Better Business Bureau accepts "Hamas" as member

From the LA Times:

For generations, Americans turned to the Better Business Bureau to find out if the local grocer was cheating customers or if the neighborhood dry cleaner was mishandling clothes.

But this week the 101-year-old consumer watchdog turned its sights on one of its own — ousting the Los Angeles chapter that grades local businesses. BBB of the Southland was expelled after years of internal strife and a slew of audits by the Council of Better Business Bureaus.

The chapter, which was the organization's largest and covered Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Orange and Riverside counties, was accused of demanding that businesses pay membership fees in exchange for good ratings. It even reportedly issued an A-minus rating for a fake business named after Hamas, considered a terrorist group by the U.S. government.

...In 2010, ABC News reported that a group of Los Angeles business owners critical of the BBB paid dues for several fake companies, including Hamas. A leader of the BBB of the Southland said that at the time the Hamas business was being presented as a youth camp and the name was pronounced differently.

The dummy businesses were accepted by the BBB of the Southland, given ratings and accredited.

Unfortunately, that same scheme to "accredit" Hamas could work in international politics as well. Pay the petrodollars, pretend to be a respectable group, mouth the right words, and eventually you can get your way.

(h/t EBoZ)