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YouTuber Jirard (a.k.a. The Completionist) has been accused of keeping and hoarding charity donations (www.youtube.com)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Clbull@lemmy.world to c/games@lemmy.world

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Karl Jobst and SomeOrdinaryGamers (separate video linked here) have accused Jirard Khalil of lying to viewers about his charity.

Jirard is a YouTuber who runs a channel known as the Completionist, where he plays games to 100% completion and reviews them based on how enjoyable the experience was.

The Open Hand Foundation, which was co-founded by Jirard in 2014, was set up to raise money for dementia charities after his dementia-stricken mother passed away. However, their yearly filings with the IRS suggest that none of this money has been donated to charity.

Jacque (Jirard's brother) responded to Karl's emails to the Open Hand Foundation claiming that they are still searching for the correct charity to partner with and disburse these funds, whereas Jirard claimed that he was only aware that none of the funds had gone out last year, yet is still openly promoting Open Hand on stream and claiming they support the UCSF, Alzheimer's Association, the AFTD and many other charities.

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[-] 4am@lemm.ee 0 points 1 year ago

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@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

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@midwest.social 3 points 1 year ago

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.