Colorful charity donation bins – you might’ve seen them pop up overnight on a block near you.

They are unattended, Redbox-sized depositories placed in parking lots, by fill stations, outside strip malls. You can drive up in your car and load your second-hand clothes and shoes into a large steel drawer on the front of the bin. Presumably, someone will pick the stuff up later.

Painted bright green, yellow, blue, or red, the donation boxes are printed with information about the numerous causes and projects your donation will supposedly benefit.

Save the Earth. Help stop HIV/AIDS in Africa. Recycling is good! Climate change!

For good measure, the image of a grinning African child gives the donor an encouraging thumbs-up.

For ordinary consumers, the colorful steel kiosks offer a way to donate unwanted property without a hassle. But where are the donations really going? Who owns the boxes? And can they be trusted to do the right thing?

In short, no, not even a little. The bulk of the bins placed in recent years are little more than pumpjacks for financial fraud. Your donation will only contribute to the wealth and power of an international crime syndicate-cum-cult led by one of the world’s most wanted money launderers.

Empire of the Clothing Bin Cult

Whoa, back up. Say what?

Let’s start over.

There exists in our world today a certain multimillion-dollar business empire with impressive global reach. This empire is very special because it is a secret corporate conglomeration with a unique purpose: to expand the wealth and influence of the Clothing Bin Cult — or as it is known in Denmark where it originated, the Tvind Teachers Group.

This cult’s inner circle reportedly comprises several hundred elite "Teachers" who are said to have taken an oath to unconditionally surrender all their time, labor and money to the collective interest of the Group. Though it’s not clear who is empowered to determine this collective interest, the highest-profile candidate is definitely octogenarian fugitive and scarecrow jetsetter, Mogens Amdi Petersen.

Petersen is the original Tvind patriarch. He is known as a charismatic man with a magnetic presence and the power to enchant, if not everyone, at least enough people to build a shadowy international following. He also helped construct a quasi-anonymous corporate empire that continues to draw in passive income streams from lucrative investments around the world, from bananas in Belize to Mozambican cashews and Malaysian timber. Petersen has been instrumental in the transformation of Tvind’s original DIY euro-cult into a truly global parasitic complex, nearly a half-century in the making.

Now wanted by Interpol and the Danish state, Petersen is thought to be currently living in Mexico’s Baja California. There, he and his friends have constructed a sprawling 500-acre compound far from prying eyes, perched on the western edge of the continent overlooking the Pacific Ocean. No one knows for sure what goes on inside the shiny new complex, with its ultramodern-cathedral aesthetics and mysterious spearlike and spherical structures. But one thing is undeniable: it cost a lot of money — including the presumptive expense of bribing the local governor to protect its rumored VIP impunity. (The Danes are still trying to persuade Mexico to extradite the fugitives.)

Alas, it is a fact of globalization: Those with the means to live transnationally are often very powerful people, able to skip around and strategically choose which set of laws to follow just as their needs and desires dictate. Petersen clearly favors Mexico, probably because much of it has become a lawless hellscape, but also because coastal Baja is so visually exquisite.

The bin on your block

Despite Tvind’s global character, residents of Europe and North America may have unwittingly seen or contributed to the assets of Petersen and the Teachers Group (TG) without even leaving their neighborhoods. From Colorado to Copenhagen, the network has been very busy in recent years planting new points-of-entry in city after city. The entry points are the clothing donation boxes mentioned above — those colorful metal bins silently soliciting your surplus.

The bins make it easy for First World consumers to hand over free goods to the cult’s front groups (Humana, People-to-People, Planet Aid, Gaia or Gaia Movement, USAgain, Angel Bins, DAPP, California Campus, et al.). Most donations are swiftly dumped overseas for a profit, where they will dominate and undermine the very local economies Tvind’s fake charities claim to be saving, in the process generating revenue that ultimately flows into TG-connected offshore accounts.

According to Rick Ross of the Cult Education Institute, “Amdi Pedersen [sic] has control with a small group of leaders at the top and they control everything. All of the charities, all of the people, all of the cash flow.”

Amazingly, in addition to the bins, Tvind’s charities have also been getting direct infusions of taxpayer money for years through federal foreign aid programs. The USDA, for instance, has generously funded Planet Aid’s ostensible food and development assistance programs in Africa, to the tune of millions of dollars. Twelve years of repeated warnings and complaints haven’t daunted the government’s aid jockeys a bit — even damning reports by their own investigator.

Perhaps relatedly, Planet Aid’s main power broker in Washington, Marie Lichtenberg, is reported to work closely with the government officials, and to stay well-connected to the right people via Washington pay-to-play trading posts like the Clinton Foundation.

What does it all mean?

Every rich globalist leaves a bloody trail of destruction in his or her wake. And so Petersen does, like a pro. He lives the high-roller’s life, having spent decades accumulating wealth by robbing the poor, the rich and the state alike to fund sumptuous yachts, elite villas, fine food and drink – and perhaps elaborate ‘religious’ rituals at his creepy compound by the sea.

The tragicomic thing about this mega-scam is that it’s been repeatedly exposed by investigative journalists and major media organizations, both in the U.S. and abroad. Steadfast charity watchdog Tvind Alert has been compiling publicly accessible information on the Teachers Group for nearly two decades. Many former workers have come forward and shared stories of money laundering, wage theft, and psychological abuse. The relevant police files have been shared with the relevant authorities.

Yet no prosecutions have taken place. In fact, the bins have been labeled "constitutionally protected free speech" by U.S. courts, saving them from retaliatory municipal bans. In Washington, the bureaucrats say they will take no further action.

Glitch in the matrix

Today, tens of thousands of donation bins still pockmark the U.S., drawing a weird combination of local ire, well-meaning generosity, and funky trash. Thousands of tons of free goods are surrendered to the crypto-cult every week. You can even donate and deduct the value of the contributions from your taxes.

The bins are like a glitch in the matrix: an unlikely public spectacle of private greed and government corruption, impunity, elitism, globalized crime and local parasitism, all hidden in plain sight. Truly, they bespeak a cruel logic of our decadent society: not only do nice guys finish last, but totally fake nice guys apparently finish first. Sad!

You can learn more about the Clothing Bin Cult from reputable sources here, here and here.