Topic: Bitcointalk Charity and its funds (Read 4933 times)

Locking this for now.

To be fair, this charity these members were running was amateur hour at best and not representative of bigger, professionally managed ones--but that's not to say that those other charities don't have their problems with money management and/or fraud, because quite a number of them have.

Honestly, I don't think this was planned as a scam from the beginning at all, and if I understand correctly they did distribute some funds/goods to needy people.  That leads me to believe that somewhere along the line having all of that bitcoin in their hands just became too much of a temptation.  The pilfering probably started small and escalated (that's an assumption based on how embezzlement cases usually progress), and by the time it got out of hand they stopped communicating anything about the charity in hopes nobody would notice.

I wanted to write a lot of swear words but it doesn't really matter. Take money for charity and do with it whatever you think is right. Don't keep records. Make shitty excuses. Tell people you are very busy coz you have a million Telegram groups to mod and scam more people in there by pumping shitcoin projects for them without even verifying the team's backgrounds.

The method is very simple. Build up a reputation here. Get into managing communities locally. Then do questionable things and blame it on others for not understanding, coz you are BUSY. Gotta love that false sense of entitlement.

This unprofessionalism is the reason a lot of things have gone to shit despite being promising.

One of these days, I will solve this funny charity business. There is a lot of people who would love to donate Bitcoin to actually make a difference but there is just too much scope for mistakes/ scams in the name of charity. This is a problem that needs solving.

crwth also seems to have other things that are more important.

Check out youtube video from several years ago with Dingdong Dantes and Marian Rivera's Grand royal wedding from Philippines (they sure paid much more).
I don't know how much they paid for this weeding and it's fine for royal grandparents to pay, but I don't think that poor old grandpa from Philippines have anywhere nearly 8k for any wedding ceremonies.
Average Monthly Salary there is only around $300, so they must save all their lives, and sell a land or house, just to pay for one wedding.
It's much easier if you have some Bitcoin... just saying. 

I didn't check all the transactions myself, does that include 2 BTC of donations received? Anyway, that's a lot of money. It seems as if things started to get messy after the first major donation of 1 BTC. Or am I missing something?

The audience that site appears to target is Americans thinking about traveling to the Philippines for their wedding.  That figure includes costs for airfare and lodging (apparently only for one person, though,) which are costs the locals will not incur.

It still seems outlandish for weddings to cost so much.  The average income in the Philippines is under $4k USD per year.  I know there're cultural differences, but it seems like in the Philippines it's an industry rife with vultures.


Would that be the case if the grandson had two or three times the average annual income worth of bitcoin in his possession?

According to the first site I found, over $8k is average in the Philippines. I don't expect the newlyweds to pay it all though: "Traditionally the groom’s family pays for the wedding and the grandparents act as the primary witnesses or sponsors".

Thanks. I think $40k is approximately the number we should be looking to be accounted for then, though it could be more or less depending on what he actually did with it once it was moved. It could have sat on exchanges for a while or been traded or loaned out etc. The pictures of the things that have been posted probably wouldn't amount to more than a couple of thousand USD I would think. Even then, we can't be certain the money was spent on those goods either. He or others could be working for other businesses or charities that are involved in such action and these guys could just be taking credit for it.

I think if he did spend a decent chunk of money on charitable actions then he probably should be able to provide a lot more evidence other than a few pictures as there should be a good paper trail. I'm guessing he didn't pay for everything in cash so there should be some bank statements that he could show to prove that at least some money was spent on what he said it was. He did offer to share his bank statements with someone so maybe someone should look into that. Does anyone know how much he earns? I saw in his last post that he claimed he spent half a million on his wedding. If he's being serious and that's in his native currency isn't that nearly 10k USD? That would probably be a very elaborate wedding by Philippine standards.


Where have the funds gone?
'I don't know' or 'we spent them'.
Can you show proof of this.
Not really.

That doesn't look good does it? Of course not being able to provide 100% proof for 100% of the funds means they misspent all the money on themselves but if they can't show reasonable proof where all this money went we should ask why that is. When you cash out the money they will have sent it to their bank account and if they gave that money to the charity then there should be a very good paper trail there. Of course, if they've spent it on living a life of luxury for themselves then it would be a lot harder to account for. Without any sort of proof or accountability we really can't just take their word for it. I would assume of anybody that if they couldn't provide reasonable proof of where the money went then there has been at least some misappropriation. cabalism13, in his last post, seems to have gone on the defensive and used the criticism as an excuse to just leave rather than try rectify the situation. Why would that be? It would be much better for everyone if he actually tried to show proof of where all this money has gone but if he knows he can't then what else is he to do other than just bounce and run away from the situation?

Am I being very much skeptical? Cabalism13 has used this address to receive the fund- 3CabaLLZeJXhbyatozNEyQRY16F5SFsW2Q, which has been only used 2 times in the forum. 1st- as stake address & 2nd- to sign a message to receive a loan from DarkStar_
He has never used this address to receive the donation fund from bl4nkcode prior to this one; still NP but after receiving the fund at Jan 6, 2021, 12:48 PMUTC, he then sent the fund to 3LjVmpw2wDWawaPGa8Lj5JYjYciXDAePbW (this address was used a couple of times for receiving fund from donation fund) on Jan 6, 2021, 1:13 PM UTC. In less than an hour, cabalism13 sent the fund from his personal address (I mean non-custodial) to his web wallet. Why didn't he receive the fund directly from the address? Quite suspicious or what should I say this. Why cabalism13 had to pay $6 worth of BTC fee
In addition, Binance charges a 0.0005 BTC tx fee for BTC withdrawal. From the tx, cabalism13 has received exactly the amount 0.1225 BTC which is shown in the screenshot. Did bl4nkcode bear the fee?

It's good that you managed to post transactions and at least some receipts, that may change some negative feedback you received, but I am afraid that you won't have any reputation left to be an escrow in this forum.
I hope that you fixed the things with your house and that you and your family are good now.

So do you still have private conversation with cabalism and do you know what's happening with him? Maybe he was also hit by super typhoon disaster??
He was not online in forum since December 19 and I almost lost hope that he will ever return here.

That. And besides, I see that he is also an active gambler. While I don't mean to slam anyone, but there are a lot of contradictions in his statements.

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll note it. I just dont think how strict the security check in apkpure before apps get listed on their directory.

After, since the sending of funds were on january.

IIRC that happened on 2020, so that was before.

Uh....let's say this case was taken to court because the prosecutor charged them with some violation of a law having to do with misuse of charitable funds.  I'd think the first piece of evidence would be the blockchain transactions and where the trail leads.  If there are gaps the size of the Grand Canyon in the accounting (which there are), you'd better believe that's going to be used against them--and it'll look really bad to the jury, just like it looks bad to the bitcointalk members following this thread.

Are you a disbarred lawyer, by any chance?

I've lost track of the time frame of when all these things were happening.  So you took out a loan from cabalism13 before or after he received the payout from you?  I'm also wondering if it was before or after he allegedly needed that $500 for his father's medicine.

And crwth was loaning out money on Jan. 14th 2021, which was right around the time of those two payouts from bL4nkcode (though I'm not sure who those went to exactly).  And what's cabalism13 doing making loans if he's pilfering charity funds to pay for meds?

Well, I as in other cases, I am always open to change my support to flag. I didn't leave feedback, but I think if I remove support for the flag, I will leave at least neutral if not negative feedback.

This seeing that bl4nkcode is wanting to collaborate in a similar way as crwth did. The problem is that I think he had more responsibility, and he has many previous positive feedbacks for acting as escrow. This has to be compensated, and even he has recognized that an escrow should not act like that:

Moving forward, should you wish to continue to operation of this Charity, may I suggest you look into acquiring some online tools to help with documenting transactions?

For example, it would benefit anyone authorized to make purchases to have an app on their smart phone that enables them to take a photo at the time of purchase that is stored in a dedicated filing system-specific to their task.

Examples can be seen in this search engine link:

https://www.bing.com/search?q=app+to+scan+receipts&qs=LT&pq=app+to+scan+&sk=LT3&sc=8-12&cvid=E133A4E759FE4B24976E672F315715F0&FORM=QBLH&sp=4

This is especially effective for use with thermal paper receipts. 

And, there are also effective tools for your smart phone's camera to capture the actual text contained on a surface you are photographing.

https://www.bing.com/search?q=app+to+scan+text+from+image&qs=UT&pq=app+to+scan+text&sc=8-16&cvid=08AEF106B17748D4987D9C03BBD7F6A1&FORM=QBRE&sp=1

If you are an Android Device user, I find APK PURE https://apkpure.com/ to be a very effective tool to search for new apps and upgrade apps already installed (as well as already installed system apps (think Gmail, Youtube, Chrome as examples of system files that may not get updated as often).

I don't think the lack of being able to prove their expenses is evidence of wrongdoing. They did not agree to prove their expenses and continued operating for years without proving their expenses, but did receive additional donations after their level of documentation was well known.

Someone asking questions is not evidence of guilt.

As a charity, their intention is obviously to spend their donations on charitable causes. The only way to spend donations is to distribute money to those able to spend money on causes the charity wants to help.

Honestly speaking, I really think that it's the best way to do make more activities, but later on I realized that I was the escrow for a reason. I have to admit that move is a mistake as what an escrow is stand for, and I apologize for that, really. I basically trusted these people involved to do what they should do for the charity cause. As things happened, what I can do is to to ensure the community that the intention of these people involved are good, that all activities happened and funds were used in good will as what the charity's aiming for in which all of them did their part.

Yes. That's it.

I can't answer to that, what I just did is to make a lend request on the lending thread. I did loan with the same purpose before that with different lender, it just that cabalism accepted the lending offer that time.

Would that be this loan: https://ninjastic.space/post/56796511


And, did the funding of the loan come out of the pool of money the "charity" had in its possession ?? (i.e. not your money)

I'm curious of all the TXIDS that happened during the spit that cabalism mentioned. Also, as escrow, why you agreed vs keeping the funds in escrow?