Tl;DR: Funds raised during IndieLand were claimed to be going to charities, which is contradicted by Open Hand’s tax filings showing the money never went anywhere.
I think this is less corruption and more vanity. There are a lot of charitable organisations out there who will routinely donate over a million dollars. They’ll get a hospital wing or entrance or statue or something named after them. I think compared to those charities, open hand is incredibly small.
My guess is their strategy was to do a bulk donation to get some kind of recognition for their mum. They were probably hoping they’d have much larger sums in a shorter time, and then time just kept on going.
The problem is, that would have been fine if it was their money they were doing this with, but they’re doing these shenanigans with other people’s money, and now open hand is probably done for as a charity.
Taxes are stupid complicated. I imagine it’s perfectly possible that this guy just didn’t know he was supposed to do something with taxes when doing charity. I’d wait for the investigation to wrap up before jumping to conclusions on this.
Watch the video.
It’s all out there in the public filings. It’s not a matter of taxes, the issue is they haven’t made ANY charitable donations at all since 2014 despite publicly claiming they were. He may have not been aware of it for some time, but even after he said he discovered it he kept making public claims that his all the money was going to charities.
The money has just been sitting in an account paying administrative fees. The good news is most the money is still there and he has an opportunity to make it right.
I don’t doubt the guy had good intentions at first, my theory is that greed got to him as the money started to pour in. What would have been the end goal if nobody ever notices? Can you even hide this kind of money from authorities as a charity organization?
However, I think he still can salvage the situation and his some of his reputation if he owns up to his mistakes and donates all of the money now.
I don’t think greed is the best explanation when it’s his whole family’s charity and none of the money has gone into anyone’s pocket.
