Complaint Review: Project195 Inc.

Dave Skoblar is a NJ fireman who decided to start a charity. Noble intentions, however, he has used this charity to pay for his personal travel, home repair and kids' expenses, as well as use it to cheat on his wife of many years. (Second wife, he cheated on the first one two, and she divorced him). Dave has cheated with his web designer, his interns, his volunteers and several women who came out to donate. Pretty sleazy for a guy who targets colleges and charities for his UNSAFE and ILLEGAL hostels. Let me clue you in, charity folks - you cannot decide to open a hostel just cause. It must be registered with the city and state, and have proper egress, fire alarms and per person room limits. Dave built bunk beds out of 2 x 4 wood and housed people 10 + to a room, in single family residence homes. He shoves them in up to 40 people per stay, charging for uncomfortable makeshift beds. If there was a fire, it is guaranteed many people would not get out because you cannnot have 10 people in a bedroom rush for the door. 

His Joplin MS hostel is so bad its nearly condemned. He hires only junkies or alcoholics to run his hostels, and as a result, they are run down and unhabitable. The "site supervisors" have included a meth head, a heroin junkie, and aging alcoholic, all who stole materials after they were "fired". Dave barely paid them and let them stay as part of the deal. Not exactly proper non-profit management where you invite teens and college kids to stay. Very creepy when you consider he's had Girl Scouts at his hostels, working on the gardens. 

Dave constantly fights with Pat Tirri, the other major director in this charity, because Dave constantly misappriates money. Pat has struggled for years to get Dave to do the right thing, but Dave is a sociopath and believes the rules don't apply to him. He believes because he's doing some good in some areas, it excuses his shortcuts and sleaze tactics in other areas. To that end, he never sought to make his charity truly legitimate. He in fact sees it as a way to get graft for his kids and Pat's kids - the plan soon is to start a "college fund" for the tornado stricken and make sure they kids get the benefits of the fund. Dave is actively seeking to change his non profit status to a foundation status, so he can run it solo and not have to report in detail on taxes what he's doing with donations (pocketing them).

Dave spends more time on social media posting images of groups he doesn't organize doing work he doesn't organize. He simply gets groups to stay at his hostel, at $40/night each, and then passes them off to other REAL charities doing work in disaster areas. Meanwhile, he gets to stand beside them, take a photo or video, and take credit. Very tacky and desperate.

Dave also seeks out awards for himself and his charity and a group of us are actively making sure the non profit world is notified of this person and his fraudulent "charity".

Please note they have also lost their non profit status several times as they have had many tax issues.

Don't trust this "aww shucks i'm just helping out" predator - he puts on a good face and game, but at his core, he's a total sleaze ball and scam artist, and worse - he's using other people's disaster status to do so! He's done the same in Joplin and NOLA as well. In fact, one of his volunteers last year left early from the NOLA trip because Dave was acting inappropriately.

Work with credible, REAL charities, not fly by nights like this.