How a clothes donation bin company passed itself off as a charity, while donated items were put up for sale

W5: Bins for Profit | Part Four W5's Jon Woodward investigates how the removal of unlicensed donation bins can lead to violent reprisals.

This is part two of a four-part investigative series by CTV W5 into the seedy underbelly of the lucrative clothing donation bin industry. W5 correspondent Jon Woodward and producer Joseph Loiero, using trackers, reveal a for-profit operation masquerading as a charity.

When Nazarene Sebastian spotted a brown stuffed elephant in a Toronto-area thrift store, she thought it would be the perfect Christmas present to donate to needy children.

What she didn’t know was that the stuffed elephant had already been donated, as part of a W5 investigation that tracked what happened to the items people place in clothing donation bins.

When a W5 crew knocked on her door in Brampton, Ont., she found out the money she spent on that elephant may have been a source of revenue for a collection of organizations that seem to be profiting off people’s donations.

And that those organizations have previously faced allegations of profiting improperly from a charitable status that has long since been revoked.

“Probably they capitalize on it because they see the value of something that is worth reselling,” Sebastian said in an interview with W5. “But it should be given to the ones who really need it.”

The elephant was one of several children’s toys and articles of used clothing that W5 placed in clothing donation bins throughout the Greater Toronto Area.

The items were fixed with trackers to follow them to their destinations. Two ended up in homes in Toronto, one at an industrial yard alongside piles of baled clothing, another at a store where rags from recycled clothes are sold in bulk, and four ended up in North Africa, part of the global used clothing trade that’s worth $181 million a year in exports from Canada alone.

The brown elephant was donated in a bin that bore the name of “Canadian Community Support Foundation,” an agency that has bins throughout the Greater Toronto Area, sometimes sporting a charitable number with the Canada Revenue Agency.

Trouble is, federal records show that charitable status was revoked in 2018, after an audit.

The CRA said it told then-CCSF Director Milda Romanoff that the charity had broken its rule by giving $29,200 to a numbered company – what the agency called an “undue private benefit.”

Corporate records show that the director of the numbered company that received the payments totalling $29,200 is Giuseppe Siggia, who is Romanoff’s husband.

Court records show Siggia has a criminal conviction from the 1980s for cocaine and heroin trafficking, and a conviction from the 1990s for conspiracy to distribute cocaine in Florida. He was also found guilty of careless use of a firearm in the 1980s.

Romanoff was also the listed director of a Toronto thrift store called Market By The Pound, where people can purchase clothes by weight. That’s where Sebastian bought the stuffed elephant.

W5 reached Romanoff by phone, and she confirmed she is Siggia’s wife, but denied being the owner of Market By The Pound.

“I’m 75 years old. I’ve been retired for over 10 years. If you want to talk to him, you talk to him. I have nothing to say,” she said.

As for Siggia, he said over the phone that he no longer does any work in the clothing bin business as well. He said he believes others are using the CCSF bins and he’s not responsible for what is being done with them.

“I’m not involved in the bin business for years and years. You’re going back at least 10, 12 years. I’m out of it completely,” he said.

Market By The Pound said that it is no longer connected with Romanoff, and corporate records show that company was dissolved in March.

CRA records confirmed that the CCSF is no longer a charity -- but its signs remain up on bins in the GTA.

As for Sebastian, she is not going to let anything get in the way of her desire to donate.

She said she was in a hospital in her native Philippines in 2021, first diagnosed with lung cancer and then COVID-19.

She survived and came to Canada. The experience humbled and changed her, she said, and when she arrived she vowed to pay her good fortune forward to kids in need. So, several times a year, she buys toys like that brown elephant to ship back home.

“It will make them happy. You know, when a kid receives it, when you give something like a toy in the Philippines, they will be very grateful,” she said.

The elephant was packed up in a box and shipped away from her Brampton home in September. Thanks to her, W5’s donation, which is also her donation, is on its way to needy kids in the Philippines right now.

For tips on donation bins or any other story, please email Jon Woodward or call 416 859 8617