A city icon who became the face of a heartbroken Melbourne in the days following the Bourke Street massacre hasn’t passed on all the money he raised via his unregistered charity.
Chris Cincotta’s face was splashed across the land in newspapers and television reports as a beacon for everything good about Melbourne after the atrocity in January 2017.
Six people were killed in the attack, including three-month-old baby Zachary Bryant, who was thrown 60 metres from his pram, and 10-year-old girl Thalia Hakin.
Chris Cincotta (right) raised money to help the victims of the Bourke Street massacre, but not all of it has been passed on
Chris Cincotta had closed up shop when James Gargasoulas drove down Swanston onto Bourke Street where he killed six people, including a baby. Mr Cincotta has admitted he still has some of the cash donated to a fund to help victims
James Gargasoulas’ killed six people with his car on Bourke Street. He was jailed for life
In February, James Gargasoulas was jailed for life with a non-parole period of 46 years in jail for the crime, which was described as one of Australia’s ‘worst examples of mass murder’.
Mr Cincotta, who operates a hugely successful Facebook site promoting Melbourne and conducts guided tours, was among the first to publicly back the victims.
The idea saw street musicians play for 12 hours straight, with all of the proceeds to be donated to the Bourke Street Fund.
The fund, which closed in June 2017, went onto raise $1.5 million by well meaning Australians.
Under the name Enruoblem, which is Melbourne spelled backwards, Mr Cincotta put together a double CD featuring Melbourne buskers, which became a huge hit.
So successful was the disc that the Australian Recording Industry Association claimed it would have climbed to seven on the charts had it been registered with it.
But as time went on, allegations arose that Mr Cincotta had failed to donate all of the money to the Bourke Street fund, prompting questions from concerned contributors.
Jess Mudie, 22 (pictured), was one of the women hit during the rampage
Mr Cincotta told The Age at the time of the attack that every cent of the proceeds from the CD sales would be donated to the Bourke Street fund.
‘We asked ourselves what we could do with our little Bourke Street community to try and help the victims of the families and it seemed pretty obvious in the end,’ he said.
‘I am going to try and sell a thousand of them, I think we could sell more. People have already told me they want to get it as their way of showing their support.’
Mr Cincotta stressed that all money received would be donated to the fund.
‘No one’s getting paid. No one is taking any kind of cut. Every cent donated will be going towards the family victims fund,’ he said.
Chris Cincotta rates himself as a photographer. He posts his photos on Instagram and Facebook and is now selling books of his work
More than $39,000 was raised by hard working Aussies to help fund Chris Cincotta’s charity Enruoblem. But the charity has never been registered and it remains unclear what, if anything, it contributes
Chris Cincotta was selling watches under the Enruoblem charity name. He claims some of the money from the charity goes on ‘random acts of kindness’
‘For me, Bourke Street means music, it means busking, and to hear it fall silent was a definite sign that something wasn’t right.
‘We are just hoping everyone will come in and pay their respects. This is our way of supporting the families in the only way we really know how.’
In February that year, Mr Cincotta took to his Facebook page Humans in Melbourne to declare $28,163 had been raised.
‘Hate may have shredded our hearts, but love is helping put them back together,’ he posted.
Bourke Street mass murderer James Gargasoulas, 29, is pictured at the Supreme Court in Melbourne last year
Zachary Matthew Bryant (pictured with his mother Nawwar) was left brain dead after the pram he and his sister Zara were in was struck by James Gargasoulas’ stolen car in 2017
But almost three years on from the attack, Daily Mail Australia learned not all of that money had gone into the Bourke Street fund.
Searches of the Australian Charities and Not-For-Profit register and Victorian Consumer Affairs also reveal no existence of the charity Enruoblem.
Hard working Australians contributed $39,708 to Mr Cincotta to establish the charity, which he claimed would be used mostly towards charities and organisations in Melbourne ‘doing good for the city’.
He further pledged to help the arts such as photography, street art and music and spend 20 per cent on ‘random acts of kindness’.
Chris Cincotta took to social media to smile and show-off a photo of his dying father. ‘I can’t think of a more beautiful photo than this,’ he stated
When contacted on Thursday afternoon, Mr Cincotta told Daily Mail Australia he raised the cash through Enruoblem and donated ‘every cent from the day’ into the Bourke Street fund.
‘The money that was raised through the website, because the CD continued to sell, I naively went: ‘I’ll put the money in the fund when it’s ready”. And by the time it came that I was to put the money in the fund it was closed,’ he said.
Mr Cincotta claimed he planned to put the money into another fund ‘along the same lines’.
‘So literally the money has been sitting in an Enruoblem account ever since and it hasn’t been used and it hasn’t been touched at all,’ he said.
Thalia Hakin (pictured) was only 10 years old when she was killed during the Bourke Street rampage
Mr Cincotta claimed all that remains of the cash he held onto was ‘about $4000’ after the costs of the CDs and postage.
He hit his Humans in Melbourne Facebook page on Thursday night after being contacted by Daily Mail Australia.
‘The next day, all the money raised on the streets was donated directly to the Bourke Street Fund – an incredible $20,497! The money from the CDs sold online entered the EnruobleM account, ready to be transferred to the fund,’ he wrote.
‘I decided not to transfer the remainder until I knew the total amount raised from online supporters.’
Mr Cincotta told Daily Mail Australia others had their concerns over the money too.
‘This was brought up with me previously … because the city asked me and we said “no, no, no this is what happened and I had to explain this to them then.” I promise you that there is nothing in this and I have not misappropriated the funds at all.’
Mr Cincotta said he was in the process of registering Enruoblem, which has been operating for three years, and that it was ‘with his lawyers’.
‘To be honest, my dad passed away two weeks ago and I’ve been dealing with his illness for the last couple of years and it’s just one of those things: it’s there and I know it’s there and it’s just sitting there and I know that it’s there and I know that if someone ever needed it really badly – in terms of someone in Melbourne – I know it’s there to be used,’ he said.
‘I promise you this … I am 100 per cent (and) just want to do good things for Melbourne. And I can show you the account that no money ever comes out of it – the only money that comes out of it would be for the website I run for it.’
The only website that appears to exist for the unregistered charity is a Facebook page that hasn’t been touched since 2016.
Mr Cincotta said the charity had funded ‘book bags’ for a charity named MET and they got ‘a guy a car’ who was living rough.
‘That’s pretty much what we’ve done,’ he said.
Mr Cincotta denied the charity had raised almost $40,000, despite the figure still being posted online on a funding site.
Chris Cincotta (right) took to Facebook on Thursday night to state his case
In his Facebook post on Thursday night, Mr Cincotta told his followers he had lawyers draw up papers to incorporate Enruoblem and register it as a charity so that ‘we can do as much good in Melbourne and Victoria as possible’.
He then called on followers to ask how he should spend the remaining funds from the Bourke Street fundraising initiative.
His followers were gushing in their praise, urging him ‘not to be too hard on himself’.
Mr Cincotta told Daily Mail Australia he always had honest intentions and it is not suggested otherwise.
‘It’s just sitting there. It’s never been touched and we have the complete intention of always going to pay a charity that is similar to the Bourke Street fund – maybe something to do with people recovering from a terrorist act or something like that.’
Mr Cincotta said he could ‘100 per cent’ produce a receipt to Daily Mail Australia for the Bourke Street Fund contribution.
‘Not a worry at all,’ he said.
Yosuke Kanno, 25 (pictured), was the first victim of the terrifying attack as the Japanese student was killed instantly outside the Royal Arcade
‘I promise I was doing it with the best intentions you could ever have and nothing has ever been misappropriated at all – I swear to you man … I don’t know who would say that because we’ve had to explain ourselves once before.’
Mr Cincotta said registering Enruoblem had been on his mind.
‘If anyone was going to look into it properly they’ll see that there has never been any misappropriation of the funds or anything like that and I understand that I’ve got to register it,’ he said.
Mr Cincotta is also now promoting his photography skills in a book and calendar showcasing Melbourne.
His popularity rose on the back a small booth he opened in the heart of Melbourne in 2014, from where he sold his photos.
While chatting to locals, he came with an idea to create a Facebook page copying the world-famous Humans of New York page.
The Humans in Melbourne page has gone on to have more than 220,000 ‘likes’ on Facebook while his Instagram account melbourneiloveyou has close to 79,000.
Bhavita Patel, 33, died in hospital, ten days after a car mowed down dozens of pedestrians on Bourke Street