IGN - YouTuber The Completionist Responds to Allegations of 'Charity Fraud' Against Him and Open Hand It should be noted the $600k donation to AFTD was made on Nov 29, 2023... 16 days after the...
In a nearly 20-minute video, Khalil has offered his response to the allegations of charity fraud, embezzlement, and forgery. Furthermore, the YouTube video of the response includes relevant links backing up his claims, including a blog post from the Association for Frontotemporal Degeneration about the $600,000 donation it received from the Open Hand Foundation.
"I’m here today to provide clarity and transparency to set the record straight," Khalil said. "I want to make it 100% clear. At no point in the foundation's history was there any criminal or financial fraud. None. I also want to touch on why I’ve been quiet for these last few weeks. A lot of folks have been saying that if I didn’t do anything wrong that I should have said something sooner or that my conversation with the accusers was considered my full side of the story. But when there is allegation after allegation being made, it takes a long time to gather the evidence and facts to refute claims. This will be my only video response on this matter."
While Khalil vehemently denied the allegations against him, he did apologize for how "it did take too long to get to this moment."
"I’m disappointed that I was not more straightforward regarding the foundation’s timeline for making donations and that I made statements potentially implying donations were made when they had not yet been," Khalil added. "It took too long for clear action to occur, and I apologize for all of this, but such inaction was not done for any selfish or malicious reasons"
Khalil also noted that the Open Hand Foundation had been in contact with organizations over the years that were potential landing spots for the money, but many of them wanted "the funds not being restricted or came with extremely high administrative costs."
Khalil then went point-by-point and addressed many of the allegations levied against him, his family, and the Open Hand Foundation, including that there were documents with no signatures, money unaccounted for, and much more.
"I want to reiterate and specifically address that both the foundation and I have been accused of forgery, embezzlement, and charity fraud," Khalil said. "The allegations imply the foundation forged tax returns because there weren’t physical signatures on them when we e-filed them or that we altered numbers to hide income or expenses. We can account for every single dollar received and spent in the last nine years. We do not have anything to hide, and due to the overwhelming amount of people who have been instructed to file complaints to the IRS and Department of Justice, we understand an audit may be coming and we welcome it."
Khalil also confirmed he is no longer part of the Open Hand Foundation and gave up his role as board member.
It should be noted the $600k donation to AFTD was made on Nov 29, 2023... 16 days after the initial allegations from Jobst. And I would hardly call an IRS audit supposedly performed on their 2014 filings as "proof" that nothing shady has been going on at Open Hand since then. So I still genuinely hope another audit is incoming after all this, so we can know for certain.
p.s. IMO Jirard's threat to sue Jobst for slander at the end of the video is pretty laughable considering the fact that Open Hand only now made the $600k donation weeks after the allegations of them sitting on the money for 10+ years came out... Which proves Jobst was 100% correct about the money never having been donated to anyone in all that time, despite all Jirard's verbal claims to the contrary in his fundraiser streams, and in the foundation's promotional material.
Mutahar is a different story though, since he has made some pretty bold, direct accusations/speculation about potential embezzlement, and even recently suggested that the donation may have taken so long due to Jirard's family having to liquidate assets after the accusations came out in order to pay for it. Jobst, as always, was pretty careful about exactly what he said in his videos, but Mutahar is clearly not.
Karl Jobst's response to the video from Jirard: The Completionist finally responded. It wasn't good. This time Jobst goes full-out with the accusations of fraud, and even openly accuses Jirard of...
This time Jobst goes full-out with the accusations of fraud, and even openly accuses Jirard of embezzlement too... with specific evidence supposedly backing that up (discussed at 10m and more at 25m).
A small patch will be going live on Steam and be submitted to consoles soon to replace the builder NPC in Mirth.
We arrived at this decision after carefully monitoring events over the past few weeks, and while it is not our place to pass judgment, we do make it a priority to maintain a positive and optimistic space that reflects the spirit of our intentions, be they creative or otherwise.
As always, we appreciate your support and trust you to respect our decision while keeping the tone of the conversation in line with the essence of what makes our games and our community what they are. Thank you.
Friends Per Second Podcast Twitter announcement 1/22/2
Hey users, we wanted to provide an update on Jirard’s involvement with the podcast. The four of us met to talk about the ongoing situation, and during that conversation, Jirard offered to step down from the podcast. As a team, we agreed that that would be for the best.
We want to thank Jirard for his contributions to the podcast and we really do wish him well for the future. We won’t be commenting any further on the situation going forward.
The podcast will continue with our holiday episode and into 2024 with Ralph, Jake, and Lucy.
I assume this is partially because one of the oft repeated pieces of evidence against Jirard is the Sea Of Stars main menu screen and has been in every video the two made about it. I've been...
A small patch will be going live on Steam and be submitted to consoles soon to replace the builder NPC in Mirth.
I assume this is partially because one of the oft repeated pieces of evidence against Jirard is the Sea Of Stars main menu screen and has been in every video the two made about it.
I've been wondering how they felt about that, guess there's my answer.
Yeah, I don't think their game being prominently featured in the background of several clips about charity fraud sat well with the devs. And those clips have been repeatedly played on a bunch of...
Yeah, I don't think their game being prominently featured in the background of several clips about charity fraud sat well with the devs. And those clips have been repeatedly played on a bunch of other huge channels covering the issue too, E.g. Asmongold, Cr1TiKaL, etc. Removing Jirard from the game won't stop those clips from being used/viewed, but it at least lets people know where the devs stand on the issue, and that they don't want to be associated with him anymore.
The fact that Karl confronted Jirard about all this via Skype, and in that call Jirard fully admitted that the money hasn't actually gone towards dementia research (despite his repeated claims...
The fact that Karl confronted Jirard about all this via Skype, and in that call Jirard fully admitted that the money hasn't actually gone towards dementia research (despite his repeated claims stating otherwise in his fundraising streams over the years), and he was supposedly "only" made aware of that in 2022... and yet despite all that, 6 days ago (allegedly after that call with Karl), IndiaLand did another charity marathon event to raise even more money for Open Hand, is pretty damning, IMO.
I saw Karl's video yesterday, it's pretty rancid behaviour. I have always felt very uncomfortable with these kinds of fundraisers as it just doesn't feel like there's much honesty to it.
I saw Karl's video yesterday, it's pretty rancid behaviour.
I have always felt very uncomfortable with these kinds of fundraisers as it just doesn't feel like there's much honesty to it.
Thankfully, most charity gaming marathon livestream events aren't raising money for the non-profit foundations created by the person doing the streaming, like Jirard/IndieLand/OpenHand is. E.g....
Thankfully, most charity gaming marathon livestream events aren't raising money for the non-profit foundations created by the person doing the streaming, like Jirard/IndieLand/OpenHand is. E.g. DesertBusForHope is raising money directly for Child's Play.
So I don't think this particular problem is all that widespread. This is unfortunately just Jirard and his brother being either lying idiots (and severely mismanaging their non-profit), or total fraudster scumfucks.
I watched the video and what really didn't make sense to me is... To what end? Why is the money sitting there? Were they trying to figure out a way to funnel it out? Why only pay yourself a meager...
I watched the video and what really didn't make sense to me is... To what end? Why is the money sitting there? Were they trying to figure out a way to funnel it out? Why only pay yourself a meager $30k or so in a year if you're committing fraud? Why not give away 200k and take a 90k salary or something?
Like, sitting on the funds for a decade doesn't make any sense. It wasn't even invested or anything from what I could tell.
If you watch SomeOrdinaryGamers' video breaking down the financial statements of Open Hand, everyone listed as being employees of the foundation are Jirard's family members, and despite the...
If you watch SomeOrdinaryGamers' video breaking down the financial statements of Open Hand, everyone listed as being employees of the foundation are Jirard's family members, and despite the filings stating they have all worked 0 hours and supposedly taken no wages, the Foundation has also somehow spent over $125k of the charity's money in unspecified "expenses" since 2015.
To give them the benefit of the doubt, those could have been for "legitimate" expenses... and the charity may have been well intentioned but also just severely mismanaged. But given all of...
To give them the benefit of the doubt, those could have been for "legitimate" expenses... and the charity may have been well intentioned but also just severely mismanaged. But given all of Jirard's other lies, I highly doubt it. So yeah, most likely it's just your run-of-the-mill charity fraud, treating the money they've raised over the years like a family rainy-day fund. :(
Yeah, I figured that money could've easily been for securing the celebrity appearances, hotels, etc. but the 'continuing to lie not only after you 'found out'' and 'continuing to lie after you've...
Yeah, I figured that money could've easily been for securing the celebrity appearances, hotels, etc. but the 'continuing to lie not only after you 'found out'' and 'continuing to lie after you've been directly contacted by someone looking into your financials' is evidence of both doing a fraud and bad at fraud.
Oh it's just me being dead suspicious of everyone. I had a colleague raise £2500 over a year a decade or so ago... turns out he paid he rent nicely for a while. Left me really jaded to anything...
Oh it's just me being dead suspicious of everyone. I had a colleague raise £2500 over a year a decade or so ago... turns out he paid he rent nicely for a while. Left me really jaded to anything charitable like that alas.
I prefer to throw cash at charities I care for myself. But these are a good idea. I think Humble did the first biggies right?
Nice. I didn't realise the background was so extensive. I game, but I don't really <get> modern gaming and the community that surrounds it. So it's quite cool to see how long that's been going on...
Nice. I didn't realise the background was so extensive.
I game, but I don't really <get> modern gaming and the community that surrounds it. So it's quite cool to see how long that's been going on to be fair.
Today Karl Jobst released a new video, in which he apparently uncovered more questionable activities around the Open Hand foundation. In the last decade the Khalils have organised yearly sponsored...
Today Karl Jobst released a new video, in which he apparently uncovered more questionable activities around the Open Hand foundation.
In the last decade the Khalils have organised yearly sponsored charity golf tournaments which should have added significant amounts of money to the foundation, but the tax filings don't show that the money was ever received. It looks as if tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars never reached the foundation.
SomeOrdinaryGamers' next companion video to Karl's, diving a bit deeper into financial details, has finally been released: The Completionist’s Open Hand Charity Scam Has To Be Investigated... It...
It sounds like Jamie Lee Curtis is probably going to be pretty angry if/when she hears about all this. If Open Hand gets investigated there is the potential for her private charitable foundation, SYZYGY, to be caught up in that now too. Since SYZYGY has made $125k in donations to Open Hand over the years, but in SYZYGY's filings it has Open Hand listed as being a "Public Charity", when it's not. Open Hand is also another private foundation, and supposedly a private foundation donating to another private foundation actually has tax obligations on those donations, since they must be declared as a taxable expense, not a tax-deductible donation.
p.s. Something not mentioned in the video that I know about from having watched Completionist/SBB a bunch over the years, is that Ruby Guest (Jamie Lee's daughter) actually worked for Jirard for several years as an editor and associate producer. That's how Jamie Lee became involved with Completionist, appearing several times on IndieLand's charity streams, and why she had her foundation donate so much to Open Hand every year. So I imagine they're both going to be pretty angry and disappointed when they learn of this.
Damn, you know it's getting serious when Karl actually urges people who watch his video to file a complaint with the California AG office. And from a comment in /r/TheCompletionist: So, at the...
Damn, you know it's getting serious when Karl actually urges people who watch his video to file a complaint with the California AG office. And from a comment in /r/TheCompletionist:
I sent links to the California Attorney General complaint site and they said ‘we’re aware of it, thank you for providing the links, keep this email for your reference’
So, at the very least, it sounds like the AG office is finally aware of the potential fraud now, and so will hopefully investigate it further.
IGN - YouTuber The Completionist Responds to Allegations of 'Charity Fraud' Against Him and Open Hand
It should be noted the $600k donation to AFTD was made on Nov 29, 2023... 16 days after the initial allegations from Jobst. And I would hardly call an IRS audit supposedly performed on their 2014 filings as "proof" that nothing shady has been going on at Open Hand since then. So I still genuinely hope another audit is incoming after all this, so we can know for certain.
p.s. IMO Jirard's threat to sue Jobst for slander at the end of the video is pretty laughable considering the fact that Open Hand only now made the $600k donation weeks after the allegations of them sitting on the money for 10+ years came out... Which proves Jobst was 100% correct about the money never having been donated to anyone in all that time, despite all Jirard's verbal claims to the contrary in his fundraiser streams, and in the foundation's promotional material.
Mutahar is a different story though, since he has made some pretty bold, direct accusations/speculation about potential embezzlement, and even recently suggested that the donation may have taken so long due to Jirard's family having to liquidate assets after the accusations came out in order to pay for it. Jobst, as always, was pretty careful about exactly what he said in his videos, but Mutahar is clearly not.
Karl Jobst's response to the video from Jirard:
The Completionist finally responded. It wasn't good.
This time Jobst goes full-out with the accusations of fraud, and even openly accuses Jirard of embezzlement too... with specific evidence supposedly backing that up (discussed at 10m and more at 25m).
Some related updates:
Sea of Stars is removing 'The Completionist' NPC from the game
Friends Per Second Podcast Twitter announcement 1/2 2/2
I assume this is partially because one of the oft repeated pieces of evidence against Jirard is the Sea Of Stars main menu screen and has been in every video the two made about it.
I've been wondering how they felt about that, guess there's my answer.
Yeah, I don't think their game being prominently featured in the background of several clips about charity fraud sat well with the devs. And those clips have been repeatedly played on a bunch of other huge channels covering the issue too, E.g. Asmongold, Cr1TiKaL, etc. Removing Jirard from the game won't stop those clips from being used/viewed, but it at least lets people know where the devs stand on the issue, and that they don't want to be associated with him anymore.
The fact that Karl confronted Jirard about all this via Skype, and in that call Jirard fully admitted that the money hasn't actually gone towards dementia research (despite his repeated claims stating otherwise in his fundraising streams over the years), and he was supposedly "only" made aware of that in 2022... and yet despite all that, 6 days ago (allegedly after that call with Karl), IndiaLand did another charity marathon event to raise even more money for Open Hand, is pretty damning, IMO.
I saw Karl's video yesterday, it's pretty rancid behaviour.
I have always felt very uncomfortable with these kinds of fundraisers as it just doesn't feel like there's much honesty to it.
Thankfully, most charity gaming marathon livestream events aren't raising money for the non-profit foundations created by the person doing the streaming, like Jirard/IndieLand/OpenHand is. E.g. DesertBusForHope is raising money directly for Child's Play.
So I don't think this particular problem is all that widespread. This is unfortunately just Jirard and his brother being either lying idiots (and severely mismanaging their non-profit), or total fraudster scumfucks.
I watched the video and what really didn't make sense to me is... To what end? Why is the money sitting there? Were they trying to figure out a way to funnel it out? Why only pay yourself a meager $30k or so in a year if you're committing fraud? Why not give away 200k and take a 90k salary or something?
Like, sitting on the funds for a decade doesn't make any sense. It wasn't even invested or anything from what I could tell.
If you watch SomeOrdinaryGamers' video breaking down the financial statements of Open Hand, everyone listed as being employees of the foundation are Jirard's family members, and despite the filings stating they have all worked 0 hours and supposedly taken no wages, the Foundation has also somehow spent over $125k of the charity's money in unspecified "expenses" since 2015.
Ah! Haven't had a moment to watch that one yet. So they are just doing a fraud then.
To give them the benefit of the doubt, those could have been for "legitimate" expenses... and the charity may have been well intentioned but also just severely mismanaged. But given all of Jirard's other lies, I highly doubt it. So yeah, most likely it's just your run-of-the-mill charity fraud, treating the money they've raised over the years like a family rainy-day fund. :(
Yeah, I figured that money could've easily been for securing the celebrity appearances, hotels, etc. but the 'continuing to lie not only after you 'found out'' and 'continuing to lie after you've been directly contacted by someone looking into your financials' is evidence of both doing a fraud and bad at fraud.
Oh it's just me being dead suspicious of everyone. I had a colleague raise £2500 over a year a decade or so ago... turns out he paid he rent nicely for a while. Left me really jaded to anything charitable like that alas.
I prefer to throw cash at charities I care for myself. But these are a good idea. I think Humble did the first biggies right?
I'm pretty sure Games Done Quick, and Extra Life predate Humble by quite a few years.
Nice. I didn't realise the background was so extensive.
I game, but I don't really <get> modern gaming and the community that surrounds it. So it's quite cool to see how long that's been going on to be fair.
Today Karl Jobst released a new video, in which he apparently uncovered more questionable activities around the Open Hand foundation.
In the last decade the Khalils have organised yearly sponsored charity golf tournaments which should have added significant amounts of money to the foundation, but the tax filings don't show that the money was ever received. It looks as if tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars never reached the foundation.
SomeOrdinaryGamers' next companion video to Karl's, diving a bit deeper into financial details, has finally been released: The Completionist’s Open Hand Charity Scam Has To Be Investigated...
It sounds like Jamie Lee Curtis is probably going to be pretty angry if/when she hears about all this. If Open Hand gets investigated there is the potential for her private charitable foundation, SYZYGY, to be caught up in that now too. Since SYZYGY has made $125k in donations to Open Hand over the years, but in SYZYGY's filings it has Open Hand listed as being a "Public Charity", when it's not. Open Hand is also another private foundation, and supposedly a private foundation donating to another private foundation actually has tax obligations on those donations, since they must be declared as a taxable expense, not a tax-deductible donation.
p.s. Something not mentioned in the video that I know about from having watched Completionist/SBB a bunch over the years, is that Ruby Guest (Jamie Lee's daughter) actually worked for Jirard for several years as an editor and associate producer. That's how Jamie Lee became involved with Completionist, appearing several times on IndieLand's charity streams, and why she had her foundation donate so much to Open Hand every year. So I imagine they're both going to be pretty angry and disappointed when they learn of this.
Damn, you know it's getting serious when Karl actually urges people who watch his video to file a complaint with the California AG office. And from a comment in /r/TheCompletionist:
So, at the very least, it sounds like the AG office is finally aware of the potential fraud now, and so will hopefully investigate it further.