Is BiblePay (BBP) a Scam? - Are BiblePay's Charity Donations Legitimate?

[togoshigekata]

Reposting from Investigations section of Scam Accusations: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5030640.0
(So that everyone can see it, not just Full Members with 100 or more Merit)

BiblePay is a masternode coin that donates 10% of coins to Charity,
we entered into Bitcointalk's Banner Ad auction, run by Theymos, and were rejected for being a masternode coin,
we later entered again after Phore was accepted, and were rejected a second time, this time the legitimacy of BiblePay's charity donations were in question:

Are BiblePay's Charity Donations Legitimate?

===

Theymos, Bitcointalk Forum Admin (June 20th)
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4471292.msg40517470#msg40517470

I've decided that masternode coins can sometimes be acceptable, but Biblepay seems highly deceptive.
For example, you say "10% of the emission goes to sponsoring Orphans, with provable contributions," but:

A - 10% of the monthly emission should be somewhere around 6 million coins, but the monthly trade volume tends to be
only slightly higher than this, which is unbelievable if you're actually selling the coins in order to make donations.

B - This 10% goes to a hardcoded non-multisig address with no explanation.

C - "THE COIN HAS RPC COMMANDS THAT PROVE 100% OF CONTRIBUTIONS ARE SPENT THE WAY INTENDED" is completely false.
The RPC command just totals up all of the payments to the hardcoded address.
What happens after the coins go to that address is unexplained.

D - There is no non-profit registration, receipts for donations, any info about the people who are supposedly facilitating donations, etc.
 
E - Biblepay looks like a generic coin with hardcoded dev subsidy plus some probably-totally-fabricated marketing about orphans. -Theymos

===

Rob, Creator and Lead Developer of BiblePay (August 12th re-posted private message with Theymos):
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2388064.msg43983234#msg43983234

A - This is completely incorrect.  Our average trade volume was $6300 per day until C-CEX went on vacation, and all you have to do is look at the volume on the date we sold the coins (which is provided at accountability.biblepay.org) and you will always see the coins were sold, and more volume.

B - Incorrect.  All of our expenses are sent to a non-hardcoded address in a superblock by the person listed that "handled" that monthly expense and all are documented with receipts at accountability.biblepay.org and reconcile to the totals in the exec contributions command.

C & D - This is 100% incorrect again.  All of our payments always have and still are completely documented with backup paperwork.  Our contributions were audited up to June from Ginger (compassion) to Mike-T - who confirmed the totals to a point in time (around $120,000 at the time).  Therefore now you can provably confirm all the expenses were audited and roll up to the wallet checkpoint date.

E. No actually we don't look generic at all, with our PODC cancer mining algo, POBH cpu-mining heat-algo and decentralized governance and orphan sponsorships. -Rob

===

Togo notes:
Starting out, July 23rd 2017, BiblePay did not have masternodes enabled, 10% of mined coins went to an address called the "Orphan Address" held and handled by Rob to be used for the charity Compassion International, he set up a web page to view sponsored orphan profiles and added the ability to write letters to them. Masternodes went live around December 18th 2017, so about 5 months after launching. After that the monthly budget and proposal system was live and all funds had to be proposed/requested for and voted upon by the masternode network.

BiblePay currently donates to 4 charities: Compassion, BLOOM, CameroonONE and Kairos,
leading to BiblePay sponsoring 100+ Orphans every month! ($200,000+ has been donated to Charity since starting)
(NOTE: at peak we were sponsoring 339 Orphans every month, had to reduce because of the bear market)

===========================================

BIBLEPAY

BiblePay Team:
https://www.biblepay.org/cryptoguru/#_team

BiblePay White Paper:
https://pool.biblepay.org/Docs/BiblePay_White_Paper.pdf

===

What Evidence/Proof does BiblePay have of 10% Charity Donations?

Accountability: http://accountability.biblepay.org/
(On left menu: "Accountability" >>> "Expenses" and "Accountability" >>> "Revenue")

====================================
CHARITY #1



Compassion International
https://www.compassion.com/

"All of our Actual Orphan ID #s are listed in:
http://pool.biblepay.org/ >>> "Orphans" >>> "Sponsored Orphan List"

Also, the receipts I posted in EXPENSES are the actual payments I made on my credit card.
I have a copy here in case the IRS comes to my house." -Rob (Creator)

==

COMPASSION INTL
ORGANIZATION NAME: BIBLEPAY
ACCOUNT #: 07816292

PHONE# : (800) 336-7676
HOURS: Monday through Friday, 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Mailing address: Compassion International Colorado Springs, CO 80997
ORG CONTACT: ROBERT A.

=

thesnat21 called Compassion, confirmed 305 orphan sponsorships:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2388064.msg40663169#msg40663169

Brian879 called Compassion, confirmed 308 orphan sponsorships:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2388064.msg40664957#msg40664957

==

Contact:
Ginger Langehennig
Area Director of Donor Relations
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ginger-langehennig-4b31981b/
832-797-3749 or glangehennig@us.ci.org

Proposals:
December - https://forum.biblepay.org/index.php?topic=53.0
February - https://forum.biblepay.org/index.php?topic=105.0
March - https://forum.biblepay.org/index.php?topic=137.0
April - https://forum.biblepay.org/index.php?topic=162.0
May - https://forum.biblepay.org/index.php?topic=181.0
June - https://forum.biblepay.org/index.php?topic=195.0
July - https://forum.biblepay.org/index.php?topic=214.0
August - https://forum.biblepay.org/index.php?topic=229.0
September - https://forum.biblepay.org/index.php?topic=252.0

Pictures:
https://pool.biblepay.org/ >>> Orphans >>> Sponsored Orphan List

Tmike talking to Ginger from Compassion:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2388064.msg39981340#msg39981340

Rob's Scan of Ginger's Pamphlet:
http://pool.biblepay.org/san/mission/CompassionMeetingGinger.pdf

Statement from Santiago “Jimmy” Mellado, President & CEO, Compassion International
https://medium.com/biblepay-news/charity-profile-compassion-international-75741753e1c8
https://i.imgur.com/1tor5xK.png

Letter Writing
BiblePay rewards BBP to write letters to the sponspored orphans through the biblepay pool website
https://pool.biblepay.org/ >>> "Orphans" tab >>> "Write Letter"

=

End of Year Statement from Compassion International:
http://pool.biblepay.org/SAN/Expenses/BiblePay_audit_2018.pdf

Excel Version with Summations:
http://pool.biblepay.org/SAN/Expenses/Compassion2018Audit.xlsx

====================================
CHARITY #2



BLOOM (Be Love Orphan Outreach Missions)
http://www.bloomworldwide.org/

Contact:
Executive Director, April Wareham
aprilw@nhoom.org

Proposals:
https://forum.biblepay.org/index.php?topic=73.0
https://forum.biblepay.org/index.php?topic=150.0
https://forum.biblepay.org/index.php?topic=186.0
https://forum.biblepay.org/index.php?topic=219.0
https://forum.biblepay.org/index.php?topic=227.0
https://forum.biblepay.org/index.php?topic=263.0

Pictures:
https://biblepaysponsorkids.tumblr.com/

Facebook Mention:
https://www.facebook.com/Beloveorphanoutreach/posts/1603251943055348

Newsletter Mention:
https://mailchi.mp/bceb933b9ea4/updates-straight-from-africa

Testimonials from BLOOM and CameroonONE
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2388064.msg39527580#msg39527580

Youtube Interview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuEik-z0ytg#t=1694

====================================
CHARITY #3



CameroonONE
https://www.cameroonone.org/

Contact:
Director of Operations, Todd Finklestone

Proposals:
https://forum.biblepay.org/index.php?topic=86.0

Pictures:
https://www.facebook.com/CameroonONE/photos/2003983039625722
https://forum.biblepay.org/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=86.0;attach=164;image
https://forum.biblepay.org/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=86.0;attach=166;image
https://forum.biblepay.org/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=86.0;attach=168;image

Twitter Mention:
https://twitter.com/CameroonONE/status/1010845995188588549

====================================
CHARITY #4



Kairos Childrens Fund
https://www.facebook.com/kairoschildrensfund/
https://kairoscf.wordpress.com

SSL Issue: https://forum.biblepay.org/index.php?topic=253.msg4423#msg4423
https://kcf.winnegor.org/

Contact:
Andrew Scribner, Founder
scribners@gmail.com

Proposals:
https://forum.biblepay.org/index.php?topic=201.0
https://forum.biblepay.org/index.php?topic=226.0
https://forum.biblepay.org/index.php?topic=253.0

Pictures:
https://www.facebook.com/kairoschildrensfund/photos/2084557715144222
https://www.facebook.com/kairoschildrensfund/photos/2084557528477574

Website Mention:
https://kcf.winnegor.org/biblepay/

Testimonial:
https://medium.com/biblepay-news/charity-profile-kairos-childrens-fund-696894542298

====================================

MISC:

Orphan Collage (NOTE: 12MB file):
http://pool.biblepay.org/docs/SponsorshipsAugust2018.pdf

BiblePay Proposals:
https://www.biblepay-central.org/en/proposals/

Understanding BiblePay Governance:
http://wiki.biblepay.org/UnderstandingGovernance

=====================================

Are BiblePay's Charity Donations Legitimate?

I will gladly reward anyone for their time spent investigating this,
are there 3rd party services we could use?

[togoshigekata]

New BiblePay News article:

Charity Profile: Compassion International

Includes statement from president of Compassion International:

Statement from Santiago “Jimmy” Mellado, President & CEO, Compassion International:
“Compassion is extremely grateful for the support from BiblePay. Thanks to their hearts for ministry, more than 300 children who live in poverty are receiving life-changing care through their local churches. This is an investment that can reap eternal returns across generations…and it starts by caring for one child. Thank you BiblePay for the way you are transforming these children’s lives.”

https://medium.com/biblepay-news/charity-profile-compassion-international-75741753e1c8

https://steemit.com/charity/@biblepay/charity-profile-compassion-international

Where can we find this statement?

Thank you so much for investigating marlboroza!

I contacted znffal (Luke F, lukef@biblepay.org) and he replied back with the email chain, here is a screenshot:

Has anyone contacted Ginger?

Compassion has been bad at giving us any PR,
I think it looks very sketchy that their CEO statement was not posted publically on their website or social media,

I contacted Ginger a month or so ago asking for a short audio only or video interview with her, she declined.

Has anyone contacted Compassion?

===

NOTE: BiblePay had to recently reduce monthly orphan sponsorships due to the bear market:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2388064.msg45885368#msg45885368

I just notified Compassion of the cancellation of 206 of our monthly sponsorships.  I asked them to transfer the credit balance remaining on these 206 children over to our remaining 100 children. 

I will update the pool ASAP reflecting the Compassion changes.  You should see 100 children for compassion and 32 from non-compassion later this evening.  Bringing our total sponsored children to 132.

From where did you get her e-mail?

I talked to live support they said they have person with that name working for them. They also said "us.ci.org" is their email and that I can try to send email there - but they don't know if it is her email.
All other questions I asked them they said to call number which is on their site( I didn't)

Also, I have found Ginger here http://giving.rice.edu/student-initiative/extraordinary-impact/will-eldridge-leadership-rice-engineering-student-internship

To learn more about contributing to Leadership Rice as a mentor or a supporter, please contact Ginger Langehennig, senior director of development, at 832-797-3749 or glange@rice.edu.

I have tried to send email there but it was rejected:

Recipient address rejected: undeliverable address:
    unknown user: "glange" (in reply to RCPT TO command)

It is the same phone number you posted.
As for Karios Children's fund i see picture on their facebook "thank you bible pay" but where can we find them? Website you posted, https://kcf.winnegor.org, I can't open it - it says "insecure connection" and it is only 67 days old:

Created on 2018-07-19
Expires on 2019-07-19
Updated on 2018-09-17

Where have you find them?
I didn't check cameroonone and bloom.

Thank you for continuing to investigate!
(Please let me know if youd like any reward, would giving out a reward break integrity?
how else to motivate someone to look into the matter? I digress...)

=

Luke forwarded me Ginger's email chain, I believe Rob was the initial person to contact Ginger and also he has met her in person and was handed her pamphlet. I believe Rob was the first person to post her information, I believe I got her contact information from a scanned online copy of the pamphlet, I dug up some old posts:

a. Rob Shares Compassion Account information
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2388064.msg24473352#msg24473352

b. Rob is going to meet Ginger
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2388064.msg35094130#msg35094130

c. Rob Shares Scan of Ginger's Pamphlet
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2388064.msg35381722#msg35381722

d. Luke Contacts Ginger for PR
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2388064.msg39515663#msg39515663
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2388064.msg39528165#msg39528165

e. Rob posts Ginger's information
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2388064.msg40656672#msg40656672

=

"Director of Development - Austin, Rice University, February 2006 – October 2017  11 years 9 months"
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ginger-langehennig-4b31981b/

From her Linkedin, looks like she worked at Rice for many years
I assume her Rice email bounced because her account was deactivated after moving on from employment there?

=

"I am going back to our free website for now https://kairoscf.wordpress.com.
SSL isn't working at kcf.winnegor.org, and chrome doesn't like that. We can't afford SSL for now." -AndrewScribner
https://forum.biblepay.org/index.php?topic=253.msg4423#msg4423

Looks like Kairos cant afford SSL, Ive updated the OP with new website

[togoshigekata]

BiblePay
1.1.5.8-Leisure Upgrade

- Added Theymos Report (exec theymos).  This report reconciles our money
supply to our charity % and BBP sold quantity, and reports on key
metrics for accountability.
- Added support for Revenue and Expense business objects, and added a
grand total.

Instructions to use our new in-wallet accountability system.
(Note: In the future we will look into making custom menus and screens for certain types of business objects).

EXPENSES:

Click Business Objects | Right click Expenses | Click List.
You can then see the expense details (all expenses since we started - and these reconcile to the pool up to the date of the cutover).  You can see a grand total (matching accountability.biblepay.org).
You can also navigate to a PDF by right clicking the row and click "Navigate to..."

REVENUE:

Click Business Objects | Right click Revenue | Click List.
You can then see the revenue details (all liquidated BBP since inception - these reconcile to accountability.biblepay.org up to the date of the cutover).  You can see a grand total (matching our total converted fiat on all exchanges).


Theymos Report:

From the RPC, type 'exec theymos'.

Code:

"Command": "theymos",
  "Theymos Report": "10-07-2018 12:11:28",
  "Total Coinbase Emission (Money Supply)": 998579970,
  "Total Charity Budget": 99857997,
  "Total BBP Sold on Exchanges": 92232375,
  "Total BTC Raised": 20.55,
  "Avg BTC Price": 7170.321212121213,
  "Avg BBP Price": 0.001746964663980517,
  "Total Revenue in USD": 161126.7,
  "Total Expenses in USD": 161483.18

This report reconciles our entire blockchain money supply to what we actually spent on charity.

So in section 1, we have a money supply of 998.5MM.  Since our Emission wiki states that we give 10% to charity, our Charity Budget portion is shown in actual live figures of:  99.85MM.  Our actual BBP sold on exchanges:  92.23MM.  (The reason BBP sold is a little less than our target charity, is because we are 30 days behind - with governance and liquidations).  

So this shows the actual amount liquidated reconciles back to the stated amount we spend in our mission and to our total money supply.

Next, we show that we raised 20.55 BTC and sold it at an average price of .00174 USD per BBP with an average of 7170 per BTC.

Next, we show our USD expenses (actual totals) derived from our actual live-in-wallet business objects to be $161,483 - in contrast to our revenue of $161,126.
The expenses were slightly higher than the revenue (due to me slightly overpaying compassion each time I pay an invoice).

Note that the actual details of each invoice and revenue record are now stored in IPFS, and going forward we will start using IPFS to store these records, meaning this report will be automatically updated in real time.  We will truly be realizing our vision as a DAO, with decentralized accountability records in IPFS.

BiblePay Wallets: https://www.biblepay.org/wallet/
Linux Wallet Instructions: https://www.reddit.com/r/BiblePay/comments/6ummuj/how_to_mine_biblepay_on_linux/
http://wiki.biblepay.org/Ubuntu_Packages

[togoshigekata]

We'll convince everyone provably, eventually, because the Truth will stand.  
We have the effects of 329 real orphans that we helped for most of 2018, their pictures, their expense records, their inbound letters on a recurring basis, etc.  
You can't falsify hundreds of inbound childrens letters written to BiblePay and kept in our SAN.

Regarding the next step, imho personally I would be more convinced by a signed end of year statement from Compassion than a CPA audit.  Im not against a CPA audit, but our current budget doesnt allow for spending a couple grand on something that could be falsified by some firm.  The other reason I like the end of year statement is it consolidates the total to a point in time - meaning that we have integrity from day zero up to that date - meaning that our expenses were provable for a very large time span.  In addition, an end of year statement can be confirmed by allowing one to call the 800 # and confirm the authenticity of the statement.  One from compassion would take care of something like 90% of our expenses, and that would add imo a lot of additional credibility.

So Ill go ahead and submit a request for compassion to create an end of year statement - maybe for all of 2018, or for 9-9 depending on how their calendar years work, Ill check into that now.  Thanks for trying.

Regarding the pandering comment, no lets not be swayed by that.  We are an upstanding untarnished organization with 100% accuracy.  I named the 'exec theymos' report out of respect and honor for Theymos's interrogation, not to supplicate his approval.  The name of the report goes down in history to honor him and I think eventually he will realize how an honest and persistent organization succeeds.  Of course if he asks to not be associated with us, we can change it .  It was meant to be a compliment to his additional stringent requirements.

End of Year Statement from Compassion International:
http://pool.biblepay.org/SAN/Expenses/BiblePay_audit_2018.pdf

Excel Version with Summations:
http://pool.biblepay.org/SAN/Expenses/Compassion2018Audit.xlsx

Hey Rob, Were you able to get an End of Year Statement from Compassion?
Id love to get it posted in our Bitcointalk Investigation thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5030640.0

I have a report from Compassion, they did give us an up to month (sort of in the end-of-year format) but the woman said something like
Dont bother us again - we wont do it for you again - but I thought, wait a minute, the web site is broken because we have too many childrens records in it,  
so we have a right to ask again LOL, but Ill talk about this more later.  Ill also provide the link for this report.

EDIT: Is this it?
http://pool.biblepay.org/SAN/Expenses/BiblePay_audit_2018.pdf

Darn, its kind of hard for me to understand it, hmmm

Other References:
https://forum.biblepay.org/index.php?topic=284.msg4569#msg4569

Yeah, this is the one they gave me, http://pool.biblepay.org/SAN/Expenses/BiblePay_audit_2018.pdf, in response to the audit questions.  And the ciqueue service rep said something like "and don't ask for one again as we will not provide you one again" and I thought, hmm thats not right, because we can't even click on our history right now from the web (we have too many records for their server to handle).  So Ill push to ask for one every year.  Anyway, it looks like a good resource, so please use it.

EDIT:  We can also explain to Theymos that it matches our [RPC command] "exec theymos" to the penny also.

Yeah, this PDF has to be one of the most convoluted formats I've seen - so it was in unicode, so I ended up converting it to ASCII and saving it and importing into excel but the columns were staggered (every other page had an extra column) then each other page had 1 less column, actually some were random, so anyway I ended up writing a program to import this thing into excel, so now we have the data here:

http://pool.biblepay.org/SAN/Expenses/Compassion2018Audit.xlsx

However looking at it is really strange in that some of the months seem doubled.  When I said it matched to the penny, I was referring to the grand total credit memo matching what we show as of the same date (IE we paid 143,901 in 2018 up to that time, we received a 25,404 credit and now have a 17,606 balance matching ours) however the individual detail rows gyrate up and down in the sheet's details (sometimes double) - you can clearly see we didnt have 650 orphans per month between February and August (which is what the charges allude to, if you divide the 241,131 charges by 10 months and $38 per month, we would have had 625+ orphans), but anyway, I did add rows I-L with the summary per month from Compassion and sum per month from BiblePay to try to reconcile.  

I'll let you take a look at the totals now to see if you catch my drift- you can pull the expense and revenue records from pool.biblepay.org accountability to see they match the figs I pasted in I-L.

For now I am just guessing that the person creating the audit found some inaccuracies in their data and had to enter journal entries to match our data (as I sent her our data to ask her if we would get a credit for the N canceling children so she knew up front what we had) and this probably resulted in 2* the journal entries on their side (doubling the charges) and then 2* the payments, etc.

Anyway the good news is if you look at row 14-15 in the summary we are still within a dollar.

I also tagged Jim CEO of Compassion in a Tweet today and he clicked like on it!
https://twitter.com/BiblePay/status/1076580683940798464



Jim also just now retweeted us!
https://twitter.com/jimmellado



EDIT: Also liked by Compassion!
https://twitter.com/compassion/status/1077331375286571008

EDIT 2: Tweet from Compassion International Supporting us:
https://twitter.com/compassion/status/1077331375286571008

[sunk818]

There was that time when Rob was using orphan foundation funds to tithe to the orphan foundation to earn daily rewards for proof of giving (pog).

How can you take tithes from participants and use it against them?