#fanime 2018

[waveoftheocean]

hi there!!!! i was looking through your merch store and i saw your fate prints and i just wanted to say WOW I CAN'T BELIEVE I'VE BEEN FOLLOWING YOU THIS ENTIRE TIME. you were at what i'm pretty sure was my first ever con and your gawain print specifically has been up on my wall for years at this point because i never thought i'd see art of him at a con, he was my first unit grailed, and i was so shocked and delighted when i saw it again just now!!! really cool to have found you again!!!! that's all i hope you're well :)

AAA HELLO FELLOW GAWAIN ENJOYER!!!!!!!!!!!! 🤝 oough i am always so very happy to meet people who appreciate him!! thank you sm for following me for all this time, i'm honored that you've had my gawain print up on your wall for so long 🥺🥺

i still love him very dearly (he wasn't my first grailed unit BC HE EVADED ME FOR SO LONG but i think he was my third?) but it's been a hot second since i drew him so thank you for the motivation!!!!! i hope you enjoy and take care 💖💖💖

[sukimas]

You know Touhou Memories of Phantasm, the most well-known Touhou fanime, right? Since it ended recently, how would you have written it if you were Manpuki Jinja? (Since it is quite contentious with the fans)

I haven’t watched any of it since about 2018, and am uninterested in watching the ending. From what I remember, the writing was surprisingly inoffensive for a Touhou fanwork of the time, but the character designs were awful (and Lunamoon, the character artist for it, is a Japanese nationalist, which is unfortunate.)

Since I don’t really know how it ended and am not interested in looking it up myself, I can’t say my opinion on it; however, if I were to direct a Touhou anime, I’d probably not give it a definite ending at all. That sort of thing is counter to Touhou. I’d just stop making it at a place that seemed decent. I also probably would spend more time exploring the parts of the games we don’t see (that are only in the prologues, etc.) if I did go for the stories of the games at all; retelling isn’t that much fun to me. But realistically I’d not be able to direct an anime anyway. I have no eye for that sort of thing, and I’m impatient and picky about my own vision for things. It’s best not to give me power over a multi-person creative work effort.

[sugaryrainbow]

I need to do better in advertisements on this website lmaooooo. But hi! I’m selling at Fanime RIGHT NOW 8 ) it’s good to be back! Haven’t sold here since 2018!

THIS INSTANT. It may be day 3 but shhhh tell no one!!

Im table 1603 in the artist alley! I’m closer to the windows in the back of the room!

[poxei]

hii i got some stuff at your table at fanime and wanted to say that I really love your art and merch!! I was rly taking in how well designed everything was (i esp love the graphic design on your pins and stickers) and i wanted to ask how you got into/how long you have been tabling at conventions? i want to get into it too but im overwhelmed with keeping track of all the applications, merch making, etc--do you have any tips for beginners that you wish you knew when u started?

Thanks so much!! I'm glad to hear you like what you got from me! and that you appreciate the effort I put into graphic design :'D

I'll answer your question below the cut since it got kind of long

My first time tabling was in September 2018 at Crunchyroll Expo! I only did 4 cons pre-2020, the last of them being Crunchyroll Expo 2019, so I tabled for exactly a year before the pandemic started. Then I stopped for two years and started doing cons again in May 2022 at Fanime. I've got at least 3 more cons planned for this year including my first AX 😳 But my last con as of right now is Fanime 2023, so I've been tabling for a little over two years.

Tabling was really overwhelming the first time I did it too, but I mooched off of a friend's table so at least I didn't have to worry about getting the table. It's really helpful if you have a friend who's willing to share their knowledge with you, but if you don't, you kind of have to learn how to table the hard way... I also have a bunch of friends who started tabling around the same time, so we all helped each other by sharing resources, tips, and manufacturers. I strongly recommend getting a buddy! Especially if you ever plan to travel to a convention to table, having a friend go with you takes off so much stress.

When you're first applying, I would suggest finding a convention or free-admission art market close to you (doesn't matter the size of the convention/market), or a big con where you're almost guaranteed to make your money back like AX, ANYC, or Fanime (though it's gonna be tough to get into these because of all the competition). Don't worry about tracking the apps for every single con, just pick a few deadlines to track. I think for your first con it's best to cut down on travel/lodging costs as much as possible because you never know how much you'll make back.

As for making merch, I wouldn't worry about making so much all at once. Well, maybe you have to produce a lot for your first con. But after that I just try to add at least one new thing for each con, even if it's just a sticker, so I slowly build up a catalogue that way. For my first con, I just printed zine pieces and illustrations that I already had, and the only new thing I drew was buttons.

For more specific questions, the blog @howtobeaconartist helped me so much in the beginning! You can also ask me off-anon, and I can try to help, but I can't guarantee that I can be of help.

[fanimeleaks]

The FanimeCon Scandal: Embezzlement, Staff Personal Data Publicly Exposed, Risk of Suspension/Revocation of Non-Profit

Global TLDR: FanimeCon’s (then) CFO embezzled over half a million USD who is also the CFO of a con called OkashiCon (and partnering with San Japan for 2024). FanimeCon’s secretary publicly shared FanimeCon Attendee information for 2018-2020 showing it is generally inflated by 5-10% of their reported estimate (if ever reported at all, in the past 10 years, only 2018 and 2019 was reported with estimated numbers); also shows how much money they profited from pre-reg for 2020 and yet to refund (likely also related to the embezzlement). Also, FanimeCon’s secretary publicly shared FanimeCon Staff masked PII information that can be cross correlated with other sources (like the guidebook) to unmask. FanimeCon non-profit is delinquent and on the verge of suspension or revocation of its non-profit status by the State Of California.

Overview

During our research on Fanime as to the claims #FailedByFanime has made; we discovered a bunch of things that were publicly accessible (like court dockets, nonprofit tax filings and state filings) and some that were publicly shared and accessible by anyone (without any login, password) that likely should not have been public.

Disclaimer: To clarify, the information we uncovered was not because their websites were compromised. Instead, a Fanime board member likely inadvertently shared documents on a hosting site configured for public access, allowing search engines to cache and indexes the data. Additionally, we are not affiliated with FailedByFanime or FanimeCon (staff, volunteer, vendor, etc) (I hope that second part is assumed given what we are disclosing) and are acting as an independent press doing investigative journalism.

In short, all we can say is that there was a lot of information we uncovered just by searching and we are presenting the information we discovered. Writing these findings with summarized information is over 13 pages in a word processor (sorry for being extremely long, we hope the section TLDR and global TLDR helps). We are kind of feeling like this when discovering the data.

We will be sourcing our findings as much as possible, but due to the nature of some findings being concerning, we will limit some of details from the sources to demonstrate the evidence of its presence, but restrict the details in those sources.

Note: The following is a long form consolidated version of the posts we shared on social media. We started to release our findings on May 1, 2024. Since our discoveries, some of the sources that we discovered was a leak were privatized, but we had planned for it and discussed how in our postmortem.

Embezzlement with its (then) CFO

TLDR: (Then) CFO embezzled over 656,000 USD. FanimeCon board knew about it as late as August 2, 2022. The public only formally knew on April 5, 2024 via a lawsuit by teams of investigators like us (we discovered the document on April 20, 2024).

During our investigations through the court system, we discovered that FanimeCon’s parent non-profit organization, The Foundation For Anime And Niche Subcultures is suing its (then) CFO for embezzlement after the (then) CFO filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. In the court docket submitted on April 5, 2024, the (then) CFO abused its position and embezzled over $656,000 USD and used it for:

> Disney time share, air conditioning repairs, refrigerator replacement, T-Mobile hot spot, and various purchases from Amazon […] food, gasoline, a payment to an individual named Corrine (presumably Debtor’s now ex-wife) and other services

Source: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/68414078/foundation-for-anime-and-niche-subcultures-v-howlett/ 

Also in the docket, the lawsuit noted that the organization knew about the embezzlement by its CFO as late as August 2, 2022. 

Cross referencing with the State Of California Secretary Of State also shows that the organization replaced its (then) CFO with another person submitted on August 30, 2022

Source: https://bizfileonline.sos.ca.gov/api/report/GetImageByNum/013148222136241041083026018189085019109167067138

On Thursday, June 6, 2024 a new docket was posted related to the case with Foundation For Anime And Niche Subcultures (FANS for short) submitted a joint motion to dismiss without prejudice (subject to reopening). In the document it is noted the following

The Parties hereby notify the Court that they have entered into a negotiated settlement Agreement dated April 5, 2024 (the “Settlement Agreement”) executed by them in connection with the claims in this adversary proceeding. Accordingly, the Parties desire to dismiss all claims and counterclaims that have been raised in the above-captioned matter without prejudice subject to reopening.

In addition "Each party will bear their own attorneys’ fees, costs, and expenses."

While the information currently closes he matters of the court case in relation to the embezzlement, it does bring many more questions than we have answers for. Questions like: why the matter had to result in going to court to waste additional money for lawyers and legal proceedings when the matter of the issue had been pressing for more than a year at this point to correct the issue civilly without the need to be presented in court. Why is the motion to dismiss by the advocacy (Foundation for Anime and Niche Subcultures) in just 2 months with nothing more than a response by the defendant (then CFO); with the timing seeming suspicious given additional information we will present in later sections of our finding. How much of the claimed embezzled money will be repaid. These are just a small portion of the list of questions we still have.

Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20240609091336/https://assets2.pacermonitor.com/filings/Foundation_for_Anime_and_Niche_v_Howlett/Foundation_for_Anime_and_Niche_v_Howlett__txwbke-24-01015__0012.0.pdf

Analysis 

TLDR: FanimeCon board knew of the embezzlement but has kept quiet to its staff and the public till the lawsuit.

What makes it interesting is that board members in the non-profit organization knew of the embezzlement for a least a year and a half before the information was made public, leaving the public and (very likely) almost of of the staff for the convention clueless of the situation (other than speculation through the public tax filings).

If you want to read more into the embezzlement and lawsuit, see the CourtListener docket referenced (court dockets are available in the public records, though requires a fee to access those records, but CourtListener is part of the “Free Law Project” and purchased dockets by others can be shared for anyone to access for free, of which some are).

Side Note: We discovered the lawsuit on April 20, 2024 as we were scanning for other information we are going to present in the later sections. 

Researching the (then) CFO Finds Another Con They Are Tied To

TLDR: (Then) CFO is also CFO of OkashiCon in Texas. (Then) CFO’s (ex-?) wife was president in 2018 and 2020. Looking at the referenced Chapter 7 bankruptcy (United States Bankruptcy Court, W.D. Texas Docket number 23-10370) listed that the (then) CFO has over a million USD in liabilities (meaning that they owe more than over a million USD) and listed The Foundation For Anime And Niche Subcultures as one of its liabilities. Based on our analysis, as part of the bankruptcy, the (then) CFO is attempting to discharge the money he (still, whatever how much less than what the organization claims in the lawsuit) owes to the organization.

Source: We will not directly list the name of the (then) CFO, but if you look at the lawsuit on some court docket monitoring sites, they reference the parent docket with the details. 

Looking at the organization’s LinkedIn Profile, we did see the (then) CFO LinkedIn profile listed in the organization. Looking at their public profile, they were also the CFO of another similar organization called “Texas Anime Conventions” (a 501-c-3 nonprofit and its FEIN is 82-2719592). 

Screenshot of their LinkedIn profile with only the certain item we are digging in:

Source: We will not directly list the name of the (then) CFO, but if you look at the defendant name in the lawsuit and check on LinkedIn for the Foundation For Anime And Niche Subcultures organization group. We will submit a screenshot of the relevant information. For OkashiCon nonprofit lookup, direct linking to IRS tax exempt page is not possible, but searching the FEIN “82-2719592” at https://apps.irs.gov/app/eos/ will give you the relevant information.

Looking at the public nonprofit information on the IRS shows the president in 2018 and 2020 as someone with the same last name. Digging around we determined through court dockets that it was Fanime’s (then) CFO’s wife and currently pending a divorce stalled by the bankruptcy. While we cannot confirm if they either are associated with OkashiCon or its nonprofit, we have learned that OkashiCon has partnered with San Japan for 2024.

For a visual chart, here is a quick chart of these findings:

Discoveries Of Sensitive Document Publicly Shared by its Secretary

TLDR: FanimeCon’s secretary left some GitHub repositories public and out in the wild. Contains some interesting things we will discuss.

During our investigation of the organization starting through its non-profit tax filings (available for public viewing by law) and looking at The Foundation For Anime And Niche Subcultures (FANS for short) organization LinkedIn company/organization profile, we saw that the organization’s secretary listed a their GitHub profile on their personal profile. 

Looking at their GitHub profile showed two Git repositories FanimeCon-Attendee and FanimeCon-Volunteer; all in the public view (anyone can see the repository in the clear without any kind of account, password, restrictions) and available to be indexed by search engines; not to also mention since it is a public GitHub repository, it is publicly forkable and all changes in the repository are log as Git/GitHub commits. Looking at the GitHub repositories, we discovered some items that were factually interesting as we will discuss later. 

When we shared the summarized information in tweet/post form about the discoveries on social media, the secretary privatized the repositories within hours of us sharing the information, backing our findings as factually interesting. (which we predicted this will happen and already knew of remediation steps to back our findings). Sometime on May 25, 2024, the secretary further attempted to hide from these discoveries by changing their username to another handle. While we won’t disclose their new handle unless they continue to accidentally share PII data of its staff, we do know its new handle and it is tracked easily.

Source Referenced (via the wayback machine): https://web.archive.org/web/20240324031421/https://github.com/Sukurudo/ 

FanimeCon-Attendee GitHub Repository

TLDR: GitHub repo contains registrations for attendee, press, professional industry, exhibitors guests, Musicfest for FanimeCon 2018-2020. Attendance numbers and profits can be summarized.

In the repository we discovered CSV files of registrations for FanimeCon 2018, FanimeCon 2019, and FanimeCon 2020 (of which was canceled but we will discuss why this one is especially important in a dedicated section).

The files in the repository contained transactions defined as type of registration (attendee GENERAL, exhibitors EXHIB, exhibitors who paid additional badges on top of their standard allotment EXHIB$, guest GST, MusicFest MFEST, press PRESS, Professional PROREG, general complimentary badges COMP, some type of subcategory of complimentary badges COMPOS, press PRESS, canceled registrations CANCEL, and REVOKE), type of badges (the same as type of registration with exception of general registrations as it sub-categorized by weekend, half weekend, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday badges), how much they paid, when the registration was submitted, how they registered (online WEB, manual data UPLOAD, via PHONE, at the event ONSITE, MAIL, via EMAIL, or via a KIOSK), if they checked in to get their badge, the organization if it is not a general attendee (like professional, press, exhibitor, etc), city, state, zip, country, general age range, gender, and email domain they used.

With any spreadsheet application, we were able to generalize the transactions made for FanimeCon 2018, FanimeCon 2019, and FanimeCon 2020 and provide a summarized information of the following. 

Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20240308162714/https://github.com/Sukurudo/FanimeCon-Attendee, we will note the specific sources in each dedicated sub-topic

Subnote: You may be wondering why we are sharing this information as it is not fully related to the other topics. Well, we are presenting the information for a few reasons; to set the basis on demonstrating the information we have discovered was not maliciously made up and present all of the facts as possible, demonstrate the board is not forthcoming with even basic information (we will discuss it later on in the analysis), and correlate the information with the embezzlement.

FanimeCon 2018 Registrations And Gross Profit Calculations

Source (via the Wayback Machine): https://web.archive.org/web/20240317231613/https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Sukurudo/FanimeCon-Attendee/master/Data/FAN_REG-2018.csv 

TLDR: Registrations was closer to ~31,556 (warm body count) and if you count those who checked in, it would be closer to ~30,735 (warm body count); which is 7-10% under their estimation of 34,000 attendees. Gross profit was around ~$2,050,000 from badge sales alone.

Source (via the Wayback Machine): https://web.archive.org/web/20240317231613/https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Sukurudo/FanimeCon-Attendee/master/Data/FAN_REG-2018.csv

Generalized, there were 28,857 general, 615 standard exhibitors, 31 extra paid exhibitors, 31 guests, 48 MusicFest, 307 professional, 583 complimentary, and 133 press registrations. A total of 951 staff members were registered. 21 registrations marked as canceled. Additionally, there were 4 strange categorized transactions with mixed information.

If we calculate the sum of registration and staff badges, excluding canceled registrations, the total attendee count is approximately 31,556 (warm body count). This is 2,444 (~7.2%) less than their estimated attendee numbers of ~34,000 (as reported). 

As for those who registered and checked in, 67 exhibitors, 75 press members, and ~679 general attendees who had pre-registered failed to check in and collect their badges. If you tally the number of exhibitors, press members, and general attendees who did not check in, the attendee count for Fanime 2018, based on the actual presence, would be ~30,735 (warm body count); 3265 (~9.6%) less than their estimation of ~34,000. (Note: We are not subtracting the numbers for non-checked-in guests, MusicFest registrations, ~190 professional registrations & 583 comped registrations from the total from 2018 numbers, since these registrations are assumed to be processed differently and may not appear as checked-in on that list.)

Note: If you want to also know, for FanimeCon 2018 convention, there were 11 attendees marked as revoked (details unknown on why it was revoked). Also, some might argue that the list doesn't account for staff members who aren't part of Fanime Staff, such as those working for SJCC. However, we believe it does, as Fanime 2018 attendee CSV list encompasses 28 registrations for "Food Vendor SJCC" exhibitor badges.

Most of the professional registrations that checked in were mainly gaming and tech companies (and only a mere 2 were remotely related to the anime industry). I can extrapolate more if needed but it is already long enough to add more sub-categories.

As for GROSS Revenue, for general registrations in 2018, around 21,203 registered full weekend, 240 registered half-weekend Sunday-Monday ($75), 609 registered Friday only ($55), 4061 registered Saturday only ($60), 2,272 registered Sunday only ($60), and 276 registered Monday only ($50). Depending on the time an attendee registered full weekend for FanimeCon 2018: 7,814 registered at $65, 3,746 registered at $75, 9,643 registered at $85. (Note: 198 transactions are excluded from the gross profit calculation due to irregularities).

(Additional Notes: 40 who pre-reg at $65, 15 who pre-reg at $75, 37 who pre-reg at $85, 2 Sunday only, lost their badge and had to re-print for an additional 50% of their purchased price.)

Among the exhibitors, 32 registrations included a payment of an additional $85 for an extra badge, above and beyond the standard allotment of exhibitor badges per space.

After excluding outliers & excluding revenue from vendor space sales except for the 32 additional exhibitor badges, FanimeCon 2018 generated a GROSS profit of ~$2,050,000 from badge sales alone, although the NET profit will be lower after operational costs are considered.

FanimeCon 2019 Registrations And Gross Profit Calculations

Source (via the Wayback Machine): https://web.archive.org/web/20240317231706/https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Sukurudo/FanimeCon-Attendee/master/Data/FAN_REG-2019.csv

TLDR: Registrations was closer to ~32,316 (warm body count) and if you count those who checked in, it would be closer to ~31,499 (warm body count); which is 4-7% under their estimation of 34,000 attendees. Gross profit was around ~$2,090,000 from badge sales alone.

Generalized, there were 29,535 general, 648 standard exhibitors, 11 extra paid exhibitors, 34 guests, 35 MusicFest, 261 professional, 730 complimentary, and 127 press registrations. A total of 925 staff members were registered. 49 registrations marked as canceled.

If we calculate the sum of registration and staff badges, excluding canceled registrations, the total attendee count is approximately 32,316 (warm body count). This is 1,684 (~4.9%) less than their estimated attendee numbers of ~34,000 (as reported). 

As for those who registered and checked in, 1 exhibitor, 6 press members, and ~810 general attendees who had pre-registered failed to check in and collect their badges. If you tally the number of exhibitors, press members, and general attendees who did not check in, the attendee count for FanimeCon 2019, based on the actual presence, would be ~31,499 (warm body count); 2,501 (~7.4%) less than their estimation of ~34,000. (Note: We are not subtracting the numbers for non-checked-in guests, MusicFest registrations & 730 comped registrations from the total from 2019 numbers, since these registrations are assumed to be processed differently and may not appear as checked-in on that list.)

Note: If you want to also know, for FanimeCon 2019 convention, there were 8 attendees marked as revoked (details unknown on why it was revoked).

As for GROSS Revenue, for general registrations for FanimeCon 2019, around 21,871 registered full weekend, 277 registered half-weekend Sunday-Monday ($75), 691 registered Friday only ($55), 3,843 registered Saturday only ($60), 2,440 registered Sunday only ($60), and 413 registered Monday only ($50). Depending on the time an attendee registered full weekend for FanimeCon 2019: 8,800 registered at $65, 3,124 registered at $75, 9,741 registered at $85. (Note: 206 transactions are excluded from the gross profit calculation due to irregularities).

(Additional Notes: 38 who pre-reg at $65, 17 who pre-reg at $75, 46 who pre-reg at $85, 1 half-weekend, 1 Saturday morning, lost their badge and had to re-print for an additional 50% of their purchased price.)

Among the exhibitors, 21 registrations included a payment of an additional $85 for an extra badge, above and beyond the standard allotment of exhibitor badges per space.

After excluding outliers & excluding revenue from vendor space sales except for the 32 additional exhibitor badges, FanimeCon 2019 generated a GROSS profit of ~$2,090,000 from badge sales alone, although the NET profit is be lower after operational costs are considered.

FanimeCon 2020 Registrations, Gross Profit Calculations (And Failing To Refund)

Source (via Wayback Machine): https://web.archive.org/web/20240317231724/https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Sukurudo/FanimeCon-Attendee/master/Data/FAN_REG-2020.csv

TLDR: 9,428 pre-registrations with gross profit of $723,350 USD, did not refund but postponed to next year(s), finally offered refund 2 years later but is failing to fulfill those refund requests.

One of the files in the (publicly) shared GitHub repository was a document including details such as attendee numbers for FanimeCon 2020. As the event did not happen, there is not as much information to extract; but there are some things we can still pull.

For FanimeCon 2020, there were 9,428 pre-registrations (& 187 registrations marked as canceled in the list) prior to announcement. 7,808 pre-reg at $75, 1,596 pre-reg at $85, 22 pre-reg at $95. Total pre-reg gross profit $723,350 prior to postponement announcement.

As for the cancellation of the FanimeCon 2020 convention, the convention did not offer to refund the pre-registration, instead initially transferring the registration to 2021 (and then to 2022) event. During FanimeCon 2022, the convention finally offers those who pre-registered for those years to request a refund or deferral; of those who submitted a refund request, most have yet to get a refund. During the closing ceremonies of FanimeCon 2023, when asked about the status of the refunds, the response was more rebuttal with people claiming that it was (attendee) fault “as they have one person handling refunds and they probably lost track of the refunds”.

Source (names redacted for privacy of unrelated parties):

Additional Source: Cross verified with FailedByFanime (former FanimeCon staffs who resigned due to board inability to address issues) https://twitter.com/failedbyfanime/status/1782952605435474260

Analysis Of 2020 Pre-Registrations

TLDR: Pre-Registration revenue that should have been refunded is likely gone.

Given the discovery of the currently ongoing lawsuit between FanimeCon’s non-profit organization and its (then) CFO embezzling ~$656,000, about 90.7% of the revenue that should have been used for FanimeCon 2020 (that should have been refunded to its customers).

Now, considering the reports of the "missing" registration list and the mishandled refund requests during the closing ceremonies in 2022, and the discovery of the embezzlement from the (then) CFO of over a half a million dollars (see “Embezzlement with its (then) CFO for details”), we have with two likelihood:

At the very best, the money that should have been refunded or deferred in 2022 is used as a non-interest bearing loan. Calculating for inflation, $75 pre-reg would value over $90 now, $85 pre-reg would value over $100 now, $95 pre-reg would value over $110 now. 

Though it is most likely that the value of pre-registration for FanimeCon 2020 that was supposed to be deferred and refunded is gone...stolen (a write off for attendees who pre-registered), never going to get back anymore.

FanimeCon-Volunteer GitHub Repository

TLDR: Masked staff information is shared publicly. See next section (Analysis) on why is it bad with analysis

In the repository we discovered CSV files of the staff roster spanning from FanimeCon 2012 to 2019. The list included PII information like

Staff Badge ID (which does not change year to year)

Birthdates (Year, Month, Day)

Age

City/State/Country of residence that convention year

Division they work in for the convention (Examples include: Programming, Guest Relations, Extravaganza)

Department they work in for the convention (likely a subcategory of the division) (Examples include: Chair Team, Artist Alley, Cosplay)

Year they were staff for the convention

Source Referenced (via the Wayback Machine): https://web.archive.org/web/20240308164013/https://github.com/Sukurudo/FanimeCon-Volunteers

Screenshot to demonstrate the existence of the document from the repository but heavily redacted with many sections obscured to limit exposure of personal information:

Note: We are keeping details of this document from being linked due to the sensitive nature of this section. 

Analysis

TLDR: Even though names are not disclosed and just badge ID, it is not too hard to match names to the badge ID with a couple of other sources and pattern matching.

Although the names are not directly linked to the publicly shared information (so it is kind of masked…. Barely), the data could be utilized with other social engineering tactics to associate the names with FanimeCon staff badge IDs, thereby posing a significant privacy risk. 

One way in which data can be de-masked is by pinpointing individuals within solo department teams based on the guidebooks FanimeCon distributes. These names can then be cross-referenced with leaked data CSV to uncover identities (Similar with small departments with a little work). Another way to unmask the data is by using a combination of social and data engineering techniques, identifying individuals who have changed departments over the years at FanimeCon, referencing in the guidebook, and correlating this information with badge IDs in the leaked data. Using a mixture of these two methods could likely gather a reasonable to moderate number of personal information.

Even if one is unable to correlate the names to the badge ID for getting PII data, there was something that could be extrapolated from the publicly shared document. 

For instance, among the entire FanimeCon chair team, according to the staff CSV data publicly shared (though likely should not be) in 2019, only one member resided in Northern California (we will not disclose where they were, but they were generally situated on one general area), with another chair team member having moved out of NorCal between 2018 and 2019. Meaning that they had to travel great distances to hold their staff meetings/recruitments and spend a lot of money on travels.

We are enclosing a (heavily masked) screenshot of the data that was public to demonstrate the seriousness and existence of the document while preventing the PII data that can be extrapolated from the screenshot. 

Note: We do not want to attack current and previous lower staff. We want to expose the secrecy of the boards through investigative journalism and research from publicly accessible data and sites.

Pending Suspension/Revocation In California

TLDR: The non-profit status is delinquent until close of business (COB) of Tuesday, June 25, 2024 to correct it or be suspended or revoked.

This one is more stated for information and there is not much more to dig into. 

On April 26, 2024 FanimeCon’s parent non-profit, Foundation For Anime And Niche Subculture (FANS) was served with a “Delinquency Notice And Warning Of Assessment of Penalties And Late Fees, And Suspension Or Revocation Of Registered Status” from the State Of California Department Of Justice. 

This stemmed from the failure to conduct an independent audit, required when there is a GROSS (just profit alone before subtracting operating costs) over 2 million USD since 2019.

The organization has (as of right now) at most 60 days since the date of the letter to complete and submit the completion of the outside audio; meaning they have till close of business (COB) of Tuesday, June 25, 2024 to complete and send the document showing they completed the independent audit or be suspended or being removed as a non-profit in the State Of California.

Source: 

https://rct.doj.ca.gov/Verification/Web/ (and enter the FEIN: 814054929 to search, permalinks don’t work there so manual entering is needed…. Though the document download link works)

Side Note: Strange IRS Filings

TLDR: IRS non-profit filings are strange given that, based on the IRS website list the last non-profit tax document was for 2020 (and submitted in 2021) but Propublica archive lists a 2021 tax document (submitted in 2022).

We will be short on this as we have seen some strange irregularities. If you look at the IRS non-profit tax filings (open to the public for inspection) the last non-profit tax filing lists the last filing was “Tax Year 2021 Form 990” for September 1, 2020 to August 31, 2021 (their fiscal year starts in September and this is not out of the ordinary); through if you look at Propublica’s non-profit explorer, they have list a form 990 for September 1, 2021 to August 31, 2022. 

We are unsure why the form 990 for September 1, 2021 to August 31, 2022 is missing on the IRS website, so we don’t have more to say without more information other than a footnote in the findings.

Source IRS Tax-Exempt Search: IRS website does not allow for permalinking for their tax exempt search so we will guide you how to pull it up. Go to https://apps.irs.gov/app/eos/, Set “Search By” (middle top dropdown box) to “Employer Identification Number”, and to the right of it “Search Term” enter “81-4054929” and click search. Included is a screenshot for reference

Source Propublica Nonprofit Explorer: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/814054929

Postmortem

TLDR: FanimeCon’s board has a lot of mismanagement and corruption from the top and needs a complete overhaul. Embezzlement and PII data exposed out in the wild with secrecy of what is happening from the top of a non-profit and hostility towards staff and attendees. 

A lot of the issues Fanime is facing have a lot of similarities with another company is facing (in both the relevance of the timing and the issues). While investigating the con’s practices from publicly accessible data, another company has came under fire for hostile workplace, bad leadership, mismanaged funds, retaliation, delayed responses and that company is EK (video explaining the situation https://youtu.be/8A7cykj0pCg) 

As for the issue with fraud with its CFO, while the CEO and FanimeCon's Board will likely claim that they are not responsible for the actions of its CFO actions, they are (most likely) equally responsible for the people they hired (quoting the video I referenced in the previous paragraph). The boards of Fanime helped create this condition for embezzlement through systematic levels of deception, not refunding attendee badges for 2020 event, not overseeing its budget, failing to have an outside audit (reason for it has a delinquent tax status in CA). The fact that no one other than Fanime’s board directly (other than speculation) knew about the fraud for more than 1 (to 2) years with its (then) CFO till we made it public gives examples how it failed its dereliction of duty engrained in its motto: For fans, by fans

The fact that they replaced its (then) CFO with a new CFO in August 2022 without disclosing a reason to its staff other than the board & was only made public by people (like FanimeLeaks) discovering court dockets about the embezzlement in April 2024 brought distrust. 

Also in documentation of the change in CFO with CA Secretary Of State, FanimeCon’s secretary was referenced as an officer in the change, that same secretary publicly exposed PII information of its staff from FanimeCon 2012-2019 on GitHub.

The fact that FanimeCon’s secretary's GitHub repo we presented in our findings was privatized hours after we disclosed our findings of them failing to protect the PII data of its staff reassures us that the information is factually interesting to our investigation. Making it private after disclosing our findings publicly demonstrates a systematic level of failures to keep their organization in compliance with requirements like financial audits. 

Not to also mention since it was public, it was forkable and the way Git/GitHub logs changes validates the user behind each changes points (Git) “blame” (more info: https://git-scm.com/docs/git-blame) at the user/person committing every change. 

It also backs the data we discovered as worth value and another example of failing its motto duty: For fans, by fans 

And how does it failed its dereliction of duty; the people who run the event are augmented on a different level than the people they serve and don’t communicate with them; or in other words, the “by fans” (board) are not the same people as the “for fans” (attendee).

Fanime’s board has a known history of unprofessionalism to borderline hostility, for example: previous posts that the CEO of Fanime posted on their forums in regards to attendance numbers (we are not going to base the comments for the reason they still estimate 2017-2019 attendance, but the comment seems….unprofessional).

Source back in 2011 who was a division head (the division with the 3rd most staff under their division) who is now the President of Foundation For Anime And Niche Subcultures:

The precedence of comments like these shows similarities to the incident of a (ex-)staff member who resigned and was threatened by the board by making their recounts of incidents of a s staff member stalking them public. These comments that are demonstrated publicly is on par with the (slight rumor yet confirmed by lower department staff levels for FanimeCon) retaliatory actions Fanime’s board countered against the entire gaming hall staff resigning by pushing to replace it with a ball pit (the only reason the replacement idea was scrapped was due to the outcry to the still existing staff).

Most closest source we can use:

In addition, there has been reports of a (still) staffing FanimeCon staff harassing mods of the primary FanimeCon unofficial facebook group calling them “FanimeCon Unofficial b\[***\]h”. One example of multiple incidents that has been reported of open hostility.

(See higher resolution image at https://i.postimg.cc/3Nn2JBDN/2024-06-01-23-15-39.png)

The issues with the Fanime’s board we found in discovery plus the way they communicate (as seen in the forms) demonstrates the mentality of a high school club and while (as operated) it started as a small social club, it has never grown out of that mentality to a responsible convention.

There are likely a lot more issues that we did not discuss, but these are just the discoveries we found through searching and analyzing data that was made public. We tried to limit the use of what people said in our findings and reference court documents and data that can be traced back to heads of the FanimeCon and its non-profit organization. (Honestly, if we went down the rabbit hole and go by what people are saying, this document will never end and writing this is already way too long)

Appendix A: Why Did We Research FanimeCon

After the claims #FailedByFanime has publicly made, we want to act as a neutral party on both sides of the claim. Having never been a staff member of the event, we operate without knowledge of how the organization works behind the scenes, and in turn, without any potential restrictions or NDA from the organization. In this situation, we are an independent press doing investigative journalism.

Most of the time, we are just a bunch of f**king weebs that try to research a bunch of silly facts from anime. But hearing staff retaliation by heads of a con, we want to dig in to pull fact from fiction (or what we can pull out from official sources).

Appendix B: Why Are We Publicly Disclosing These Discoveries

After finding the issues behind the scenes and how far reaching the issues were, we wanted to go straight with the information and warn the public convention community of the issues. 

Seeing how the organization handles people coming out (as shown in examples with CosplayCleric’s video explaining how the organization threatened them with a Cease and Desist to prevent them from coming out).

We did not want to report the issue and have it just swept under the rug, fail to disclose to its staff and threatened with a Cease and Desist given the severity of people information being public for anyone to see in the clear.

Based on the practices we have seen, we expect that, if we emailed them about their data security failure, they would not only just hide the info, gaslight us that it was not a security issue, threaten us for finding the information, gag us with cease and desist if we disclosed to anyone else, and threaten us with a lawsuit for discovering something that was open and publicly available, open for anyone to see. We have seen this even with some government agencies with reporters discovering security issues before (Example: https://www.npr.org/2021/10/14/1046124278/missouri-newspaper-security-flaws-hacking-investigation-gov-mike-parson) and, given the past history of FanimeCon’s hostility, we would not be surprised if they resort to it and we have already seen examples in group forums where staff members have been harassing group mods in unofficial Facebook groups. Given we are operating as an investigative journalism, we are operating as a press and not a security engineer given we have not accessed any part of their website to discover any of the main sources (other than supplementary comments from the board they have publicly posted on their forums) and access public sources (of none of which was behind any level of access control, login, password, token, etc) like court dockets (which is open for public access), GitHub public repository (meaning the repo was set to public so anyone can see the data initially… for 4 years).

If this operated like a standard company that stored people’s private information was accidentally made public or even just stolen, the company would at least disclose the security issue to affected people and (typically) offer some kind of 2 year credit monitoring; but how we see FanimeCon would do (based on examples before) is sweep the issue under the rug and hide the discovery from anyone, hence why we need to make the discoveries public instead of reporting back first.

While the GitHub sources we referenced via the Wayback Machine will demonstrate the existence of the documents and repositories, backing our claims and findings; the details are not easily accessible via the links, which is a good thing as the document contains PII information we don’t want to share.

As for writing this condensed version of our findings, we have yet to see FanimeCon and Foundation For Anime And Niche Subcultures (FANS for short) disclose or even just acknowledge any of the findings to its staff or the public (embezzlement, data publicly shared, delinquency). We can assume they know the issues we discovered, or how else would they have quickly privatized the GitHub repositories we disclosed our findings on social media. While we waited for them to disclose or even just acknowledge the information till after their 2024 convention, we have still not heard of anything from the board. Given how we have seen in previous reports who came out stating that FanimeCon and Foundation For Anime And Niche Subcultures likes to threaten people who come out with information with cease and desist, we are not willing to contact and wait for them to start threatening people with litigations and needing us to solicit a lawyer to assist as we don’t have any association with FanimeCon or Foundation For Anime And Niche Subculture to start and serve some levels of litigation, even through all of the sources we found were in the public through court dockets and publicly accessible sites. 

Appendix C: Why Are We Limiting Sources On Some Items

Due to the nature and severity of some documents discovered containing personal identifiable data, we are not disclosing some of the sources that show the raw data, but we can show limited information to demonstrate the existence of the source, but redact major components to still protect major components of the information. With the attendee list, most of the information cannot be correlated back to the people with the exception of business (and most businesses have a location already publicly known), but staff information contains serious levels of personally identifiable information of individuals that we don’t want to disclose.

Appendix D: Should You Go Or Not?

That is up to you and we are here just to provide all of the facts in discoveries. We are acting neutral on that and whether to call for a boycott or not (that is up to you). 

We are just here to warn that their financial stability is risky and its scandal may be outer reaching than just FanimeCon alone (example as we have explained, Okashicon and its partnership with San Japan for 2024), actual attendance number for the estimated numbers they have disclosed in the past 10 years (only 2 attendance numbers were publicized) being lower than their estimated numbers by a moderate percentage, and personal information of its staff has been out in the open.

[saltyfears]

Kassidee Reference 2 (2018)

An updated reference for Kassidee for a fanime I was working on at the time, Weeb’s Guide to School. Now with side profile reference! (Fancy)

[papasaysbuyit]

Check out this listing I just added to my Poshmark closet: LOL Surprise Dolls MGA 2016 2018 Headband Glasses Clothes.

[mr-paul-phoenix-downer]

6, 56, 57, 63

already answered 6

56. Occupations you wanted to be when you were a kid?

Pokémon professor lol

57. Do you believe in ghosts?

Somewhat to an extent

63. First concert?

nano at fanime 2018

[sadonishi]

More Fanime memories, with some Tales of Xillia friends

Jude: @herogenkaku Milla: tem_cakes Leia: @lightofhope18 Alvin: @sadonishi

Photos by JC

[oblivionsongstress]

GLaDOS @oblivionsongstress

I realized I didn’t post my fanime pictures from last year whoops,,,

[atinygamer]

Series: Kuroshitsuji / Black Butler Character: Alan Humphries  Cosplayer: @askthetinybishie​  Photographer: sugarcoateddame (Instagram) Event: Fanime 2018 Sunday, May 24, 2018

[alwrath]

Wrath from Fullmetal Alchemist: The Conqueror of Shamballa worn at Fanime 2018. 

Amazing photographs by Cnidarium Photography!

Stunning automail commissioned from ShimyrCosplayProps!

[lunaversedoodles]

Fanime 2018

conspiracy ! Pidge cosplay  I love the AU/Headcannon where Keith and Pidge are conspiracy bros.... It's probably due in part because preteen me was a little obsessed with that kind of stuff as well!

[papasaysbuyit]

Check out this listing I just added to my Poshmark closet: LOL Surprise Dolls MGA 2016 2018 Headband Glasses Clothes.

[littlepinkmoonbunny]

Some Chibiusa cosplays from Fanime 2019!

[sadonishi]

Our prom pictures from the ball at Fanime 2018. Pretty much sums up our shenanigans that year.

Cardia: @lightofhope18 Lupin: @tomoyoichijouji Frankenstein: @herogenkaku Van Helsing: @sadonishi Saint-Germain: tem_cakes Special guest appearance Yuri Katsuki: @karukaikashi

Code: Realize for the Black & White ball: 1 | 2