks of Otis of stealing more than $50,000 from the Red Cross in Lincoln County on Set. 7, 2023 and Nov. 3, 2023.
Brooks is the founder and director of Cascade Relief Team, which is based in Otis, and founded in 2020 to help recovery from the 2020 Echo Mountain Fire that tore through that community. It later expanded to operations in the McKenzie River Valley east of Eugene and to Kentucky.
The local indictment follows a civil suit by the Oregon Department of Justice in April that accused Brooks of running donated and government grants through 26 bank accounts and then spending it on casino trips, strip clubs, a Disneyland vacation, vehicles, and personal bills – all while wildfire survivors in Oregon waited for help that never came.
The last of Cascade Relief Team employees were laid off in August 2023, one former team member told the Lincoln Chronicle.
The civil suit is pending in Multnomah County, but court documents indicate prosecutors have had trouble locating Brooks to serve legal papers. His address of record is still in Otis.
In a news release, the Oregon Department of Justice said Tuesday’s criminal indictment centers on a $326,000 grant from the American Red Cross intended to help build shelters for tornado survivors in Kentucky.
The agency said Brooks used a substantial portion of the funds to settle past debts and using new grants to shore up pre-existing liabilities. The rest, investigators say, went to personal use — vehicle payments, entertainment, cash withdrawals from ATMs (many at casinos), payments to himself, travel and hotel stays unrelated to the Kentucky project, and fees from bank overdrafts.
“This man preyed on people at the worst moment of their lives,” Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield said in a statement. “He wore the badge of a disaster relief leader while gambling away the money meant to rebuild people’s homes and give them a new start. That’s a debt he’ll have to pay back in more ways than one.”
The Lincoln County grand jury heard from seven witnesses on Tuesday, including three former members of the Cascade Relief Team, a Portland Police Bureau detective and the Red Cross’s national director of long-term recovery.
The Oregon Department of Justice said in April that Brooks landed a $326,000 contract with the Red Cross in November 2023 to help tornado victims in Kentucky. That money was sent to an account with $17,000 in overdraft fees, leaving $309,000 remaining that Brooks never doled out to tornado victims, according to investigators.
In a 24-page lawsuit filed in April, the Oregon Department of Justice claims Brooks set up the organization with a “disinterested board of directors” to reap donations — largely from Oregonians — and public contracts.
That lawsuit said Brooks capitalized on the devastation by forming a “sham” organization that was governed by board members who, ultimately, never attended any meetings or saw any financial records. Donations poured in. The organization notched $48,000 in revenue in 2020 and another $941,587 in 2021, according to public filings required of nonprofit organizations.
Brooks, meanwhile, began a pattern of drying out bank accounts. State investigators said he opened several accounts at a time for donations, spent them into the red and ignored rising bank fees. Banks would close his accounts, only for Brooks to move on to another financial institution.
Brooks’ organization also collected contract money through government agencies and disaster relief organizations. At one point, the Oregon Department of Human Services paid the organization $60 an hour to help disaster-struck Oregonians but did not renew the eight-month contract after developing concerns about the organization, according to the April complaint.
Brooks also landed a $100,000 contract with the Oregon State Fire Marshal to clean up debris and help remove trees associated with 2020 wildfires. He ghosted the organization shortly after getting the grant, the complaint said, and never completed the work.
