In reviewing the text from last week's Ken Whitman interview, a couple of things stood out and there was this huge underlying question of "Why now?"
People generally only do things for a reason and if Ken "Whit" Whitman is surfacing now, there has to be some rationale (for him) for doing so. At first we thought he might be going the "I've been getting help and I'm not that scammer anymore route" he did that once before and suckered Jolly Blackburn and it lead to his run of six unfulfilled Kickstarters and an excess of $187K:
"Ken's apologies and talk of being on new meds for his ADHD and having turned over a new leaf..."
So that seemed a good motivation....Kenny trying to dip into the same well for another go. Makes sense when you see his regular claims that he could start a new Kickstarter at any moment "And just to let everyone know, I can start a Kickstarter anytime I want."
The thing is...he's done Kickstarters and if he started another one of those, there would hundreds if not thousands of people backing for a buck just to get in and warn everyone to run, and run fast.
No....no...there is something else goin on and again that's why we have to go into speculation mode.
The first thing that stood out to use from the interview, out of the many things we won't elaborate now, was he mentioned a couple times that, "but I have never, since the time that we've done this, paid myself more than $18,000 a year."
$18K a year...why is that number significant?
Now again, pure speculation, but a cursory check reveals that $18,600 is the magic cut-off number for determining if your employment is considered a Substantial Gainful Activity (SGA) when collecting Social Security Disability Insurance. Now we're not knocking anyone who needs to collect disability, but when a known scam-artist is on disability and limiting himself to a salary of $18,000 (or less), which means he could pay himself more.....that's suspect.
Another number that jumped out again, because he said it twice in quick succession, was 480: "And then each state will give a kid 480 hours worth of being paid."
480 hours......480 hours, again why is this significant.
Well there just so happens to be a Federally-funded (state administered) youth program called Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) that gives money, or in this case, labor, to employers: Work Experience Program or Work-Based Learning places jobseekers with an employer for up to 480 hours at no cost to the employer as it is covered by WIOA.
The way Ken describes what's he up to.....seems to fit right in line with Kentucky's initiatives with WIOA, so we're speculating that Whit is getting free labor from the great state of Kentucky: "I paid my kids $15, the state of Kentucky paid them."
So everybody's tracking...we're speculating that Ken "Whit" Whitman is a) limiting his "income" to $18K a year to maximize his SSDI gains and b) He's using state-provided labor to make movies.
That seems like it should be enough for one post, but in reviewing things....we've noticed that Ken's fake charity has a new facelift! Now in the interview Ken stated that "I have never taken any donations with it so far." We do not believe, for a second, that Kenny hasn't taken any donations, but even if he hasn't...it's kind of chilling that he's specifically said..."so far", as in "yet".
Coupling this with the Community Film Collaborative website...no, not the Square site we mentioned earlier, maybe that is a red herring (?), but there is a new site: www.communityfilmcollaborative.org This new website has Kenny's fingerprints all over it, albeit a bit more professional looking than expected. It's a Kentucky registered site, but the pertinents are otherwise made private. The site is pretty much two, maybe three, pages right now and everything just links back onto the "about" page.
Now normally when a website is being made it it doesn't "go live" until it's complete, but this amateur operation is up now. It's clear that some of the pics are AI generated and the text is generally BS. This thing wasn't created in 2010, and those are so not the members of the "dedicated team".
Yeah....not buying it. You know what else we're not buying? That The Community Film Collaborative is an actual entity. We checked this morning....
Of course the "charity" is defunct, but Ken's "for profit" side of things is current...imagine that....
This updates our speculation to include this new bit information: Kenny is getting free labor from the state to help make films, soliciting donations (or at the very least getting set up to do so) to make films using the free labor as a selling point, not directly, but still....., and funneling everything through the only legal entity and "limiting" himself to only making $18K a year. He's clearly making more, otherwise he couldn't "limit" anything...
....but then, what's the angle?
Well the new website is telling, for certain, but....is it enough? Let's head back into the interview...
"Well, I am probably 24 months away from even having a profit off of anything that I'm doing. I am barely making a living right now and have to stretch out another 24 months before I see any profits from a film."
....and there it is!
Everything is revolving around Kenny making and the profiting off of his films, which is funny because he profited off of what, three films through Kickstarter and they were never completed (at least by him as promised). He's clearly profiting (but not by too much!), off of his "current" films, and he anticipates making money off of them in the future.
While still speculation....it all makes a lot of sense!
At the beginning of this post we mentioned a plea for assistance. We'd love to either prove or disprove (NOT WRITING TO YOU KENNY) these presumptions. If you happen to have 1st hand knowledge to share, please do:
