https://noisypixel.net/sea-of-stars-patch-removes-the-completionist/
The director of the turn-based RPG Sea of Stars, Thierry Boulanger, has announced that The Completionist is removed from the game.
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."
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.
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
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.
How much he knew and when is certainly up for debate, we just have limited evidence of that.
Over a decade he announced each year that the donations go to a specific charity and then he claimed that all this time he could not find a charity to donate to. That's different from ignorance.
He claimed he knew the money hadn't been donated in 2021, so if that's true, we're looking at 2 years, not 10. He was an officer the whole time, but it's very common for family run businesses and charities to name people as officers even when they don't have an active role.
My point is that it's very possible that he didn't know for the first 7-8 years, and later just followed the same script he'd been following. That's still bad, especially since he didn't get the money donated until called out, but not as bad as sitting on it for 10 years.
The golf thing is the final smoking gun, and I'd very much like to hear his explanation of that before jumping to conclusions. It could very well be that one of his siblings is doing something shady there and he wasn't involved. Until I have details, I'll keep my finger pointed at the charity itself and not Jirard, though he is a prime suspect. I think it should absolutely be investigated by the authorities, who'll have access to all of the account data and can provide proof of what happened.
He cannot claim and keep a straight face that he's looking for charities when he speaks about a specific charity for years, be it 10 or 2.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Yup. The series of events was roughly this:
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.
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.
The complete saga as of three days ago:
Outlines alleged charity fraud and embezzlement on the scale of hundreds of thousands of dollars
It'S juSt YoUtUbe dRaMa
The core of it isn’t YouTube drama as the dude is actually committing a crime I believe, but a lot of the comments surrounding it is 1000% YouTube drama - same with the SSSniperwolf and JacksFilms stuff with one YouTuber stalking and doxxing the other on their Instagram and getting away basically scot-free because YouTube prefers one over the other and the fans of the perpetrator said they were 100% justified in stalking and revealing the other YouTuber’s home address.
If it's more then YouTube drama then there will be actual criminal charges or investigations by the IRS. Until then all the back and forth videos after the first one about whether he broke the law or not is just YouTube drama.
I mean, the charity is getting audited for holding onto donations for 10 years. I think thats kinda a big deal regardless of if criminal charges happen
That's not what we're talking about, pal. Re-read the post title and the question asked
Looked up into it. It’s not just fans and it’s not just YouTube. They ran fundraising golf tournaments that they ended straight up not even reporting on their taxes (we’re talking well above 100k$ missing). It’s very shady.
He claims those weren't always fundraising tournaments, they were done with his help or something, but not always with the intention of the proceeds going to charity apparently. Who knows, I'll leave it for the IRS to decide.
They literally had “fundraising for the Open Hand Foundation” on their banners every year.
Whether or not these were literal frauds, it’s very shady and should destroy his reputation. I’ll let the lawyers figure out the rest.
Agreed, his YouTube reputation should be destroyed and the legal stuff should be figured out in courts. That's why I called this YouTuber drama.
Just because it's about a YouTuber and was investigated by a youtuber doesn't mean its youtube drama though. It isn't just superficial drama about beef between two creators.
That doesn't need to be what's implied by YouTube drama, that's just your preconceived idea of what it means.
I think the point is that he committed charity fraud which is straight up a criminal offense. Drama means in general that people are arguing with each other. One guy commiting a crime and being called out for it is not drama.
I mean you wouldn't call investigative journalism on the TV about a TV presenter "TV Drama"
I mean you wouldn't call investigative journalism on the TV about a TV presenter "TV Drama"
Charity scams that need to be audited for a potential decade of illicit behavior are not "youtube drama" just because a youtuber was involved
Never ever ever ever give money to someone that promise to give it after to charity. There are countless stories with proof of people who never kept the promises. Even if they did give it, they get tax benefit instead of you. It's worth also (even more) for shop or other places that propose to round up the total and give to charity.
You want to give to charity? Just give to charity, why a middle man ?
Even if they did give it, they get tax benefit instead of you.
No, they don't.
They literally just don't have to count the amount you gave them as income. That's it. That's the whole thing. You can't profit off of middle manning donations unless you commit fraud.
So, you're kind of correct. However, you CAN make profit by acting as an 'organizer' for the charity event, where the charity pays you the money as a service, but directly gets the donations. See: Games Done Quick, which is a for-profit LLC that the various charities they 'support' pay them to put on the event. Of course, this number naturally is likely to end up being a % of the last event's donations.
I don't see what that has to do with the premise, which is the somehow donating to charity gives you a net profit because taxes. The real issue here is that people don't seem to understand taxes (understandable, it's complex).
Here's how it works WRT to taxes:
Middle-manning charitable gifts is net zero tax-wise. The only potential for profit has nothing to do with tax write offs:
In short, donating to charity doesn't somehow make you better off in terms of taxes, at best it helps you with your branding.
Also if your on the charity board etc you can use the funds for “marketing” or “admin fees”. Its a quite common scam that crappy charities only donate like 5% of donations
That's not the point. It's the constantly repeated "they get tax benefits" lie despite that never being the case.
Because A) you have to research the charities as a lot of them give very little (or sometimes don’t, in this case) to the actual cause they are championing, and 2) sometimes people are more likely to donate to a face they know rather than an organization.
iirc Crit1kal used to donate practically all of his YouTube earnings to charity waaaaaay back in the day with pics of the monies being given. No idea if he does it now still, but I’m confident he would show the receipts if it was in question.
I'd rather just donate to the charity in question. Why funnel it through a middle man when I could just donate it straight to the source?
If they're selling other merch and profits go to a charity, I evaluate it as a sale, not as a charity, and only buy if I want the item for that price.
People like to make the argument about the money going to admin costs instead of productive work, but I think that's silly because that admin costs will need to be paid by someone. If I trust a charity to allocate bulk funds properly, I should also trust them to allocate other funds properly as well. Money is fungible, so all that earmarking does is make their accounting work harder.
It's usually people who weren't thinking of giving to a charity until the charity host did it. And it's usually also done for in return for entertainment.
So while there's definitely an overarching goal to get something to a charity, it's usually about grabbing people who would normally not think about doing it.
It's gotten far more complicated that that, but we can keep it with "Suspect of running a (or multiple) charity scams, eventually paying a token amount that is only in line with reported revenue, not with revenue that can easily be checked from the vods of the charity streams.
Not to mention he's defending his actions and is now threatening to sue those accusing. Probably just gonna keep exploding till idk. Something major happens.
I am 100% convinced that article was written by ai with just enough info to keep people reading between the ads.
I 100%'d this game, including post game content, and never even knew this character was based on a real person. That's wild.
That being said, if you enjoy turn-based RPGs with action command elements (Mario RPG, Paper Mario, Mario & Luigi, etc.) please play this game. It's incredible.