We at Riptide fancy ourselves as 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 Bros. 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 at 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 LLC.
Also directors: Robert and Toni Garner, proud parents of the Robert Garner who 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 until recently were registered to Greenberg's former CPA's office at 10840 SW 113th Pl. in Kendall. Registered there as well: websites including GangBangBus.com, BoyBangBus.com, BangHerBus.com --you get the idea. Now the charities are all headquartered in a single office -- Suite 206 -- at 930 Washington Ave., above a Bank of America branch. 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 at Greenberg's accounting office.
Our snooping got the attention of attorney Mark Bryn, a director at all three companies. Last night, he responded in an email:
Jeff Greenberg forwarded me a copy of your email below. Respectfully, I am at a loss to understand your apparent obsession with trying to show that these three worthwhile charities, organized and administered on a day to day purely voluntary basis by our Executive Director, Toni Garner, are, in your words, I believe, "owned by porn companies".For your information, although I don't know why it is even necessary to share this with you, Mr. Greenberg, a CPA in this community for over 40 years, has worked with volunteer, charity, and other community service organizations for his entire career. His association with the charities was to perform pro bono annual report and related filings. He has never had any involvement whatsoever in the management of the charities...
It so happens, unrelated to any of your inquiries or articles I assure you, Mr. Greenberg stepped down many months ago from the Board of Directors of the charities due to his other commitments. However we still have every expectation and hope that he will continue to assist us on a voluntary basis with filing our required annual reports.
Again respectfully, and at the risk of being redundant, what is the story that you were looking for? Call me naive but I don't believe you would intentionally slander or intentionally hurt these three worthwhile organizations that render services vital to the beneficiaries: children born with birth defects that have no other resources, inner city children that would otherwise might not have any chance to gain necessary computer skills required to further their education and our returning veterans whose incredible challenges have been well-documented.
Hehe, he said "pro bono".
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