A message of hope...

And fair warning to charity thieves

“The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall; but in charity there is no excess, neither can angel or man come in danger by it.”

Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

Welcome to a new media approach devoted to winding down large, complex and false “charities” that, instead, are seemingly used to purchase influence from politicians, launder vast streams of money, and protect privilege-seeking donors. Together, we can hunt down charity thieves even as some major governments refuse to do so.

What a shame that one must continue documenting and analyzing bold examples of entities passing themselves off as “charities”, when they are, judging from their public filings, outright scams. Why? Because bureaucrats and even national leaders across the modern world are apparently in on the crooked game of letting “charities-in-name-only” steal on ever-expanding scale. 

So, in summary form for free browsers, and in greater detail for paid subscribers, False Philanthropy hopes to give you the essential resources you need, using the fine services of substack, to tilt the playing field against charity con artists who operate outside and inside of government. With the materials you will read and confirm for yourselves, we can, together, push hard at local, state, federal and foreign levels to demand fair accounting and proper recompense through numerous channels that are, in fact, available to members of the wider public.

And, what a further shame, that taxing and other government authorities resolutely refuse to investigate and then prosecute rampant, ongoing charity frauds in this moment, when most local, state, and federal government agencies are trying to service mammoth debt loads, while at the same time spending far more than they earn in receipts. 

The Scale of Charity Fraud

Supposed “elites” must believe that you and we are both stupid and docile.

If you are reading this free introduction to False Philanthropy, you are likely one of millions of people who regularly try to support attractive-sounding nonprofit entities which you believe perform good works, inside and outside your home country. 

Perhaps you will initially find it difficult to believe that anyone would abuse a charity to steal donations from potentially worthy recipients. But publicly available filings confirm that these abuses have been happening and on a grievously large and bold scale as you will see for yourselves, particularly when you pay to subscribe, and evaluate our detailed, resourced reports.

Yet, evidence of massive abuse and fraud in the nonprofit world hides in plain sight. Meanwhile, expensive government bureaucracies have done little to stop charity con artists from practicing their crooked trade.

Just imagine how much money might be raised and then used to shore up government finances, if false-front “charities” and their enabling donors were forced to explain what truly happened to trillions of dollars in charity assets ostensibly sitting in “audited” financial accounts worldwide.

In stark contrast, to the extent that governments attack charity con artists, they seem chiefly to police weak, small players cheating over millions of dollars, when they could and should pounce upon powerful, as yet un-indicted, inveterate charity criminals who fleece, over time in the billions, and more recently, in the trillions of dollars.

Notably, the prime charity abusers seem to be members of dynastic political families worldwide, including leaders of nations and of multilateral government entities who seem to believe no one will ever force them to explain their path to riches in “public service”.

Perhaps these people become too used to living high lifestyles they can never hope to sustain once they leave “public service”. No doubt, these scoundrels are certain they will never be caught and prosecuted–but, are they in fact above the law?

A Profound, Peaceful Reckoning is Required

Many of unduly proud charity charlatans also believe they are entitled to rewards they scam through porous, supposed “organizations” for all the poorly compensated years that they and their families “suffered” while in office. 

Is this what hard-working persons in the private sector, and what honest laborers also believe? 

When did “public servants” become entitled and untouchable plutocrats and rulers, cocksure they can boldly abuse “charities”, unchallenged by anyone?

As paid subscribers to False Philanthropy will learn in depth, too many charities actually do operate as “Robin Hood in Reverse”--in essence, stealing aid flows intended for the poor, to burnish, unfairly, the reputations of charity managers and overseers, while also fattening their personal bank accounts. 

This is especially true of certain complex “charities”, particularly when these operate in many places across America and around the world. Sadly, informal charity rating services and even front-line government regulators are not equipped, and may be disinclined, to root out rampant charity frauds.

Why do so many who must know better break charity, corruption, foreign agent registration, money-laundering, income tax reporting and other laws?

Fake charities truly are not regulated, so these have become “perfect” self-enrichment and self-promotion schemes, especially for champions of “globalism”.

Moreover, inflation is certainly not transitory, so the cost of living and of national political campaigns only has been rising. Meanwhile, the value of benefits that unscrupulous elected officials and bureaucrats can confer on their donors and on their extended families has been growing exponentially since 1988, when too many trusting souls embraced the fiction that toothless global governance should replace tight national rule in a “new world order”.

Shamelessly Exploiting the Vulnerable

After centuries of supposed “progress”, a majority of humans live today in precarious circumstances, measured using economic and financial statistics. 

This situation is unlikely to improve and is more certain to deteriorate should we continue to suffer the fools, mostly living large in expensive nations, who push upon us grand-sounding schemes whose goals sound noble, whose financial scale grows ever more enormous, but whose actual consequences seem, by design, impossible to measure.

In appeal after appeal, heart-wrenching tales are told about destitute souls, barely existing in far-flung, difficult to access places scattered world-wide. Many of these solicitations falsely suggest that donations to certain nonprofit “entities” will eventually filter through to benefit suffering individuals, families and creatures.

In False Philanthropy, free browsers and paid subscribers will learn much concerning many sweet-sounding “charities” that do not even bother to organize formally and follow the raft of laws and regulations essentially required to qualify as legitimate tax-exempt organizations. 

In the worst cases, villains “operating” these grift-mills divert (steal) donations before they even reach the financial accounts of the supposed charity. After that, these inveterate scam artists may also steal more sums by inflating reported expenses and capital expenditures well above actual costs.

How do they succeed? In part, because professional service firms–- who donors may believe validate the reports of these crooked schemes-- are either in on the game or too lazy to perform essential diligence. But, in the main, charity scams live on because overseers at board level and managers are reckless, conflicted or both, and fail to discharge their solemn legal duties. 

Naming and Shaming the Worst Charity Scam Artists

Existing charity raters and regulators are clearly not up to the task of combing through public filings to discern how seemingly complex and large “nonprofit organizations” may regularly do grievous harm rather than essential good.

The good news is that a large amount of information is available online and, in many cases, free of charge that permits determined analysts to spot abuses perpetrated by supposed “charities”.

A first step, recommended before donating a single cent to a nonprofit, is to establish that the supposed entity actually exists and remains in good legal standing. To exist as a tax-exempt entity, it must be formally organized and operated as a going concern not only where it may be headquartered, but also where it solicits and where it may operate, inside and outside the United States.

A second key step is to examine what tax-exempt purposes the supposed charity has been authorized to further, by relevant government authorities. Here, it is important to understand that American charities (and those of other nations whose laws, generally, are modeled on English tradition) are required, exclusively to further specific purposes explicitly explained in their charter documents and deemed to be tax-exempt.

Another important step is to check (using the Advanced Search function of propublica Nonprofit Explorer) whether substantial amounts recorded as grants to a given charity you may consider supporting are accurately reported as income at the recipient organization on Schedule B in IRS Form 990 or Form PF (or the equivalent disclosures for foreign charities).

As we proceed, free browsers will learn, in summary, about suspicious and even seemingly fraudulent activities of certain purported tax-exempt “organizations”. Paid subscribers will have opportunities to examine more detailed supporting evidence chiefly gleaned from publicly available sources.

Here it is important to understand that proving fraud involving supposed nonprofit organizations is less difficult than in the case of for-profit entities, as you will come to understand evaluating free and paid materials published in False Philanthropy.

How We Shall Work: Motivating the Global Audience to Curtail Charity Frauds

On a regular basis, we will communicate with our browsers and then tack onto the worldwide web for paid subscribers, detailed information we hope that you and, ultimately, government authorities will use to bring charity scam artists to justice, especially and particularly, the more powerful and privileged among us who dare to harvest supposed nonprofit entities for personal benefit or political gain.

The good news for those of you who become involved is that there is actually a large amount of accessible information concerning tax-exempt entities that you can check for yourselves to confirm the analysis contained in False Philanthropy is correct.

Once you become informed, we can then prod local, state, federal and foreign authorities to police supposed charities, donors to these scams and service providers (accountants, lawyers, consultants and fund-raisers) who lend an appearance of legitimacy to charity frauds as well as the conspiracies to cover these up.

Welcome to False Philanthropy–may we make a positive difference.

Sincerely,

Charles Ortel

Coming Soon for Paid Subscribers: 

Tack #1–ART OF THE STEAL: A Detailed Introduction to Certain Materially False and Uncorrected Filings of “Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation”