2024.02.13 Ken "Whit" Whitman Will Still Take Your Money, but Probably not Legally

Over a year ago we totally waived the Bullshit flag that our main man Ken "Whit" Whitman was up to some shady shit. Ok, we just said things were not passing the sniff test in regard to his (then) new company Community Film Collaborative, Inc. 

Now we know Kenny's been bad with movie money, he knows he's been bad with movie money ("My name is Ken Whitman and I am a bad businessman" and if you've followed along with any of the various movie-related Kickstarters, you'd probably come to the same natural conclusion.

So, what's a better idea than donating more money to Kenny so he can start "Teaching Underprivileged Young Adults the Art of Filmmaking & Storytelling" This is direct from Kenny's Whit Whitman LinkedIn Profile, where he's listed himself as "President" from "Oct 2022 to Present"

We have to give Kenny some credit because, on paper, he looked like he was trying to be legit. Thing is when it comes to money, he's proven time and time again (come on....at least 11 Kickstarters) that he cannot be trusted.

Now before anyone wants to support Mr. Whitman here and come to his defense by stating, "What do you mean he can't be trusted?!" I cannot state upfront or unequivocally that he's stolen money through the Community Film Collaborative, Inc., but I <edit> This particular author, although the rest of the team probably agrees</edit> do ascribe to the belief that if something looks shady, that's just as bad as being shady and in the absence of proof otherwise, it is safe to make a logical assumption.

Now a good point has already been made that the info that Ken "Whit" Whitman was putting out about his non-profit didn't add up (pass the sniff test). If you haven't read that post, then you should do so and then continue on here......we'll wait.

Ok then.

A quick search shows that the Community Film Collaborative, Inc. was formed on August 3rd, 2022, BUT it was inactivated a year later when the company did not file the required Annual Report. 

So right off the bat, the company that Kenny is President of.....doesn't exist. Might want to scratch that off of the old LinkedIn profile there buddy!

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Now since Kenny was touting that he was a non-profit, he had to do an extra filing with the IRS and sure enough, that particular form was filed 2022.09.14, but wait a second.....what's that over there by Form 990 required? Oh yeah, that says "Yes".

Now you may not realize this, but non-profits need to file taxes too!

From the Library of Congress: "The 990 is the tax form the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) requires all 501(c)(3) tax-exempt charitable and nonprofit organizations to submit annually. The Form 990 is designed to increase financial transparency and includes revenue, expenditure, and income data in addition to information used to assess whether a nonprofit aligns with federal requirements for tax-exempt status. "

Even though Community Film Collaborative, Inc. isn't an actual company now, much less a legitimate 501c3 non-profit, they were one at the end of 2022, so they were to file one for 2022. Now that is publicly available information, so we should conceivably be able to find that information through the Kentucky Attorney General's Office: "The Form 990 shall be filed with the Attorney General each year in which contributors are solicited in the Commonwealth at the same time the form is filed with the Internal Revenue Service." 

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That means we can look up Kenny's fundraising information!

Of course, there is no way he's going to let that happen. The KY AG does let you download the rather long list of all the non-profits that have filed their Form 990 and wouldn't you know, Community Film Collaborative is not listed! The PDF is larger than letter-sized and 147 pages long. Ken "Whit" Whitman's charity should be listed on page 32, but there is a noticeable gap.

Now this particular page doesn't have any 2023 entries on it, other pages do, and it was updated yesterday.

To make things a little easier, here is a quick shot of the entries that should be before and after "Community Film Collaborative, Inc." To be thorough, I did look up the organization number just to make sure it wasn't misfiled somehow, just because we know Kenny isn't the best as spelling, although I doubt that could be a factor in this particular instance.

If you haven't read the post before this one, you might want to because we're circling around to a point from that post. 

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To sum things up we now have Ken "Whit" Whitman running a new company he's calling a school, as in it's literally in the name "School of Cinematic Arts", and it has taken over as producer (according to IMDB, which presumably Kenny has been updating) of all of the films in the Little Monster Entertainment pipeline, including the one that was crowdfunded several years ago. Ken is still promoting himself as President of a defunct charity that has never submitted its books to the Kentucky Attorney General, as required by the IRS. We have no idea how much money he's collected, much less spent, but at least he's not using the defunct company to solicit more donations.....

Oh wait......he still is......and he's calling himself CEO on the donation/funding/commerce/squaresite page for Community Film Collaborative, Inc., the company that was....for not even a year.