I was approached at home by a young man wearing a white shirt, black pants and tie — he at first appeared to be a missionary of some kind. When I answered the door he launched into a pitch about selling magazines for the charity "Graceful Hands", which he claimed was helping him and other young adults from "the hard inner city life" make a better life for themselves through magazine sales. It was a strange speech and I kept interrupting asking questions, but he had a difficult time answering off-message questions like "where is the charity based" and "where can I find more information online."
He was very focused on the magazine sales and told me that if I bought a package of 3 subscriptions he'd be allowed to go home for the evening — which was a bit disturbing in itself. When I said I didn't need magazines he suggested that I donate them to local charities. When I asked him for the amount for the subscriptions, he said "186.00 for the package of 3" — totally nuts. I told him that I'd be willing to give him a small donation of 25.00 via check just because he was working hard, and he gave me a receipt from an organization called "Graceful Hands".
The web site for this organization is gracefulhands.org, which is the only information about this entity available anywhere online. The site itself appears to have been thrown together quickly and has only some basic generic information, although it does have the name of the founder — Maurice McClain. Researching Maurice McClain led to discovering that this man also runs a notorious scam operation called Ultimate Unity Inc, which appears to recruit vulnerable youth into a traveling sales program where they're taken from city to city doing exactly what Graceful Hands appeared to be doing in my neighborhood.
Very bad feeling about this organization and even more disconcerted upon learning that the founder, Maruice McClain, might be exploiting vulnerable youth. Given the total lack of information about Graceful Hands anywhere online and the connection to Ultimate Unity Inc., I'm planning to file a police report to alert local authorities that these people are active in my area.
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