Kotaku’s Alyssa Mercante Gets Caught With Ridiculous Trans Charity Grift
Alyssa Mercante has been grifting off of Kotaku and video games for awhile, but this might be the craziest one yet.
Kotaku’s Alyssa Mercante loves to call everyone in the gaming industry whose politics are to the right of Mao’s a grifter and has a particular obsession with former World of Warcraft developer Mark Kern (Grummz) and YouTuber Smash JT. But her latest antics have exposed who the real grifters are, and it is not Mark Kern, Smash JT, or any anti-woke influencer in gaming.
Alyssa Mercante has been one of the worst of the worst of Kotaku, defending Sweet Baby Inc. and their woke grifting off of games like Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League, attacking YouTubers who disagree with her to the point of DMing his wife to try to get her to divorce him, and even harassing Vara Dark with strange threats on Fourth of July. Her embattled nature and disdain for normal gamers has garnered her comparisons to former G4TV host, Frosk, who had similar meltdowns a couple of years ago.
Over the weekend, Alyssa Mercante crashed Hypnotic's Saturday night Hypnosis YouTube stream, trying to own them by bragging about how she raised over $20,000 for a charity called Trans Lifeline. It's a big mistake because that got Smash JT and other culture commentators looking into this charity and exposing Trans Lifeline as the real grifters.
According to Smash JT, an old Kiwi Farms investigation had exposed how the founders embezzled and misappropriated funds. In January 2018, Trans Lifeline's Board of Directors had to dismiss the founders, Nia Chaubal and Greta Martela, after an internal audit discovered that they had misdirected over $350,000 of the organization's funds. An internal review revealed that Chaubal and Martela had made $353,703 of unauthorized purchases for personal benefit and side projects.
At the time, Trans Lifeline issued a statement: "Earlier this year, the board launched an investigation into the financial transactions of Nia and Greta and concluded with the advice of legal and financial professionals that there had been significant spending of Trans Lifeline funds outside the scope of the current budget. Much of this spending was on an unauthorized project neither approved by the board nor made clear to donors, which Greta and Nia sincerely believed was for the good of the trans community. Unfortunately, their unauthorized project ran afoul of Trans Lifeline's obligations to the 501(c)(3) tax laws."
Trans Lifeline was operated by Greta and Nia, who would post extravagant lifestyle photos on their Instagram accounts. Meanwhile, the Trans Lifeline hotline service rarely had anyone online to accept emergency calls. That led Kiwi Farms users to suspect they were stealing from their charity, so they began documenting both their lifestyle and their hotline's performance or lack thereof.
Documents leaked to Kiwi Farms by people who had worked with them apparently showed that there was almost no organization, no internal support structure, and no training. Transgender people recruited by Trans Lifeline to be call agents would then be put on lines to deal with suicidal transgender people, with scant information on how to actually help them. Some callers reported being hung up on, and operators reported trauma from having to answer life-or-death phone calls without any idea of what to do or say.
According to their website, Trans Lifeline supports initiatives including paying bail and providing legal assistance to trans individuals, even if they've been found guilty of crimes, and has already paid over half a million dollars toward criminals who have been convicted and put in prison, trying to get them out. They also assist in name changes and alternate IDs to assist people in hiding.
According to the Trans Lifeline website, the qualifications you need to be a Hotline operator are that: “you must live in the US or Canada and be 18+. You’ll need a phone, computer, and internet connection you can use at the same time, and a quiet, private place to take calls (Hotline). Because we offer peer support, Hotline and Microgrants volunteer positions are only open to trans, nonbinary, and gender nonconfrorming identified people.” No formal training in dealing with suicidal people are required, the only qualification is that you shouldn’t be normal. The hotline also only answers calls Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.
But here is the real kicker. While it isn’t clear how much the current Trans Lifeline board members are earning, screen-shots have emerged of previous board members earning in the region of $150K per year. All the while gender, gender-confused suicidal people have to talk to unqualified, equally gender-confused, and unpaid volunteers in times of crisis, and only if the crisis is not happening outside of business hours and IF a volunteer is available at the time.
Kotaku’s Alyssa Mercante’s attempt to own gamers backfired and exposed who the real grifters are. Let us know in the comments what you think about Mercante’s latest faux pas.
By Jack Dunn
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