Topic: Bitcointalk Charity and its funds - page 4. (Read 4933 times)

OR, of the three UID's it's the one that *might* be salvageable to resume participation in signature campaigns in the New Year.

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Yes, it's an online wallet that both crewth and cabalism13 use - more reason not to have 2+ BTC sitting vulnerable.

Ok so, I am going to write what I hope will be my last comment in this thread and I'm done with it. Unless now cabalism13 and bl4nkcode show up with receipts etc. I don't think it's worth giving the matter any more thought.

I find what suchmoon has said quite sensible, and I said something similar in this thread before he wrote. If I give $50 to a charity, seeing a picture is good enough for me. If you want to show a receipt, all the better, but at the end of the day both the photo and the receipt can be forged, and this is not a professional charity, they were three friends who tried to help people with small contributions that they received at first, the problem came when they received very considerable amounts.

For me there are several things that make me think that crwth deserves the benefit of the doubt, and this is what the community has understood, because if you go to his trust page, the flag is not shown for insufficient support and only the negative feedback of DireWolfM14 is left:

1) The amount of money. He received and handled considerably less money than cabalism13 and bl4nkcode.

2) His attitude. The best of the three people involved in this.

3) He neither ran the charity nor was he the escrow. Although here we could say that he is partly to blame too, I think he is less to blame than the other two, and this is how the community has understood it.

Apples and oranges. Across the street you can "check and balance" in person. Not feasible halfway across the world, not for $100 anyway. And most of the information provided remotely (pictures, receipts, spreadsheets) can be faked. So it comes down to trust.

If someone across the street much less halfway across the globe asked you to donate $100 to their cause you wouldn't until you had done some checks and balances.

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@crwth - what sort of advance notification did you or the others receive that an entire bitcoin would twice be donated?

In hindsight, with the ~2 BTC - yes.

However it didn't start like that. I didn't donate to this specific effort but I've given money in similar circumstances. Let's say you give $100 to someone halfway across the world and the person provided e.g. a picture of a happy crowd with what could be $100 worth of groceries in front of them, is a receipt going to change anything? Without being there in person you have no way to verify it so comes down to trusting - or not - that person with the $100. And if you didn't ask for a receipt to begin with, you'd be an asshole to start asking for it a year later.

Anyway, with the somewhat spotty evidence provided I have no reason to believe that crwth is at fault here. There seem to be significant amounts gone to the other two guys, so there is probably more work needed to untangle that part.

I never heard of a case with forum donation similar like this, so I can't compare it with anything better...some people even sent donations to Bruno AKA Phinnaeus Gage, or someone who claimed it was him, but they did it with their own free will.
Nobody forced people to DONATE, they never promised to have detailed reports whatsoever, and nobody asked them to provide any evidence until now.
I honestly don't think they should be crucified for this, I am not defending them but I have the right on my own opinion to not go with the herd, and I don't think that I am naive for thinking like this.
I certainly don't agree that all 3 of them should be treated equally here, and I just wanted to give them some more time for defending.

Okay, let's look at it this way:  (these receipts aren't on the spreadsheet posted just above BTW)

Three scrunched up receipts from eleven months ago.  Two are hand written with no contact details and a vague letter "C" as if that's supposed to explain all.

Then receipt 0367 in image three has the wording: This document is not valid for claim of input taxes."

Did it occur to you on reading (the tax disclaimer) that you might run into difficulties later on down the track if there were an audit of your expenditure?

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@LoyceV - was it really necessary to give this person four merits for a Covid test receipt and three vague hand written receipts (one of which is for *bags*?) from eleven months ago. ?

All were looking good until the point marked 1.

After that things were mess except only two:

• Row 52, crwth had references of the activities he has done. After looking at the images and I feel there are nothing to doubt.
• Row 56, cabalism13 sent for marlboroza and it's clearly documented.

There are 7 outgoing txes for cabalism13 and only 1 was documented. The total amount for undocumented txes were: 0.54722358 BTC (I have no idea how much they were in USD).

2 outgoing txes for bL4nkcode and total was: 0.56639445 BTC

There are no trace of spending or using the fund so far for the total of 0.54722358 + 0.56639445 = 1.11361803 BTC from these two. There are no effort from these two as well to give satisfactory answers too.

After the 2nd 1 BTC donation it seems big portions were gone to cabalism13 and bL4nkcode. crwth was given a small part it (0.09970577) to cover the activities he has done.

I am giving crwth my benefit of the doubt. At least he gave enough effort to keep things clean. But for bL4nkcode and cabalism13, I stay in my decision unless they present something that will be somehow acceptable.

As they say, it can take years to build a stellar reputation but only seconds to ruin it.  There have been many people throughout history who've done a lot of charity work and other good works for people only to have it sullied by a scandal.  Bernie Madoff is the first example that comes to mind, but I could probably list a dozen others if I thought about it for a few minutes.  

In addition, good intentions count for little if the accompanying behavior isn't good--the road to hell is paved with them, to use another old saying.  So you shouldn't be surprised that this charity, the members behind it, and how the funds donated were spent are all being scrutinized with critical eyes.  You've been a member of the forum long enough that you should know that reputations are destroyed in an instant and it doesn't matter what a person's history was.  Ultimately this is the internet and more importantly this is bitcoin.  It's very easy to scam with due to its pseudo-anonymous nature, and the whole bitcoin space is full of scammers and always has been.

Again with your feelings, just like cabalism13.  I don't know about anyone else, but the feelings of the three of you are irrelevant.  The receipts and how the money was spent are.  And again, you've been a member of bitcointalk long enough that you ought to know how members tend to think when it comes to someone not replying to a scam accusation while still being active on the forum.

What does the holiday season have to do with any of this?  Should anyone care more about the emotional feelings of three members who are being questioned by the community about some very serious matters?  And on top of that, there's been ample time for all of them to respond in this thread.  

I supported both flags thus far.

That's a case of "whataboutism" if I ever saw one, and those examples have nothing to do with this thread.  I hate to say this (and I'm not attacking you, but your argument), but you're being far too lenient on these three members and perhaps a bit naive as well.

You made it the point of the thread when you posted it as your response in this thread.  

As others have pointed out:

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Time for some tough questions:

• Where's the money?
• Who's idea was it to first dip into the funds for personal needs?  And, as a follow-up: How long then did it take to become "normal" to use the funds for non charitable payments?
• How many people do you owe money to?  (And how much do you owe)??

Well you suggested this few days ago so I am not surprised, but I think it's a bit harsh and especially doing this during holiday season.
I don't know if it was so hard for you to wait few more days after new year.

I agree with you, they never promised to present any records for transactions, and I will repeat again... we had much worse situation with official bitcointalk forum donations and new forum software that never happened.
I don't think that anyone was tagged or received negative feedback for that.
Are we asking for theymos and moderators to show us records how they spent donations?

We can all agree they handled situation bad and this would go unnoticed if yahoo didn't report this, that makes me speculate that maybe he donated or know someone who donated to this charity.
I know we are all suspicious to any posts, but I am trying to keep open mind, and I believe crwth in this case when he sad that he was sick, he even presented some receipts.
I am not going to support that flags.

I haven't ruled out the possibility that he could be collateral damage. I'll take a thorough look at the spreadsheet and images he posted tomorrow.

I still have mixed feelings about it, it's at least very naive not to keep accurate records.

@crwth, Didn't you know what's going on with the charity fund, escrow contract wasn't in its way & if any corruption on going? Did you know anything? If yes, why didn't you alert the community about it? Don't you think you should share with the community about things that are not going accordingly? It's great that you have provided some documents which are real; to me it's real.

All of them posted pictures of whatever event they were a part of up until June of this year. Then everything stopped. I said in the beginning I believe they were doing good for their communities, but there was a definite breach of contract.


Just because cabalism13 posted the thread, he is the only 1 being held responsible in alot of peoples minds, but in fact all 3 involved agreed to these terms so all 3 are guilty IMO.

I cannot say for sure that any 1 of the 3 stole a single penny. That is reflected in my trust given to all 3. I have not called any of them thieves. What prompted me to give a negative was the lack of response, lack of even logging in, and the response given when they did log in. The community 100% deserved a warning to be seen before they decided to donate another cent. The charity needs/needed an official book keeper so as to show where every cent was going. They failed to show all of that to this point. Flags and tags can be changed, I have no issue with anyone withdrawing support or opposing. Crwth contacted me last night, so I knew he was going to post today and I also told him his rep was salvageable. The other 2 I wasn't so sure of due to their actions to this point, but they may just be away for the holidays who knows.

I agree it will be nearly impossible to get receipts from the beginning, but I would say that they could see what all was donated and get a price for all those items then add it all together and show on the spreadsheet to get some sort of quote for the money that was spent.

Moving forward, if they are to continue and all tags removed(idk if this will happen), they will need to show all transactions and utilize the escrow(bl4nkcode or anyone else willing). There should never be money not protected.

Previously, I told about it there

I opposed all three flags but as said, I thought something bad were done by three guys but to say they scam, I don't think so. I want to say a few more things and honestly, I don't involve in this charity and their activities.

• I forgot to mention that months ago, not sure when (it is too long already), cabalism13 asked me that whether I can help him to do charity activities in Vietnam. I said No, because of few reasons:
  
  • I don't have time to manage such operations
  • It's pandemic and I have elderly in my family so that I can not put them under risk if I hang out for charity and bring the virus back to infect them. It's not right
  • Running a charity requires lot of things, I know that because I have joined many of charity activities. Because I do neither have time for lots of steps in a whole procedure, I only donate money to charity, to people I trust if I want to help
  • This invitation of cabalism13 probably was sent around the same period when he sent BTC to Croatia and malboroza, I knew it. However, honestly I did not know his charity received 1 BTC from a very generous donator
• About issues in this charity, something are bad in operations and should be managed better.
• However, it already happened. I don't think it is good to ask for all receipts for purchases months or 2 years ago. I myself, never keep such things for too long. Of course, some leftovers can be found that are what you can expect from this charity.
• As charity operators, they should imagine of such things, have skills and plans for good management. Anyway, it already happened and it is unfair to say they are scam only because they did not keep receipts, etc.
• I don't expect such transparent things when I donate my money to charity. I donate to many sources and not only to this charity, just told you so. I am not rich but it is what I did and please don't ask me to show you proof of my donations
• Not only for this charity team, but for other teams want to run such things: this is a good lesson, do things transparently, spreadsheets for all activities, expenses, receipts, reports with signature between charity and receivers, etc. Such things help to make charity actually better and you will be free from accusation. If you feel that you can not do so (example you are careless guys), don't operate any charity from donated fund. If you want to do charity, use your own money. It's best for all!

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A bit off-topic

In my nation, about 4 months ago, a same drama happened which (in my opinion) was triggered by someone related to government. Then people ask about receipts, invoices, audits, etc. I know there are good and bad charity operators but that drama put all charity operators under pressure, and wasted their time for reports to the community. Even those activities happened 2 or 3 years ago.

It is crowd or herd effects, I meant.

Consequently, locals have less intention to do charity now. It's bad for disadvantaged people but looks good for governmental-backed foundations. I don't like it, frankly.

The reason why I haven't been posting too much. If you were having symptoms, you need to at least isolate yourself for a couple of weeks, 14 days to be exact here. So of course my actions were limited and had to be verified again if I have covid etc.

TBH, this is not really the point of the post though. Why are you focusing on this?

What else do you suggest?

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I believe this is where the charity should be improved upon if it were to continue.

It's quite funny (in a cringe-inducing kind of way, I'm not trying to make light of this situation) how this compares to another incident recently where someone was accused of things and said "I was sick" and some people were outraged how the poor sick person was treated.

I've been sitting on the fence here (very uncomfortable) and honestly can't figure out what crwth is accused of. There were pictures provided of activities that seemed legit. I don't think the original thread promised detailed receipts.

That's not to say there isn't an issue with funds, or that there isn't a communication problem, but it looks to me like there also was a failure to convey expectations to the organizers of this charity, either in advance or at least after those big donations were given. It's seems a bit disingenuous to demand receipts a year later.

IOTW it was possible (at last for crwth; not sure about the other two people involved) to be completely honest and follow the letter and the spirit of the charity thread and end up with a red tag/flag for it because he didn't do something that wasn't part of the deal. I think that's messed up. I will oppose the flag until and unless actual proof of misconduct is provided.

Sorry if this is true but what this has to do with the proof you were supposed to post here? The image is dated on 23rd December while this thread has been posted on 11th December. By the way, such images can be easily made up, faked or what's not?
You have provided some receipts, do they really prove anything? I really don't think so.

I appreciate all your efforts in understanding and that's why I put the first part of what happened with me on to why I wasn't able to.

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Good for those who get tested every time. I got tested because I got symptoms of suspected covid. Having fever, diarrhea, body pains is not a joke. This is to verify if you have covid, I consulted a doctor first and it was recommended as well, if you want to see the medical prescription, PM me. That's not the main point of the thread though.

Image quoted for future reference.

https://ninjastic.space/post/58816120


So you had a "PCR" test which is just another name for a "Covid test" that literally millions of people globally are taking each and every week.  According to the form, "the patient" requested it, not "a Doctor".

Is that it?  

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diagnostics/21462-covid-19-and-pcr-testing

OR

You had an RT-PCR test https://www.emedicinehealth.com/pcr_polymerase_chain_reaction_test/article_em.htm (nearly the same thing)...