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

submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months 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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[-] frezik@midwest.social 6 points 11 months ago

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.