LGBTQ Breaking News Service

A former police officer was found guilty of fraud for faking a long-term gay relationship with a pharmacist just hours after his death to scam his $6 million inheritance.

The Australian officer, Okan Yesilhat, attempted to contest pharmacist George Sclavos’ will by fabricating a 14-year secret relationship between them to claim he was the de facto partner of Sclavos and therefore entitled to his estate. The New South Wales Supreme Court judge called Yesilhat “manipulative” and “calculating”.

Just three and a half hours after Sclavos suffering a fatal heart attack, Yesilhat was found to have transferred $200,000 from the pharmacist’s account to his own, which “took all George’s credit and debit facilities to their available limits”, the Supreme Court heard.

Under Australian law, a couple can be considered de facto partners if they are unmarried but have lived together for at least two years without separation. However, there a number of other factors that can lead courts to consider two people in a de facto relationship, such as the length of the relationship, financial dependency and the degree of a mutual commitment to a shared life. Being considered a de facto partner gives one partner the right to challenge the other partner’s will if they die and claim their social security entitlements.

Sclavos originally left his estate to his two nieces, having never married or had children himself.

Okan Yesilhat married two different women during the 14 years he claimed he was in a relationship with Sclavos.

Yesilhat was found guilty of 14 charges relating to fraud and the misappropriation of money from Sclavos’ accounts. He was sentenced to a two-year intensive corrections order, similar to parole, and 750 hours of community service. He was also ordered to pay costs relating to his various legal challenges to the will, which all failed.

Justice Michael Slattery said Yesilhat “dishonestly diverted to himself or for his benefit all the funds transferred from the deceased’s accounts on and from the day of the deceased’s death.”

He later described Okan Yesilhat as “cold, very cold” and a “highly calculating individual” who “survives and thrives purveying misinformation and inventing stories”.

June 1, 2021 8 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Try, take a reality bath, devise, create and finally found. A 19-year-old Daniel Serrano became interested in the idea of some “cuates” (friends) who wanted to develop a civil association to help the Yucatecan LGBT population.

“I fell in love with the project, I got involved with them and during a year that I was in it I realized that my problems were nothing compared to all the violence and discrimination that existed in Yucatán and, obviously, throughout the country,” he says. Daniel Serrano de Regil, founder of Insade in an interview with Entrepreneur in Spanish .

After this experience, Serrano began to connect with the world of activism, from feminism to work related to HIV, sexual and reproductive rights. The young man ended up specializing in the latter, through a participation in Catholics for the Right to Decide.

“Here my labor activism grew a lot, in one of those I got to know the world of entrepreneurship through Ashoka Mexico and Central America and from there I began to have my approaches to the issue of social entrepreneurship,” he says.

Daniel Serrano refused to create his own civil association for all that it implied in terms of taxes, paperwork “and others.” However, as a result of having the idea of some projects stolen from him in 2010, the following year he decided to found his own organization and in this way Interculturalidad, Salud y Derechos AC , better known as Insade, was born .

Insade is responsible for generating strategies for social reintegration and economic autonomy of populations in the context of violence, crime or confinement through participatory methodologies in the hands of key allies.

“What we are looking for is to show that second chances are possible and that undertaking freely is possible,” says Serrano.

How does this Association work?

Insade has “an intervention model created from the populations themselves” known as “Made in Freedom”, it is dedicated to generating these options for social reintegration and economic autonomy in populations that decide not to commit crimes again.

“This is very important: no one is forced into the model, no one is necessarily channeled by a judge. It is a model that starts from cooperation and volunteering or the will of people who say: “I stop the crime here. I already want to start over ”, explains the entrepreneur.

This program has four phases:

Skills for life , where they use sport as a reintegration approach to work on values such as teamwork, equity, frustration in the face of failure, among others. In addition, they address the issue of drug addiction and foster restorative justice circles, the latter where it teaches people how to file a criminal record discrimination complaint.

The “ Labor Training ” phase, in which beneficiaries are taught to develop products that allow them to be self-employed.

“We help those who want to be self-employed to make artisan products, through screen printing, painting of trees of life, making creams and soaps with natural ingredients. Those who decide to be employed are focused on being apprentices in screen printing and sublimated, and apprentices in cooking ”.

The third phase is about “Entrepreneurial Skills and Access to the Ecosystem” , it has to do with self-employment, it helps the beneficiaries to land a business model, present a pitch, learn the Canvas business model and link them with credits accessible.

“In the case of those who are going to be employed, we link them with small businesses so that they can carry out professional internships, so to speak. Right now, due to COVID, it has not been possible to resume that ”.

Follow-up phase , this last stage is described by Serrano as “the most important”, it is the moment where they follow up on each person to know how the reintegration process is going, it occurs in a period between 6 and 12 years.

“Between 6 and 12 years we follow up on each one of them to see how their reintegration is, to see if they have not had obstacles, if they were not discriminated against, if they had any problems with any procedure.”

What they want to achieve with this methodology is to provide skills, mentoring and links so that people who leave jail or jail can “undertake in freedom.”

Alliances with micro-enterprises

The association that Serrano directs seeks alliances with small businesses, such as cafeterias, restaurants and other types of enterprises that are interested in providing jobs to vulnerable groups.

“A great ally of ours is this social company called Pixza, which employs young people in vulnerable contexts and is an example of a company that is helping us in this regard,” he says.

Success stories

Last year the CA documented between 100 and 150 people with three profiles of social entrepreneurs:

• Women who came out of prison who already have their micro-businesses and are beginning to employ other women who are coming out of prison.
• Speakers , former beneficiaries who are going to share testimonies with other young people to motivate them not to commit a crime again.
• Teachers, those beneficiaries who now teach other people who got out of jail.

“So the model is not only reintegrating people who decide not to commit a crime again, but it is also generating agents of change and social entrepreneurs,” says Serrano.

Remove stigmata

The difficult thing for the association has been convincing donors that the people they are helping will not be criminals for life, also removing the stigma that if they are taught combat sports they will develop violent behavior.

“The challenge is that, that they see them as agents of change and that they stop seeing them as these people who will commit crimes all their lives. Indeed, there are people in jail who look you in the eye and tell you, “I’m going to do it when I’m going out.” And this is very his idea, very his roll and what a pity, but it is worth investing in those who look at you in the face and say, “I no longer want to return here,” he explains.

With the issue of the pandemic, the members of Insade were afraid that there would be recurrences in the beneficiaries. However, despite the fact that some had problems in their jobs, none of them relapsed into crime.

“It was incredible to know from their own voices that they said,” Not even here did the reoffending happen to me. ” And we asked them why, and most of them agreed, “I don’t want to go back to that hell, which meant being in jail for me.”

Insade has already helped just over 5,500 people, of which 20% are women and 80% are men. Likewise, within the profiles of vulnerable groups that most reach the model are older adults, indigenous population and the LGBT community.

“Today we have a presence in five cities with our structure. Nuevo León, Tlaxcala, Mexico City, the State of Mexico and Yucatán, but we are beginning to expand our model through the figure of local partners, allies or allies who have already done something in the area of crime prevention, social reintegration and who want to incorporate something of the model. We are already with local partners in Coahuila and Chiapas ”, Serrano concludes.

For years, Devin Ibañez took pains to keep his professional rugby career separate from his personal life.

The Brookline native had come out as gay to his parents at just 11 years old and was open about his sexuality with friends. Yet it would be another 16 years before he shared that news with the world, becoming the first openly gay Major League Rugby player.

Since publicly coming out in December, Ibañez has dedicated himself to making sports a more inclusive space for everyone.

Growing up in Brookline, Ibañez recalled the town’s acceptance of LGBTQ people. The sporting community, however, was another story.

“I still felt like it was still very typical and kind of hyper-masculine culture where I didn’t really feel comfortable sharing [my sexuality],” he said.

The 2011 Brookline High School graduate got his start with rugby there, continuing through his time at UMass-Amherst and going on to play abroad in Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.

Ibañez also represented the U.S. at the 2017 Maccabiah Games, where the team won gold. He played locally after returning to the Boston area, becoming one of the first players signed to the Major League Rugby team the New England Free Jacks, founded in 2018.

Even as his pro career grew, Ibañez hesitated to come out publicly.

He knew of other LGBTQ rugby players who had, many years prior, been effectively blackballed from the sport due to the stigma. He also wondered whether he would be tokenized and shown favoritism in the name of inclusivity.

“You just get into your head so much about what the impacts of it could be,” he said.

After taking a shoulder to the throat in 2017, he suffered a severe injury that left him re-thinking how he wanted to live his life. He met his partner, Fergus Wade, soon after.

Fast-forward a few years, and the pandemic hit – rugby was on hold, and Ibañez was physically separated from Wade, who was studying abroad in the UK. On Dec. 29, with Wade’s birthday and the couple’s third anniversary just days away, the timing was finally right.

“I was like, ‘I don’t want to let a whole other year go by where I can’t publicly wish my partner happy birthday [and] I can’t publicly celebrate our love and our anniversary,’” Ibañez recalled. “And then I just had this urgency all of a sudden, where I was just like, ‘You know what, I’m going to stop putting this off.’”

He sat down on his lunch break at work and typed out the social media post that had been long in the making.

“I’d been putting this off for years, because I felt like I needed to accomplish more or prove myself more as a rugby player,” he said. “It’s like, there’s no rugby going on anymore; now it’s just me and what’s best for me and my partner.”

The post on his Instagram account, @thatgayrugger, took off, drawing attention from all over the world.

“It was just a crazy kind of whirlwind experience, where something that I had just written as kind of like an open love letter to my partner became this big, kind of international story,” he recalled.

The rugby community’s response was overwhelmingly positive; to date, Ibañez said he has not received one negative message.

“In rugby, there’s this kind of perception that we have of ourselves that we are the most inclusive sport, and that anybody can play and the only thing we care about is if you’re a great player and a good teammate,” he explained.

At the same time, Ibañez knew that wasn’t always the case.

Last year, governing body World Rugby passed a policy banning transgender women from competing in international women’s competitions.

When Ibañez saw his broad network of rugby contacts remain mostly silent on the issue, he decided to speak up.

“I really felt like it would be incredibly impactful if I could just like, come forward and not only say, ‘Yes, I’m an openly gay rugby player,’ but also say these are issues that should be important to all of us, not just to women’s rugby players, not just to queer rugby players,” he said.

He later partnered with artist Richard Lopez, who had heard him speak on the podcast Race Chaser and wanted to launch a fundraiser. World Rugby’s ban wasn’t set to be reconsidered soon, so the pair are fundraising for the Transgender Law Center, which provides legal advocacy and support to transgender people facing discrimination.

They’ve raised more than $5,500 in less than two weeks and hope to make it to $7,500 by the time the fundraiser closes June 6.

Reunited with Wade in London and playing rugby with Richmond Football Club there, Ibañez – who was recently named International Gay Rugby’s global ambassador – is buckling down on his advocacy and community outreach.

“It’s not just about making rugby more accessible to gay athletes, it’s about making it more accessible to all parts of the LGBTQ community, but also making sure that it’s racially inclusive, making sure that all backgrounds and all cultures feel accepted and loved,” Ibañez said. “Unfortunately, with the history of rugby, it is still very much so an overwhelmingly white sport.”

Ibañez has also set his sights on the 2022 Maccabiah Games, where he said he would like to serve as Team USA’s first openly gay captain.

In the meantime, he plans to continue his public speaking and activism. Sports, he said, have the power to set an example of what diversity and inclusivity should look like.

“I just want to marry my two loves of rugby and being myself and showing people that those don’t have to be mutually exclusive things,” Ibañez said.

To donate to Ibañez’s Transgender Law Center fundraiser, visit tinyurl.com/TLCfundraiser.

A gay Ohio middle school student was brutally attacked by other students just because he was wearing a Pride flag.

Tristen Torrez, 14, told local news station WTOL 11 that he had been standing on the bleachers at Defiance Middle School in Defiance, Ohio. He said students were allowed outside on Thursday (27 May) to celebrate the last day of classes. But instead of celebrating, Torrez was attacked by fellow students because he was wearing a Pride flag – which was caught on video and shared on social media.

The video, which was shared with WTOL 11, shows Torrez standing on the bleachers with a Pride flag around his neck and draped on his shoulders. Another student approaches Torrez from behind, grabs the flag and throws Torrez down against the bleachers. Torrez sits up, but the other student pulls off the flag and hits Torrez with it.

The video ends with Torrez being surrounded by students, who are hitting him. Torrez told WTOL 11 that the other student “poured water” on him and then “started choking” him.

The teen said that wearing the Pride flag was his “official way” of saying he is gay and “not trying to hide it”. Torrez added: “I was wearing it to state a message, and state just because one person is who they are, proud of who they are, doesn’t mean others shouldn’t be proud of who they are.”

He told WTOL 11 that he heard from other students that he was attacked because of a “dare”. Torrez added: “Someone told me it was because I said a racial slur, which was completely false.

“Some people said it was because I’m gay and just do it anyway.”

Torrez’s mother, Brianne, said the incident was “heartbreaking” to her. She told WTOL 11 that she woke up to her son coming home after school and telling her that “he was roughed up today”.

“He’s so used to the bullying it was kind of nothing to him, but to me, it was heartbreaking,” Brianne said.

Defiance City Schools superintendent Bob Morton said in a statement to WTOL 11 that they are “aware of this situation”. He explained Defiance City Schools takes situations like this “seriously”, and this incident was dealt with “swiftly with school administration and local law enforcement”.