A second Vallejo group has distanced itself from a local man accused of trying to have sex with a 14-year-old girl in San Francisco earlier this month.
Peter Brooks, president of Fresh Air Vallejo, said last week that Bryan Rosenthal wasn’t an active member of the group but “offered his foundation as our fiscal receiver” sometime in 2016.
Rosenthal, 45, was arrested after he allegedly arranged to have sex with the underage girl, but was instead met by police investigators.
He is the founder and president of the Vallejo-based Cann-I-Dream children’s charity.
“As we moved forward in June 2016 all ties were severed,” Brooks said in an email to the Times-Herald last week. “We are currently a not-for-profit organization with a Board of Directors and officers, in which Bryan was never involved.”
However, screen shots from previous versions of Fresh Air Vallejo’s website show Rosenthal’s photo under the “About Us” section, which lists prominent members of the group. They include, Brooks, and Vallejo residents Paula Bauer, Liat Meitzenheimer, and Donald Osborne, among others.
Brooks further clarified Rosenthal’s association with the group.
“When Fresh Air Vallejo was founded in 2015, we were looking for a local nonprofit to help us deposit donations we were receiving from Vallejo citizens,” Brooks wrote in a separate email to the Times-Herald. “Bryan offered his foundation which he led us to believe was a 50.c.3 nonprofit organization with the proper tax status. When we learned that his foundation was not a 501.c.3, we severed that banking relationship with Bryan and opened a new account.”
Fresh Air Vallejo is comprised of local residents opposed to the Vallejo Marine Terminal, Orcem project proposed for development in South Vallejo. The group contends the project will harm the local environment and residents.
“We are saddened by the allegations against Bryan but remain committed to our core beliefs that Vallejo citizens can stop a cement factory on Vallejo’s waterfront and together we’ll continue to fight for environmental justice for the people of south Vallejo,” Brooks wrote in an email to the Times-Herald.
A search of the Internal Revenue Service’s tax-exempt organizations online database revealed that the Cann-I-Dream Foundation had its tax-exempt status revoked in May 2017. According to the website, organizations lose their tax-exempt status if they fail to file tax forums for three consecutive years. The same record search shows the foundation was exempt as a 501(c)(4), which is reserved for social welfare organizations.
Reached for comment last week, Rosenthal declined to say why he never filed tax returns for the foundation. However, much of the funding to the foundation came from the cannabis industry. While regulated in several states, including California, cannabis is still illegal under federal law.