“About $1,200 of the $5,000 Jenny Otto of Boulder donated to and raised for Humanwire to help that family was never delivered” — As described above, this is false. Otto did not raise the funds for the airline ticket through Humanwire, she said she would pay for that herself as a result of not meeting her own goals. But I offered to pay for it anyway because I knew that it was their ticket to asylum and time was of the essence. The family lived comfortably in Greece from the moment Humanwire began raising funds for this family and this family made it on to Germany without any concerns of any kind. Humanwire took extra care to assure this family’s particular needs were always met. Any type of argument that suggests $1,200 was never delivered should first ask to who it was never delivered to and why that entity never came forward.
“And the refugee family, already struggling to survive in a foreign country, went into debt,” — This is false. The family never went into debt and The Denver Post can not substantiate this. It’s possible that Anna Segur went into debt or used the money she took from Humanwire and itemized it as a debt, though no person ever communicated to the family that they were in debt, and they were never in debt. This is a verifiably untrue statement.
“volunteers who say they now feel misled by its promises, still prominently displayed on the website, that pledges would go directly to needy refugees with “0 percent” going to operational costs,” — A volunteer may have said this but it’s a verifiably false technical matter. This false conveyance that “0 percent” would go to operational costs reflects the tragic misunderstanding the reporter had about Humanwire’s operating costs including costs raised at the point of sale in every transaction where donors decided what % they wished to allocate of their final donation to Humanwire for operating costs. It can not be argued that the material conveyance was vague enough to be journalistically viable or could be interpreted by anyone as truthful. Neither I, nor anyone at Humanwire, ever received a complaint or expression of a misunderstanding from anyone related to this, Osher was the only person who ever made this claim, which resulted in a misunderstanding that will affect me negatively for the rest of my life.
It‘s also worth noting that while this reporter had never seen such a style and technique for a platform to allow users to pay 0% to operational costs, as there had never been one before, two weeks after my arrest, the GoFundMe company announced that they changed their entire business model to the exact same model, previously demanding 5%, now taking 0%. While all four articles in Osher’s series mentioned that 0% goes to operating costs, he never once mentioned in any article that users have the option to give money to operating expenses. In the article above describing GoFundMe’s adoption of this method, it would not be fair to anyone if the writer failed to mention that GoFundMe has a method of attaining operating costs. If it did, the article should be retracted, just as this article from The Denver Post should be retracted for not mentioning that Humanwire had multiple revenue streams for operating costs.
“Those jeopardized…Facing eviction from the apartment due to a lack of support from Humanwire, the Alrahmouns now probably will have to relocate to a more cramped apartment provided by United Nations relief workers — one they will have to share with another family, according to former Humanwire volunteers.” — This is false. The family never faced eviction, and The Denver Post can not substantiate it. “Volunteers” refers again to Anna Segur. A review of the campaign finance records shows a detailed history for this family. The move to UNHCR housing was the result of a positive impetus to extend their support while their asylum was delayed, and because they only raised $500 total which was spent on food and rent already. Nevertheless, they did have rent paid for them by Humanwire that was not obliged, and thus the truth is the opposite to what The Denver Post wrote.
A review of email correspondence from Anna about this family shows an example of the significant types of accounting errors Anna made. In her emails on this family, she claimed in this family was due $4,835 which was their goal, though the family only raised $500, actually. In May and June, she requested rent for this family in a table of expenses, but then followed up her email later to say that she was unaware that some distributions had already been completed, so she updated her spreadsheet with the rent expense removed. Then later when she followed up to push for distribution, the rent appeared again on the table as she had put back in the old table again, and thus her new total reflected the rent which wasn’t due anymore. I also discovered that her table did not match the correct order numbers on the system and that her claim in this case for $4,835, was the result of both an organizational mistake on her part (if not yet another intended extraction), as well as a deep lack of understanding over allocations due to being a volunteer who was not in the loop over allocations. In the end, the family was paid significantly more than the $500 they raised.
“The volunteers say they’ve moved 47 refugees in Greece out of Humanwire housing and into units provided by United Nations relief operations and started relying on other nonprofits.” — This is a true statement but the actual act of moving families into UN housing was designed by Anna and myself, not because of any problem with Humanwire funding which is an idea that this sentence is placed to support, which thus makes it an incorrect use of the facts. The cause for moving them was a delay in their asylum applications. The correlation between moving families was not related to being jeopardized by Humanwire. The action was correlated to their applications process becoming uncertain and was put into place as a result of the extra care that we were taking in assuring that the funds they had would last over an extended period. Humanwire never caused anyone to become jeopardized and The Denver Post can not substantiate any of what they published regarding whoever these “47 refugees” are, likely including a group of single-mother refugees Anna found, but never raised any funds for, and never signed up through Humanwire.
“About $40,000 donated to Humanwire to help 149 refugees in Greece was missing from the $157,225 that had been raised for them, according to an August spreadsheet a volunteer prepared.” — This is false. First of all, this is another example that incorrectly conveys there was yet another volunteer who was a part of a concern, but this volunteer was already named in the article, and so it‘s misleading to say “according to a volunteer” without noting that its one of the volunteers that was already named. He named all three of the volunteers, the same three that they were working as their own team, against the Humanwire team.
Nonetheless, all money to Greece was allocated properly to Greece and the related claims by Anna to the District Attorney were dropped after looking closely at each individual one she rounded up from individual donors. As described in the accompanying report, Anna came up with a variety of different totals for the same claim and this was yet another total that contradicts all her other totals and was also false. When she made this claim, she did not provide any evidence, she only had a spreadsheet that she made and said it was true. The Denver Post can not substantiate any of her totals, even if she had a spreadsheet that she created to back up each one. I opened up all of the company records to the Denver Post that could be verified as true evidence but they choose not to request or look at any.
“Anna Segur, who helped Humanwire launch the tent-to-home program in Greece, quit in July over concerns pledges weren’t going to the families.” — This is a true statement. She did quit, as described in the accompanying report. Though The Denver Post never found it compelling to report that she continued to withdraw money from the business after she quit, nor did they find her legal demand letters compelling to detail, as described in the accompanying report.
“Hilton said at least $6,000 of that money remains unaccounted for by Humanwire,” — This is false and can not be substantiated by The Denver Post. We provided Hilton with a specific breakdown with receipts of how his claim for $6000 was spent, based on his own direction. The breakdown that was provided to him was validated by our director in Turkey who helped me with the facts for the record, as he was the one who managed the money at my direction for Hilton, in the correct manner, for which all of it was fully allocated toward the project properly, and none was allocated anywhere else. All funds were spent and they were spent legitimately for the cause they were raised for. I offered documents but The Denver Post did not take the time to look. Hilton also made this claim of $6,000 to the District Attorney, where he played a material role in trying to send me to jail for my life, but he did not provide the list of receipts apparently even though he had them, and his claim was rejected a second time after the DA’s office did have the time to look. Hilton did not receive any money for this false claim.
“Baron told him [Hilton] during those conversations that he used some of Hilton’s donations to pay other expenses and that he planned to eventually reimburse the organization, he said.” — This can not be substantiated by The Denver Post because it’s hearsay and also false, and is irresponsible of The Denver Post to include without looking at the list of receipts that account for the claim he made, which Hilton was provided a copy of.
“He’s paying back his investment in the forprofit as a form of sweat equity with payments from the non-profit.” — This statement is grossly false. I never said anything like it and The Denver Post can not substantiate their statement. I fully understood my own business structure and was well versed in articulating the structure and I never said anything like this at all. This is a misunderstanding he had or a conveyance he wished to make that was not true.
“During the recent issues regarding the distribution of campaign funds, refugees have been lining up at the office, calling and messaging us at all hours, threatening and begging us,” — I originally misunderstood the reference to this event and did not believe it happened, though I later found it was a result of Justin Hilton’s visit to Turkey, where he was active in promoting his claim that I stole money from campaigns. This group began to complain though they were not complaining about any specific distributions that were due to them, they were responding to Hilton’s rumors that the leader of Humanwire in America was using their faces to steal money, and they were demanding answers, which was the purpose of a call I was handed, also mentioned in the article to support the notion that I didn’t care when it was the opposite, I showed up to take accountability. The contractor who was himself a refugee in charge of this group began working for Hilton after Hilton convinced him that I was a thief, and the contractor did not communicate his status to me that he had stopped working, which compounded the problem that Hilton created by going to Turkey and telling people they would be accused too but that he would take care of them.
Other material problems with the article come into question naturally because the story is based on the oral testimony of Anna Segur and those she persuaded with information and opinions that they obtained through her. For example, the Greece accounting was not managed by the other volunteers, it was Anna’s job for them, and they followed her accounting. So when Osher is presenting the volunteers, in each case, they are simply regurgitating what they were told from Anna.
Osher presented Anna and Kayra as if they were two separate volunteers who were unrelated, even though they were business partners, and joined in the legal demand letters to take over the company.
The article did not clarify the relationship between Anna Segur and Jenny Otto, either. If Osher knew that Anna or her own new team member bought the ticket, he hid that from you by naming “a volunteer” but not the volunteers that he already named, Anna and Kayra. Humanwire did not have any other volunteers in the company, everyone else was a paid worker.
Since the entire article was like this, filled with example after example of wrong facts, and since the hour-long interview that Osher conducted with me in my office was recorded, I contacted Lee Ann Colacioppo, the very top editor in charge of the entire Denver Post, and I asked if I could come in to show her what Osher had not yet seen. She said she was too busy to meet herself and handed me back to Osher and his editors who refused to meet.