November 8, 2023

Martin Scorsese’s newest film, Killers of the Flower Moon, which is based on David Grann’s nonfiction book, tells the story of how Oklahoma cattle baron William King Hale and his nephews Bryon and Ernest Burkhart outwardly pretended to be friends and benefactors of the oil-rich Osage Nation community while under cover of night and masks robbed and murdered (or tried to murder) their own wives.

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Hale’s outward face included his command of the Osage language, his donations to charities, schools, and even hospitals for the Osage, and his fingers-crossed promise to “find the killers and bring them to justice” (when he was the chief killer). For a long time, he had nearly everybody fooled, and it took the predecessor to J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI to bring him and his nephews to partial justice (many others got away scot-free.)

Of crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried’s donations to political and charitable organizations, one that stands out is his gifts totaling more than $2.5 million to the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center — a leading nonpartisan political watchdog. The Center declined to return the donations to those the “crypto king” had defrauded, claiming they had spent the tainted money.

In the wake of the death of George Floyd, the principals who incorporated under the appellation “Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation” collected about $90 million in donations in the years 2020-2022. The group did transfer about a third of the money to black, trans, and anti-police nonprofits (including $4.5 million to charities run by cronies), but spent $12 million buying luxury homes for themselves and allocated another $22.7 million for “expenses.”

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Millions went to co-founder Patrisse Cullors, who had also scored a lucrative TV deal with Warner Bros. that ended with no shows produced. Paul Cullors (her brother) was paid nearly $140,000 in salaries on top of the $1.6 million paid to his security firm, Black Ties Security, LLC. Another $2 million plus was doled out to board member Shalomyah Bowers and her consulting firm.

Ethicist Frank Addessi cited a report from the Tampa Bay Times and the Center for Investigative Reporting on “the fifty worst charities in America,” which together had raised nearly $1 billion for corporate fundraisers. Addessi noted that no more than 11.1 percent (and as low as not a single dime) of the funds these charities took in went to direct aid to victims.

While charity watchdog organizations say no more than 35 percent of donations should go to fundraising costs, charities with high-sounding names (cancer foundations, firefighter and police associations, veterans’ organizations, and “children’s” charities) turn out to just be shills for their principals to rake in sizable salaries on the backs of the truly charitable. The truly worst paid over 90 percent of collections to solicitors, and two-thirds paid at least 70 percent.

One common hustle, says Addessi, is what he calls “the name game.” While the well-respected Make a Wish Foundation spends most of its receipts directly on children, the similarly named Kids Wish Network spends just 3 percent. But they rake in far more than they deserve, he intimates, by designing their website and solicitations to look and sound like Make a Wish.

Another ethicist, Patricia Illingworth, takes on a different group of charities — bad actor companies who either donate to or create their own charitable organizations to distract the public from the harm they do. Jeffrey Epstein tops her list for his donations to high-profile institutions like Harvard University and MIT’s Media Lab (and countless others) that bought him cover for his nefarious deeds.

Museums around the world, embarrassed that they had benefited from Sackler family charitable giving, have recently backed away from having their reputations linked to the Purdue Pharma principals whose company patented and aggressively marketed Oxycontin, helping to usher in a national opioid crisis.