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Computerchairgeneral, do games w YouTuber Jirard (a.k.a. The Completionist) has been accused of keeping and hoarding charity donations

Well, this is incredibly disappointing. I wasn't aware the Completionist had a charity dedicated to dementia, but I've respected his commitment to preserving gaming media and history. Still none of this looks good and I'm struggling to find a good reason as to why you would just sit on donations for nearly a decade without dispersing them.

gamingdexter, do games w YouTuber Jirard (a.k.a. The Completionist) has been accused of keeping and hoarding charity donations
@gamingdexter@lemmy.ml avatar

I’d say watch both videos, Muta’s video is a little more in depth, but it is just odd to hold onto the money for so long. At least they aren’t spending it on nonsensical things, but if they get audited, that will be a big problem with how they filled out their taxes. I’m hoping for the best though, I do like Jirard and I can’t imagine how it is with your parent/family going through that

Coreidan,

Just report him to the IRS and move on. Let them sort it out. If he’s legit the IRS won’t have issue.

Ebennz,

At least they aren’t spending it on nonsensical things

They pulled out like 30k two years 10-12k other years. No idea what that was spent on.

blue_zephyr,

It’s more than odd, it’s deception. He has been talking to his donators as if the money has been going to charities for years. He has named specific charities that haven’t received a single dime from them.

GreenMario, do games w YouTuber Jirard (a.k.a. The Completionist) has been accused of keeping and hoarding charity donations

Watched it too, fan of both channels so this is strange.

There is a possibility that Jirard just wasn’t in the loop and didn’t know, but someone was (brother?) But regardless this is very suspect.

underwire212,

At best, he didn’t know, which means he really didn’t care enough to even check to make sure the money was going to where it was supposed to be going? Like, the ONE thing a charity does? Even so, in 10 years, he wasn’t suspicious at all about not hearing back from these organizations (like a “Thank You for your donation letter”)? He didn’t give a shit about the charity, and used it to flaunt his own brand and ego. And that’s the BEST case scenario.

Worst case scenario he is knowingly committing charity fraud…by using his own Mother as bait. Fucking deplorable if you ask me.

108,
@108@kbin.social avatar

He admitted to taking money out for reimbursement, how the hell did he not know?

Carighan,
@Carighan@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah he had no qualms with 12k-30k annually being taken out for “expenses”.

108,
@108@kbin.social avatar

I don’t know about anyone else but I usually check my account before taking out anything over a certain amount. Especially if it was in the thousands as he says.

Coreidan,

How in the fuck could he not be aware? It’s his channel isn’t it?

blargerer,

It seems like his brother was running things at the charity. Its plausible he just asked his brother where the money was going and trusted him.

Coreidan,

That’s a huge stretch. You must be in denial.

No reason to defend him he’s just a stranger on the internet. He owes you nothing.

They are both in on it. Fucking bros for crying out loud.

blargerer,

I think I've watched maybe 2 The Completionist videos ever. I'm not in denial about anything here. I am waiting for the other side to respond, and possibly for the IRS to get involved before any final judgement. I just know his brothers statement sounded incredibly sketchy. Like I wouldn't be surprised if he was embezzling money from the charity sketchy, while Jirard seemed genuine. Maybe Jirard is just a better actor/more charismatic, it is his job after all. Time will tell.

AnonTwo,

How is that a huge stretch??

zero_spelled_with_an_ecks,

He’s listed as a director in the legal documents.

woelkchen,
@woelkchen@lemmy.world avatar

As a board member of his own charity, he has to be aware of it at some point. Heck, he even acknowledged to know this since 2021 and still nothing happened.

Lord_ToRA,
@Lord_ToRA@lemmy.world avatar

He quickly corrected himself and said 2022.

woelkchen,
@woelkchen@lemmy.world avatar

It’s still a year later by now.

Silverseren,

I don't see how there's any good explanation though for having a website quote thanking them for donating from someone who was fired for money issues 7 years prior.

badaboomxx,

Not sure, he told that he was aware on 2022, but in 2023 he said that they donated to several associations.

Everything is really weird.

freebdsm, do games w YouTuber Jirard (a.k.a. The Completionist) has been accused of keeping and hoarding charity donations

I watched the video. It’s definitely not looking good for Jirard but I’ll reserve judgement until he responds. These allegations are really bad.

stopthatgirl7,
!deleted7120 avatar

I haven’t watched this video, but watched the one by No Ordinary Gamer, and he included responses he got from Jirard. It didn’t look great.

Brunbrun6766, do games w YouTuber Jirard (a.k.a. The Completionist) has been accused of keeping and hoarding charity donations
@Brunbrun6766@lemmy.world avatar

I have only EVER heard nice and good things about Jirard, so I’m going to wait for some actual evidence before making any judgements.

naticus,

And on the other hand, Karl Jobst has always been very well researched in his videos, so I’m a big torn here. Definitely going to keep an eye on this and see where it goes before making my own conclusions.

echo64, (edited )

He’s also someone who hangs around with nazis which is wild. He backed away from them when it all came out but then got chummy again so I got the fuck away from his content. Which is decidedly in the outrage bait genre these days.

imgur.com/a/X7qLRXa his friend who he promotes in his videos, nazis fuck off, fuck you if you support this

Clbull,

Are we talking about RWhiteGoose here?

I mean… Goose is still prominent in the Goldeneye speedrunning community, and was only banned from The Elite for about a year before he was welcomed back. Jobst made his name speedrunning the same game, even managing to get some uncontested world records.

echo64, (edited )

edit wild how lemmy supports nazis now

imgur.com/a/X7qLRXa

naticus,

Lemmy isn’t supporting Nazis, you’re being downvoted because making accusations without sources is just yelling into the wind. “Just Google it” and “do your own research” is synonymous in practice and adds nothing to the conversation and only is rumormill level gossip.

Provide links to some sources if you have some legit concerns, because that’s definitely news to me.

echo64, (edited )

i guess supporting nazis is more important than typing two words into a search engine

imgur.com/a/X7qLRXa have fun, i hope you regret at least a little

I want to be clear, and you should too - RWhiteGoose is a legitimate nazi, and Karl Jobst is his friend and supporter.


edit, yes lemmy supports nazis. here’s your links and yet still.

Clbull,

Firstly, these screenshots are from The Elite’s and RWhiteGoose’s own Discord servers. He was part of the site’s council that effectively moderated Goldeneye speedrun records and set precedent for new rules, hence why they didn’t do anything until this all came out.

Secondly, Karl barely took part in discussions on these servers. Of the 150 screenshots, he appears in a grand total of one where he debates the taboo surrounding white people saying the n-word with Goose. He even addressed the interactions he had with Goose and all the allegations made against him by Tomatoanus and others in a video.

britishblaze,

Which he’s already debunked?

echo64, (edited )

imgur.com/a/X7qLRXa his friend who he promotes in his videos

britishblaze,

youtu.be/3_jcpig-C2s?t=245 as I said before, debunked. Understandable you got swept up in the fray but he was just as disgusted as you are.

echo64,

none of that is debunked, he’s just trying to worm his way out of it. the correct thing to do when you find out someone is a nazi is to cut them out. he doesn’t, then he tries to say i’m just trying to help him be a not nazi by promoting and featuring him in my videos.

you’re a fool to believe that for a moment, especially when it comes from him.

i want to be incredibly clear here, nothing is debunked. he said what he wants to say, you choose to believe him at face value.

britishblaze,

You have been incredibly clear, and so has he. He is clear on his disgust and why he chose to help him rather the cut off all ties and whilst I would not do the same myself I do not condemn others who try to.

But so far there has been no evidence that he supports or sympathises with any Nazism ideals or ideas which to me is the breaking point.

If there is something I have missed then please show me but I have not seen anything to the contrary.

Clbull,

At the same time, Mutahar and Karl are very well respected content creators who do their research. They wouldn’t drop a bombshell like this if they didn’t have good sources.

I too will wait to see how Jirard responds.

dangblingus,

Muta is…not very well respected. His reputation is more of an SEO opportunist.

echo64,

Karl Jobst hangs out with nazis tho imgur.com/a/X7qLRXa how much respect do you get from that

toasteecup,

Considering the last time Jobst had a big report about someone’s “misdoings” we may be waiting for quite a while.

toasteecup, (edited )

Dislike the comment all you want, it doesn’t make his wata games heritage auctions insider trader exposé any less of a speculation piece.

code,

Easy to check the filings yourself. The research presented in the video is legit. There is no reason to have zero donations to charities since 2014. Zero

underwire212,

What “actual evidence” are you waiting for? The filings are public (you can confirm literally right now) and Jirard admitted to the accusations himself? What else do you need?

buddascrayon,

Welcome to the cult of personality. You could show them the guy’s fingerprints on the bloody knife at a murder scene and they would still ask for more conclusive evidence. 🙄

4am,

Speaking of the cult of personality, you see a one-sided YouTube video and automatically assume this has been through trial.

What about 2023? Was the money then donated? Where the tax forms filed incorrectly? Almost a year has passed since this supposedly just came to light for this guy. What has been done to fix it?

I’m not sticking up for him, seems like this was a huge fuckup either way, but I’m not ready to burn someone at the stake for “being a personality”.

Carighan,
@Carighan@lemmy.world avatar

The accusation is not that the money has not been donated now, however. It is that the money has been sitting around since 2014, while happily paying themselves “expenses” from it.

It’s just a mix of an externally paid expenses account + a tax writeoff for the years 2014-2022, so even iff the money has now been donated, that doesn’t excuse the previous 8 years and in fact, you can’t shirk legal responsibility that way.

frezik,

There wouldn’t necessarily be legal responsibility. Things have been reported to the IRS with the money sitting there. If they’re paying themselves “expenses”, that would need to be reported on their personal income taxes. If that’s all there is to it, nothing illegal is happening. As of now, that’s all the evidence tells us.

Bad way to run a charity, but not illegal. That may change with more evidence, like if the money was paid out more than is actually reported.

TORFdot0,

Jirard’s Open Hands charity is a nonprofit so you can see their books through their tax filings.

The most likely explanation is that Jirard is incredibly busy running a successful YouTube channel and so he had no idea how the charity is being run.

When being made aware in 2022 he said he stepped in to make sure the money is being donated the way he believed it was. That wasn’t reflected in their 2022 tax filing but it still can be true for 2023, the public will find that out when those filings are made public.

Karl Jobst is a really good content creator but he has a bit of a dramatic flair and tends to call things “illegal” when they actually aren’t and he did in this video again. Still I think that it’s important to make call outs like this. And I think that Jirard will make it right, now that he has been made aware. It’s clear from the filings that they aren’t committing fraud or skimming off the top. They just were sitting on the money probably because the task of running a charity was beyond their capabilities

olmec,

I feel like your comment is the most reasonable explanation. The charity sounds like it isn’t actively being run. It is probably a misunderstanding. I can see the charity paying for a group to run the charity, but because their income is very small, they want the charity ran frugally, and are paying the minimum required for management. The management is running the account, making sure taxes are filed, etc, but Jirard thought they were dispersing the funds too. They don’t talk much, other than a quick review at tax season, and the issue is never addressed, because both sides don’t interact enough to see the difference.

This video really frustrated me, because Jobst is claiming things “Fraud” when the evidence he provided looks nothing like that. It isn’t great PR, but nothing so far looks remotely illegal, or even unethical. The internet just loves ragging on a “bad guy,” and are eager to get mad at the bad guy of the day.

frezik,

The one thing that does lean more towards malice is the quote from the UCSF guy who was fired long before the charity existed.

That said, I otherwise agree. If the IRS forms are right, the money is just sitting there. That’s not illegal in itself. It just looks bad.

Jobst also doesn’t always know US law, since he has a legal background in Australia (and I’m not sure what his specialty was, either).

He particularly mentioned in the video that the IRS isn’t an all-knowing monster ready to pounce on unsuspecting taxpayers, which is true. I’ve seen the bullshit US tax protesters sometimes get away with. Irwin Schiff, for example, once signed a blank 1040 form and sent it into the IRS. He almost made it to the statue of limitations until he went on The Tomorrow Show (a nationwide NBC talk show) and bragged about it. That said, people in the US do tend to think of the IRS as an all-knowing monster ready to pounce on unsuspecting taxpayers, and that’s why the response with the guy came back that way. Jobst doesn’t seem to be fully cognizant of how people in the US view the IRS.

TORFdot0,

Yes, their quoting of the guy who was fired before they filed as a non-profit was very deceptive. And soliciting with the list of other organizations that the money supposedly goes to is as well. It is probable that they donated funds to these places when it was just them raising money for their mom before they decided to organize as a non-profit in 2014 (when Jirard’s YouTube channel started to really gain popularity). The problem lies in that these donations can’t really be proven just based on public filings and so they create the appearance of impropriety if not proving actual impropriety.

Goronmon,

Over half a million dollars isn’t “very small” for this type of charity in my opinion.

Not to mention, they seem to admit they’ve known about the issue for a while, but have continued to fund raise and present the charity as if it’s been running along doing good this whole time, but they’ve just been hoarding the money so far.

Cethin,

I’m certain he’s very busy. He’s busy with his channel, and he was also one of the cast of G4 for the short time it returned, and they were being overworked I think there, and he was still running his channel. This is why you hire people to handle these things though. It’s bad that it wasn’t handled properly, but not necessarily malicious. I’ll forgive a mistake, but if it turns out it was a scam that’s unforgivable.

TORFdot0,

Based on the reported expenses being around $10,000 a yea; I don’t think they were trying to run a scam or trying to be malicious. I think they wanted to honor their mom, but didn’t have the time to run the charity or donation volume to justify hiring someone to run it. Not an excuse for how they ran things of course, I think it wasn’t fair to the people who gave them money that they solicited donations on how they wanted things to be rather than how they actually ran it. Whether they knew or not that the money was just sitting there isn’t an excuse. If they were soliciting donations then they have a duty to inform themselves.

andyMFK, (edited )

…did you watch the video? You can see their contributions have been $0 year after year with their tax filings, and Jirard admitted they haven’t donated anything.

CmdrShepard,

I don’t know who this guy is or anything about the situation other than what’s written here, but if he’s naming specific charities supposedly receiving these donations, it makes zero sense that they’d be “looking for a good charity to donate to.” If that were the case there’d be zero reason to name the ones they did.

andyMFK,

you should watch the content in the post before engaging in discussion about it. What you’re saying is kinda the whole crux of the issue. Jirard has been caught lying, saying his fund has donated to specific charities when in reality the fund has donated nothing. You’re right - it doesn’t make sense to lie about something so easily verified, but here we are.

PsychedSy,

I kinda figure he’ll show the receipts, donate the cash and this will end up being nothing in the end.

blue_zephyr,

He’s already caught in a lie. Even if his unbelievable story that he, the director of the charity, was unaware the charity never did anything charitable for as long as it has existed (this already makes him guilty of failing the donators by incompetence), he still lied about knowing where the money went for all those years to the donators and CONTINUED TO DO SO AFTER HE ADMITTED HE KNEW ABOUT IT.

Now he claims that he has been looking for worthy charities for over a year while he could easily just donate the money to the charities he has been talking about for years already.

undeffeined,

The fact that he kept naming specific organizations where the money was being donated after he was made aware that the money was just sitting there is quite the red flag. This whole situation is very weird and I must say, I’m really curious to understand what is happening.

Also worth mentioning that the Charity organization tried to take the video down, another red flag

Pseudonaut,

The literal IRS tax filing isn’t enough evidence for you?

frezik,

It points to something hinky, but it’s not complete proof. If it’s correct, then the money is just sitting in an account. It’s not going into anybody’s pockets (although the interest might?). The open question is if the IRS form is accurate to the amount of money just sitting there. If not, then this starts to look like criminal tax fraud.

This could still come down to incompetence rather than malice. That said, the quote from the UCSF guy who was fired years before the charity existed does lean more towards malice.

One other thing to note is that while Karl Jobst does have a legal background, it’s in Australia. The US is also a common law system, but there are enough differences that Karl might not realize what is and isn’t illegal.

CluckN, do games w YouTuber Jirard (a.k.a. The Completionist) has been accused of keeping and hoarding charity donations

I see he’s going for the career downfall completion

Clbull,

In all honesty I’m shocked. Jirard is one of the few YouTubers I have (well, had) a tonne of respect for.

Part of me wants to hope there’s a rational explanation for why he and his foundation sat on viewer donations for a whole decade whilst knowingly misleading donors that their funds were going to a charitable cause, but I really think this is going to end his career. Just wait until every other YouTuber picks this story up, or when it goes viral on Reddit…

code,

Hint: there is no excuse thats legitimate. Ive busted local charities the same way.

Clbull,

I think some explanations are worse than others.

Either the OHF have been incompetent with filing their annual returns, have been incompetent with actually ensuring the money goes to the right people, or there’s some embezzlement going on.

Silverseren,

Well, Jirard admitted on the call in the video that he knew almost two years ago that the charity had never donated to anything. So strike those options off your list.

stopthatgirl7,
!deleted7120 avatar

Same with feeling shocked. He always seemed so wholesome and I like his videos. If this is a bad at it seems, then yeah. His channel is going to start hemorrhaging subscribers.

Grangle1, do games w The Completionist's Charity Has Been Lying To You For Years

Jirard has never come across as the type of guy who would knowingly just sit on something like this. Another video and thread here seems to imply his brother is running the account and Jirard didn’t know until last year that the money hadn’t been donated, so the brother may be the one primarily at fault? The fact that it was just sitting there unused also implies to me more incompetence or negligence instead of bad intent, so I do want to give them at least a bit of BOTD. That said, that still leaves a whole year where both brothers were just sitting on the money. If they really are looking for “the right place” to donate the money to, they’d better pick a place/places fast and get that money out. Either way they’re probably gonna see a lot fewer donations in the future. If they’re just collecting money from their followers and donating it somewhere else, they may as well just do what a bunch of other content creators do (and what I think they do for their other charitable stuff IIRC) and just do marathon videos/streams with links to just donate to the charities directly in the chat/comments. Cuts out the middleman and keeps them out of this kind of trouble.

helloharu,
@helloharu@lemmy.world avatar

That said, that still leaves a whole year where both brothers were just sitting on the money. If they really are looking for “the right place” to donate the money to, they’d better pick a place/places fast and get that money out.

Sorry I don’t know much about these guys and how they operate, so it may need explaining, but that rings alarm bells for me. Why didn’t they know and communicate that with everyone donating to begin with? I’m not sure I’d have parted with any money if I didn’t know upfront where it was going.

Grangle1,

Jirard was asked essentially that by Mutahar and Karl and he said that the foundation was “looking for the right place to donate it to that aligns with our values”, and that when he found out, there was internal conflict within the foundation about when and where to donate, with Jirard himself, by his own account, being in favor of getting the money out sooner than later. Unfortunately, that just led to further delays. Just terrible incompetence by all parties involved.

Goronmon,

Of course, none of that involved any public disclosure of the issue, nor did it prevent them from continuing to raise donations for their charity.

Carighan, do games w The Completionist's Charity Has Been Lying To You For Years
@Carighan@lemmy.world avatar

I never even heard of them, but fuck. Damn. ☹️

gamingdexter, do games w The Completionist's Charity Has Been Lying To You For Years
@gamingdexter@lemmy.ml avatar

I watched both of the videos, it sucks. I like him as a YouTuber, but it sounds like they are about to get in a lot of trouble even if the IRS doesn’t do an audit. Very odd they just say on the money, I’m sure they’ll be donating it within the next few weeks

ioslife, do games w The Completionist's Charity Has Been Lying To You For Years

TLDW?

Goronmon,

The only thing the charity has done with the money donated has been to pay for it’s own expenses. The rest has just been sitting in an account somewhere. No grants or anything have been made with the money so far.

At least that what the charity’s filings claim.

wizardbeard, (edited )
@wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

How can it have expenses at all if it’s just a bank account held by the guy’s brother? Why does it need to be a charity or exist at all if they’re just donating the money to another group, why be a middle man?

This whole thing reeks, imo.

Edit: Duh, stupid of me. The charity streams and website cost money. Still stinks. How does that add up to 11k expenses one year and 29k expenses another year. How does that make any sense?

108,
@108@kbin.social avatar

How does he admit to taking out expenses from the account and not know the money was there?

woelkchen, do games w The Completionist's Charity Has Been Lying To You For Years
@woelkchen@lemmy.world avatar

Even if keeping the money on on a bank account for nine years was an honest mistake: Don’t tell that every penny will be donated and then deduct expenses.

wildginger,

Is it not normal for a charity to deduct expenses from donated funds? I didnt think that was the scandalous part, I always thought that was standard practice for charities in general.

woelkchen,
@woelkchen@lemmy.world avatar

Yes, it is normal but then credible organizations then won’t make the claim that everything will be donated. When such statements are made, the reasonable expectation is that costs are covered by 3rd parties.

BleatingZombie,

I’m not sure if this fits here, but that’s the main difference between “100% of profit” vs “100% of revenue”

p03locke, do games w Pay-To-Win Minecraft Servers are officially APPROVED by Mojang
@p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

They already took out C418’s music from the game, so they might as well continue to make the game worse and worse.

800XL, do games w Pay-To-Win Minecraft Servers are officially APPROVED by Mojang

For someone who doesn’t know how ptw minecraft servers work nor has the free time to watch the posted video could someone explain this?

haui_lemmy,

Ptw means you pay for advancement ingame. It has been against the eula to sell items that you cant get ingame through playing.

800XL,

So the server admin creates items in their server that are unable to be achieved by playing the game on their server?

haui_lemmy,

Yes. For example „efficiency 6 pickaxe“ (you can create whatever stats you want as a server owner) is only available for paid tier members. Done, eula broken and mojang can shut you down immediately (and have done so in the past).

Sharpiemarker, do gaming w This is Best Physic ?

No this is Patrick

Rayspekt, do gaming w Valve announces Steam Deck OLED refresh: Pre-orders start Nov. 16th.

You might want to buy this one because there's no way Valve releases a third one

Arkham,

Valve has already started talking to press outlets about their plans for a Steam Deck 2 in two to three years.

www.polygon.com/…/steam-deck-2-valve-interview

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