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The Berkbridge Foundation - Questions Regarding Legitimacy
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682 posts in this topic

Just now, James J Johnson said:

Yes. That would be illegal, hence I wrote, "He's taking advantage of a system Not illegal >>UNLESS<< his charity status is/was revoked/suspended

OK, gotcha.  I would certainly like to see that status revoked, but in the meantime I have no intention of buying anything from Robert Jalali and his little gang, and I would recommend other buyers stay away as well.

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They send all proceeds to the Berkbridge Foundation. Then they use almost all of the proceeds for "administrative expenses." A small fraction of the proceeds goes to single mother(s). No fees or taxes. Actually pretty brilliant.

And FYI, billionaires pay less tax than the average middle income worker. 

Not fair. But legal. The people in charge take care of themselves first. They have a great amount of influence on laws/tax laws. Politicians get "contributions" and are (legally) as morally bankrupt as the day is long.

Welcome to reality. o.O

 

 

Edited by icefires
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11 minutes ago, icefires said:

Having said that, they may be reporting inaccurate numbers to the IRS, which of course is illegal.

Does the % of the amount of charitable contributions, in this case Berk's sales, that must be used for the purpose of said charity vary from state to state? Or are there no rules governing what a foundation must apportion for provably charitable works? I have to look into it further.

10 years ago, after following Comiclink auction results and ebay results, I noticed that there was a boatload of money to be made, >>IF<< you could simply win auctions on Link, and then sell them the next month on Ebay <<WITHOUT>> having to pay final value fees, seller fees, taxes, sales taxes (if applicable). For $100 to $10,000 books, being an honest seller, no shilling, Link results usually sold at or slightly below GP. Ebay results typically finish above GP. The difference of making money, losing money, or spinning wheels and breaking even are those expenses that being a foundation eliminates!

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27 minutes ago, icefires said:

Having said that, they may be reporting inaccurate numbers to the IRS, which of course is illegal.

The money sent by ebay to the foundation is probably being spent on more inventory minus "expenses". That's a business. Buy/sell, isn't it? Is that the way a Foundation is supposed to operate?

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4 hours ago, Montezuma said:

Looking through the feedback on e-bay

Joined 1999 username unknown?

First feedback was from 2002 as a buyer, then most of the feedback was for selling cars, motorcycles, jet ski's. Including Hummers, Vipers, Ferrari's.  Seller was called Robert, and Rob in some of the feedback so that fits.

A hundred or so feedback's in the account switched to buying comic books big time from a lot of familiar names. This went on for  500-600 transactions. At that point they started selling comics and the charity was first mentioned in the feedback.

 

 

The guy's name is Robert Jalali.

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2 hours ago, Sweet Lou 14 said:

The guy's name is Robert Jalali.

Yep. We established that shortly into page 1. My question, and it's a question that nobody has the answer to, is what was the ebay name that Berkbridge sold under prior to the name change to Berkbridge 4 years ago> They did business for 16 years using an ebay handle that is now a mystery.

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59 minutes ago, James J Johnson said:

Yep. We established that shortly into page 1. My question, and it's a question that nobody has the answer to, is what was the ebay name that Berkbridge sold under prior to the name change to Berkbridge 4 years ago> They did business for 16 years using an ebay handle that is now a mystery.

Jerkbridge?

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If anyone in this thread is that concerned about Berkbridge, they need to request the documentation via regular mail and pay the fee asked. Once received, it can be determined if Berkbridge is legally doing everything correctly. Of course they are a scam, but are they doing anything illegally? My biggest question is which form 990 are they filing? If they are filing the one that says gross receipts are less than $50,000 annually, I believe they are breaking the law.

 

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38 minutes ago, icefires said:

If anyone in this thread is that concerned about Berkbridge, they need to request the documentation via regular mail and pay the fee asked. Once received, it can be determined if Berkbridge is legally doing everything correctly. Of course they are a scam, but are they doing anything illegally? My biggest question is which form 990 are they filing? If they are filing the one that says gross receipts are less than $50,000 annually, I believe they are breaking the law.

 

Yes, that was already produced that they were filing the under $50k (990N). But that was for last year which cannot be tracked through eBay. They could change it this year.

Edited by ygogolak
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5 minutes ago, ygogolak said:

Yes, that was already produced that they were filing the under $50k (990N). But that was for last year which cannot be tracked through eBay. They could change it this year.

Ebay could certainly provide that information if requested by law enforcement.

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43 minutes ago, icefires said:

 

If anyone in this thread is that concerned about Berkbridge, they need to request the documentation via regular mail and pay the fee asked.

 

It seems to me that even if one of us did this, they would decline to provide the documentation on the basis that they are being victimised by a smear campaign :eyeroll:

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3 hours ago, comicwiz said:

Can we establish one thing here before this goes any further. We can collectively blame that fail of feeBay which has allowed the anonymity to creep into every aspect of it's platform. Private bidding, feedback, past aliases, etc. When I started using feeBay, you could contact other bidders to warn them of a seller ripping people off, can't do that anymore. In fact, it's been subverted for sellers who love to shill bid. If a seller doesn't want you to know it's bidding on it's own auctions, they can run an auction hiding the bidders, even though you can't see who is bidding anyway. Even when you want to study patterns in bidding, all it shows you is that bidder 1 is bidding on auctions of one or more sellers, it doesn't allow you to see if there is an association to those sellers and bidders. And when you had a bad feeling about a seller possibly trying to play games, you could look up that sellers information, which included past aliases. Can't do that anymore. So let's not forget who is responsible for harboring frauds, criminals, and shiesters here - it's not anyone's fault other than feeBay.

I don't recognize what Berk is doing with ebay as a failure of anything. There's a system in place with specific advantages that Berk has availed himself of. The laws make this possible, much like the laws of crack, press, and resubmit resulting in a book of higher grade and increased value. It's part of modern grading system/company DNA now and acceptable. Some hate it, some are indifferent, some love it, but there's no failure and perfectly legal since the rules and ethics of the hobby allow it.

W really don't know if he's violating any foundation laws. Under-reporting, the charity status suspended, etc., etc.. We don't know thus we don't really have the intel necessary to determine if ebay, and or the entire charity mechanism has failed. If that info comes to light, only then will we know if that's the case.

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2 minutes ago, James J Johnson said:

I don't recognize what Berk is doing with ebay as a failure of anything. There's a system in place with specific advantages that Berk has availed himself of. The laws make this possible, much like the laws of crack, press, and resubmit resulting in a book of higher grade and increased value. It's part of modern grading system/company DNA now and acceptable. Some hate it, some are indifferent, some love it, but there's no failure and perfectly legal since the rules and ethics of the hobby allow it.

W really don't know if he's violating any foundation laws. Under-reporting, the charity status suspended, etc., etc.. We don't know thus we don't really have the intel necessary to determine if ebay, and or the entire charity mechanism has failed. If that info comes to light, only then will we know if that's the case.

I'm speaking generally here, not toward any specific seller. I replied in the context of you suggesting the feature to check on past aliases does not allow a feeBay member to see what a sellers used as a past alias. This was something you could see in the past, but feeBay took away that feature, and replaced it with an anonymized alias. There is no way to know that information. That is all.

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1 hour ago, kav said:

ebay keeps taking away features that help people make informed buying decisions.  You cant see what a best offer sold for anymore, for example.

+1  There's been a gradual and steady decline of transparency over the past decade. Info that was once available to buyers no longer exists.

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