The Dayton chapter of the civil rights organization founded by Martin Luther King Jr. has been stripped of its tax-exempt status because it didn’t file tax returns with the Internal Revenue Service to account for its receipts and expenditures during its final, scandal-ridden years under former chairman the Rev. Raleigh Trammell.

The IRS announced this week that the tax exemption of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s Dayton chapter was revoked automatically last May because the SCLC failed for three consecutive years to file tax returns for nonprofits known as Forms 990. The forms, open for public inspection, detail how nonprofits raise and spend their money. According to the GuideStar database, the chapter’s last Form 990 was for 2008.

The chapter’s leader since 2010, Bishop Richard Cox, said he was unaware of the IRS action and will seek to have the status reinstated. He said he and other local SCLC members volunteer their services, and the group hasn’t been receiving public funding or providing social services since Cox took over.

But Cox said the SCLC may need tax-exempt status again, as leaders are considering seeking funding for voter registration efforts and a proposed program to help victims of human trafficking. The lack of tax exemption “may be hindering what the SCLC may do in the future,” Cox said. “The SCLC is alive and well.”

Under Trammell, the SCLC claimed to provide a range of social services, including a battered women’s shelter and a food pantry, and received federal, state and local funding. All that public funding was pulled after officials discovered spending irregularities.

Trammell was convicted last year of 51 felony theft charges stemming from a Dayton Daily News investigation of an SCLC program allegedly providing home-delivered meals for shut-ins. Among those Trammell claimed to be serving were dead people and nursing home residents who were being fed by the homes. He was briefly imprisoned, but released on bond pending appeal.