Every cent of loose change helps. For decades that has been the pitch of the United Homeless Organisation (UHO), whose workers operate on dozens of street corners in Manhattan, urging passers-by to help provide food, clothing and hygienic services for the tens of thousands of people in New York without a roof over their heads.

But if the state's top legal officer is to be believed, the charity is nothing but a scam, whose sole beneficiaries are the two people that run it and their workers. In a lawsuit filed this week, Attorney-General Andrew Cuomo claimed their programmes to help the homeless simply do not exist.