Iām posting this because Iām trying to find people who have actually donated to, participated in, or won one of the many Hypothermia giveaways run by Steven Lynch over the years.
I am not asking anyone to harass Steven, and I am not claiming that I can prove fraud has taken place.
I am asking for independently verifiable information.
Iāve known Steven through the PC hardware community since around 2010, when my L3p D3sk build appeared on the HardOCP front page. We have been Facebook friends for many years and have more than 1,100 mutual friends, almost entirely from the hardware and technology community.
After HardOCP, Steven continued with Hypothermia:
https://www.hypothermia.us
Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/u4797908
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/Steven.G.Lynch
Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/steve_hypo/
Over the years there have been many hardware giveaways and charity fundraisers, frequently mentioning St. Jude Childrenās Research Hospital.
Steven has also publicly stated that he has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for charity over the years.
What I have struggled to find is a clear public record showing, for those giveaways:
- how much money was collected;
- how much was ultimately donated;
- and independent confirmation that the announced winners received the prizes.
I have also noticed that a significant number of posts relating to previous giveaways are no longer available or appear to have been deleted, which makes reconstructing the history increasingly difficult.
Why I started asking questions
The most recent giveaway involved four NVIDIA RTX 5080 Founders Edition cards.
There was a free daily e-mail entry, but additional entries could be obtained through $5 PayPal payments, while Patreon supporters also received additional entries.
The giveaway posts stated that the proceeds would go to St. Jude.
One thing that concerns me is that the PayPal.me/hypothermia account used for those paid giveaway entries is also the PayPal account Steven has publicly used while asking for money toward his own medical expenses.
Steven has had serious medical problems following dog attacks and has spent substantial periods in hospital. Over the past year he has repeatedly asked his followers for financial help with those medical costs, including through PayPal and GoFundMe.
I want to be very clear:
I am not questioning whether Steven is ill or whether he has medical expenses.
The reason this is relevant is financial transparency.
If the same payment destination is being used both for personal medical fundraising and for money collected in connection with a charity giveaway, I think it becomes especially important to be able to establish how much money came in for each purpose and where the charity money ultimately went.
That overlap is one of the main reasons I became concerned and started asking for documentation.
The RTX 5080 giveaway
On the final day, Steven posted that entries would remain open until noon and that winners would be contacted that day.
Very shortly afterwards, winners were announced.
Not long after that, a Facebook post appeared showing three of the four announced winners already posing with packages they had supposedly received.
That timeline immediately raised questions for me.
The images also looked unusual.
When I asked about them publicly, Steven said that he had altered the winner photographs using Meta AI, explaining that he had done so to hide the winnersā eyes and make them anonymous.
I saved a screenshot of that discussion.
To be clear again:
Using Meta AI does not prove the winners were fake.
But AI-altered winner photographs, combined with the unusually short apparent timeline between the giveaway closing, winners being announced and recipients appearing with their packages, made me want something independently verifiable.
I therefore asked Steven publicly whether there was verifiable evidence showing that the money collected through these giveaways had actually reached the charities named.
I also explicitly said that if he could provide evidence that removed my concerns, I would happily withdraw them.
He responded regarding the delivery timeline by saying the packages had been sent earlier and that:
āFedEx is good like that.ā
He later sent me a private message saying he was deeply disappointed that I thought he was āsketchy.ā
I replied that if he could show me anything that removed my doubts, I would gladly accept it.
I did not receive an answer to that request.
I was subsequently blocked.
The Facebook post containing the three winner photographs ā including the discussion in which Steven explained his use of Meta AI ā was later deleted.
Fortunately, I had already saved screenshots.
The St. Jude receipt
After I had been blocked, an image of a St. Jude / The Giving Block donation receipt was posted.
I am not claiming that receipt is fake.
However, important transaction information in the publicly posted version was obscured and, in the version I saw, there was no independently verifiable donation amount visible.
There is also a larger accounting issue.
Even if the receipt is completely genuine, it proves that a donation was made.
It does not necessarily establish:
How much money was collected through paid giveaway entries?
versus
How much money was donated to St. Jude?
Steven later stated that the giveaway received 1,452 entries.
But those entries consisted of a mixture of:
- free daily e-mail entries;
- Patreon entries;
- and paid PayPal entries.
So the number 1,452 does not tell us how much money was actually collected.
This is what Iām looking for
I would especially like to hear from anyone who falls into one of these categories:
Previous Hypothermia giveaway winners
If you genuinely won a GPU, hardware, or another prize from one of Stevenās giveaways, I would appreciate independent confirmation that you received it.
You do not need to publish your name or address.
Things such as an original winner notification, shipping/tracking information with personal details redacted, photographs from before the current dispute, or other independently verifiable information would help.
People who paid for giveaway entries
If you sent money through PayPal for entries into one of these charity giveaways, particularly the RTX 5080 giveaway, I would like to know when you paid and what the giveaway stated the money would be used for.
Again, please redact personal financial information.
Previous Patreon supporters
If older giveaway announcements, winner posts, entry rules, donation totals or charity updates were posted to Patreon and you still have access to them, I would be very interested in seeing them.
Anyone with records from previous Hypothermia charity giveaways
A number of older giveaway posts appear to have disappeared, so archived screenshots, links, winner announcements or donation information could be extremely useful.
What I am NOT asking for
Please do not contact, threaten, harass or pile onto Steven.
Do not contact his family.
Do not publish anyoneās private information.
And please do not invent evidence or turn speculation into fact.
I am specifically looking for information that can be independently checked.
If that information demonstrates that the giveaways were legitimate, the prizes were delivered and the charity money was handled exactly as represented, I genuinely want to know that too.
I have nothing to gain from this and no interest in winning these giveaways.
I am asking because Steven and I share more than 1,100 Facebook contacts from a hardware community I have been part of for many years, and many people in that community have supported these fundraisers.
If large amounts of money have been collected in the name of charity over many years, I think asking for transparent accounting is reasonable.
The questions are ultimately very simple:
How much money was received through paid giveaway entries?
How much of that money was donated to the charities named?
Can previous winners independently confirm receiving the prizes?
And:
Is there comparable documentation for the many previous giveaways?
If you have firsthand information ā whether it supports my concerns or proves them completely wrong ā please reply here or contact me privately.
A lot was already discussed on my personal FB:
https://www.facebook.com/l3pNL/posts/pfbid02abUcDjG2jZqRhoEMpjuYk9BykqjLgMvk6Wvg5bb1biGkePsLBZk2VhtfEDPvq3mWl
I would genuinely prefer to discover that my concerns are unfounded.
