We at Riptide fancy ourselves open-minded and nonjudgmental. But when a charity called Child Foundation, Inc. is registered to the same office as a website called TeenBangBus.com, well, it grabs our attention.
The links between three local nonprofits — Child Foundation, American Love & Appreciation Fund, and the Click Charity — and Miami-area online porn giants Bang Brothers and Reality Kings are pretty inescapable.
The charities aren't two-bit outfits. Child Foundation, which claims to provide cosmetic care to children with deformities in Third-World countries, lists seven MDs and Ricardo Forbes, a vice president of Baptist Health South Florida, among its directors. It has declared in tax filings to have collected more than $330,000 in contributions since being founded in 2007, and spent around half that on surgical costs.
Veterans' fund American Love has helped bankroll Christmas events at hospitals in Germany and Washington, D.C., as well as "American Airlines for Soldier's Night" at the Heat's home arena. In 2009, the fund donated $45,154 to the Miami VA hospital. And the Click Charity, which purports to provide computer labs for poor kids, last year competed for a $250,000 Pepsi Refresh grant.
Jeffrey Greenberg is among the founding directors of the Child Foundation and American Love. Greenberg, a registered accountant, is also listed on state corporation records as manager of Reality Kings.
Also directors: Robert and Toni Garner, proud parents of the Robert Garner who cofounded and directs Bang Brothers Entertainment, Bait Bus, and the fabled Bang Bus, producer of films in which a van full of dudes purports to sweet-talk regular women into having sex for cash and then ditches them on the streets of Miami. The elder Garners are also directors of Click. Child Foundation director Jessica Kone once founded a company — Godspace LLC — with Reality Kings CEO Mauricio Botero.
The nonprofits, as well as the porn sites, until recently were registered to Greenberg's former CPA office in Kendall. Now the charities are all headquartered in a suite at 930 Washington Ave. in Miami Beach. We paid a surprise visit to the office, which is decorated with a strange motif: photos of children with severe cleft lips on the walls and a BangBros.com lanyard draped over a computer.
Sitting at that desk, "assistant" Stella, who didn't give her last name, said she'd been working there only a month and didn't know anything. We got similar treatment one floor up, where a T-shirted guy named Keith answered the door to Greenberg's accounting office.
We later received a phone call from attorney Mark Bryn, a director of all three companies. "There is no porn connection," he insisted, deflecting our evidence as "incidental... These are three great charities."
Fair enough, but at this point, you might as well let your freak flag fly.
