this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2023
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[–] Contramuffin@lemmy.world 46 points 10 months ago (3 children)

YouTuber who ran a charity for something like 10 years, recently it came out that he kept all the money that was donated. What was supposed to happen is that he takes the donations, then donates that to another charity. When called out, his excuse was that he "forgot to donate the money."

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 16 points 10 months ago (5 children)

He later did donate the money, but only after being publicly called out, and his excuse was that he was trying to find his right charity to donate to, not that he forgot.

He's still a scumbag, but don't oversell it, the truth is bad enough.

[–] Fyurion@lemmy.world 13 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

He starts by saying he didnt know and "that's not cool" but than changes his story and now it was totaly the plan all along. But on top of this, for years he would say all money they receive would be donated including things like twitch subscriptions and all that but now he says they used that money for their own costs. But wait there's more! His familly also runs a golf tournament which was supposed to donate all the money they recive to his charity but that money is nowhere to be found.

And to top it all off, he keeps bringing up his dead mother to try to get sympathy. The Completionist is a COMPLETE scumbag and a consistent liar, you cant trust a word he says. Oh and he is threatening to sue the people that brought his clear fraud to light.

I think that covers it

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 points 10 months ago

changes his story

I'm not going to defend or attack the guy, merely point out that facts. How much he knew and when is certainly up for debate, we just have limited evidence of that.

What we do have are facts, and those facts can certainly be used for cause for tht authorities to investigate.

His family also runs a golf tournament which was supposed to donate all the money they recive to his charity

That's partially true. What we know is that his dad runs a golf tournament and put the Open Hand Foundation on the ads. Usually this means all proceeds go to the charity, or at least that they get the sponsorship money (i.e. merch and whatnot) according to the prices they have listed for sponsors, but we don't have the actual agreement AFAIK between the tournament and the charity.

So there's certainly enough to warrant an investigation, but not enough to actually prove any kind of crime. There does seem to be enough to prove negligence for holding onto the money for 10 years though, which should be enough to trigger a thorough audit, including alleged golf tournament income.

And that's what I don't like about this whole thing. They've already presented facts and contacted the relevant authorities, so anything further they say is conjecture and therefore YouTube drama. The first video by Mutahar was informative, the second was a bit of drama (they should've investigated the golf thing a bit more), the third was just dunking on him, and any further videos I see that aren't directly related to an investigation are pure Internet drama at this point.

[–] p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

He’s still a scumbag, but don’t oversell it, the truth is bad enough.

One, running a charity and saying that you're donating money and then not donating that money is still charity fraud, especially when you advertise that you've "donated the money" in past events.

Two, they run another golf event that has donations that are easily tracked (by the number of donation members and tier groups for those donations), but the money from those events do not add up to the money they have on their non-profit statements. They have also conveniently left out their donation amounts for that golf event in an (very poor) attempt to hide the money that they have been stealing from that event.

He's a scumbag, and a criminal, and a thief. And he and his brother deserves to serve prison time. And they did this in the dumbest way possible, to the point that a YouTuber could follow the path and find the fraud. This sort of case is a federal prosecutor's wet dream.

There is no such thing as "overselling" this.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works -2 points 10 months ago

running a charity and saying that you're donating money and then not donating that money is still charity fraud

Potentially. I'm not a tax expert, and I do know there's usually some leeway about timing, though there's a good chance delaying for 10 years does violate the law (not sure how the process of moving from private to public nonprofit changes things). This would hinge on how the IRS sees the "promises" Jirard made when asking for donations, whether the eventual donation fits with those promises, and how the IRS interprets the law.

There's certainly enough to allege that they committed charity fraud, but there absolutely must be an official investigation before conclusions can be drawn. If you jump to conclusions, you can legitimately be sued for defamation and perhaps libel, depending on the statements.

the money from those events do not add up to the money they have on their non-profit statements

Again, that's not proof, it's evidence, and it certainly warrants closer inspection. We don't know the deal between the groups involved, and we have no way of getting those without an investigation.

You can absolutely say, "this is really fishy, explain yourselves" and file reports to the relevant authorities (crowd-sourcing reports is a step too far since it just increases the crap authorities need to wade through).

He's a scumbag, and a criminal, and a thief

There's a good chance of that, but at the end of the day, he is innocent until proven guilty, and if you assume otherwise, you open yourself up to defamation lawsuits. That doesn't matter on something like Lemmy, but it absolutely does for people use make their living off public statements.

[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

his excuse was that he was trying to find his right charity to donate to

Yeah, so bonkers. Naming a specific charity for 10 years and then to claim that all that time was spent to find the right charity is such an obviously dumb lie. Before the golf tournament thing came out, he could just have claimed "Oops, I could have sworn I made a recurring donation and I just didn't look at the numbers all that time. Seems I made an error, my bad, sorry." and nobody could have disproven it having been a dumb human error.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

He mentioned he knew the number hadn't been donated as of 2021, so it's entirely possible he wasn't directly involved in the charity other than running donation drives. Yes he was an officer that whole time, but it's very reasonable to say that a sibling was doing most of the charity work.

This doesn't absolve him of responsibility (he's an officer, so he should be aware), and he still didn't donate it for two years. But it's entirely possible he didn't know it hadn't been donated for 7-8 years, and after that point he just followed the same script he'd been using. Again, it doesn't absolve him, but it does provide some important context.

Then again, this assumes what he said was true. I don't have any reason to doubt it though, because he basically admitted to multiple allegations in the same call.

[–] Gljvf@lemmy.today 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Well Mayne he didn't donate all the money because there are things lite donations, merch , bits and the golf tournament that weren't factored in by some ordinary gamer. So some money may still be gone

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 0 points 10 months ago

Perhaps, but we don't know anything about those figures, so it's going to need to be investigated by the IRS or state equivalent who can get that information. But at this point there's merely a suggestion of fraud, no solid proof. They've said their piece, now it's up to the authorities.

[–] UNWILLING_PARTICIPANT@sh.itjust.works -2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

So the money actually got to charities? Yeah he's scumbag, but not so much of one that shame didn't work on him, at least.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works -2 points 10 months ago

Yup. The series of events was roughly this:

  1. YouTubers made videos alleging charity fraud
  2. Open hand made a donation (a week or so after)
  3. YouTubers made follow up videos about golf events not showing up in income
  4. The Completionist posted response video, which didn't mention the golf events (IIRC)
  5. Follow up videos by YouTubers reacting to The Completionist's response
[–] p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

It's worse than that.

They were using the charity as a way to hide money that they were actually stealing from another golf charity event. The math doesn't add up, and this is going to end with the IRS throwing these assholes in prison. Trey Parker already put out in a comment (on that same video above) that he's suing their organization, and this is going to attract a lot of federal govt attention. The IRS does not fuck around when it comes to charity fraud.

[–] Clbull@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

Wait... The Trey Parker? As in the South Park producer?

[–] CaptPretentious@lemmy.world 6 points 10 months ago

Left out the part and at the end he plays victim and made a claim that he was going to sue the people that called him out for not donating.