Two staff members of the Baltimore office of ACORN were fired Thursday after they were captured on hidden camera appearing to give advice on evading tax laws to a man and woman posing as a pimp and a prostitute.
The video depicts a man and a scantily dressed female partner visiting the Charles Village office of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, where they appear to ask two employees about how to shield their work from state and federal tax requirements. The supposed pimp also appears to ask the employees how to conceal underage girls from El Salvador brought into the country illegally to work for him.
"If they don't have Social Security numbers, you don't have to worry about them," the employee says.
FOR THE RECORD - An article in Friday's editions misstated the Web site on which a video depicting employees at the Baltimore office of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) first appeared. The footage made its debut at BigGovernment.com.
The Baltimore Sun regrets the error.
Stuart Katzenberg, lead organizer for ACORN's Maryland chapter, said ACORN is questioning the validity of the video but had fired the employees who appeared in it because their handling of the situation "did not meet ACORN's standards of professionalism."
"Our work historically speaks for itself - fighting for working-class families across the country and in Baltimore," Katzenberg said.
ACORN, which provides services to the needy, emerged as a target of Republicans during the 2008 presidential campaign, when it was accused of submitting fraudulent voter registration cards in several states. Although officially nonpartisan, the organization tends to serve poor and minority communities that traditionally vote Democratic.
Posted online Thursday, the video made waves, particularly in conservative circles. Although it first appeared on a Web site called Big Hollywood, Katzenberg said it was part of a "coordinated" campaign by FOX News to damage ACORN. He could not offer evidence to support his claim, and a spokeswoman for FOX News said the allegations were without merit.
Katzenberg said ACORN offices in New York, Philadelphia and Los Angeles had received visits under similar scenarios, but those people were turned away.
He said the Baltimore employees did not know they were being videotaped. He said Hannah Giles and James O'Keefe, the supposed prostitute and pimp, consistently misrepresented their intentions. He said the ACORN employees, a part-time receptionist and a part-time tax preparer, filed no tax returns and provided no assistance. ACORN now is trying to determine whether the videotaping broke any laws, Katzenberg said.
