Everyday Heroes Like You (EHLY) or its overseas projects; a PolitiFact review
Executive summary
PolitiFact’s review of claims tying Everyday Heroes Like You (EHLY) and its Romanian projects to child trafficking concluded those accusations are baseless, citing reviews of Romanian media and court records that found only positive mentions of the charities’ work [1]. Independent reporting documents EHLY’s Romania-focused “Romanian Angels” activities and fundraising materials, while public records searches show gaps in accessible U.S. nonprofit filings that leave some administrative questions unresolved [2] [3] [4].
1. What PolitiFact examined and what it concluded
PolitiFact reported that social media claims asserting EHLY—or Erika Kirk/Frantzve’s related ministries—were accused of trafficking children or banned from Romania were false, relying on Lead Stories’ Romanian staff review of media reports and court records which found only favorable references to Romanian Angels and Everyday Heroes Like You [1]. That conclusion aligns with multiple fact-checks that found no evidence tying the organizations to trafficking, and instead documented donation activity and charity events in Romania during the early 2010s [5] [2].
2. Documentary evidence for EHLY’s Romania work
Contemporaneous materials support that EHLY ran Romania-directed projects: archival fliers invited supporters to “adopt” an orphan by buying wish-list gifts for Antonio Placement Center in Constanța, and the organization’s website and social posts from 2012–2014 document travel and donations to a local hospital and orphanage [2] [5]. Local profiles and interviews with founder Erika Frantzve describe the Romanian Angels project and a stated partnership with U.S. Marines to sponsor an orphanage, showing a public-facing outreach and sponsorship narrative [6] [3].
3. What public records show — and what they don’t
Major nonprofit databases present a mixed picture: ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer shows no Form 990 data for Everyday Heroes Like You Inc., and Charity Navigator points users to IRS searches for filings without displaying 990s directly—indicating limited accessible financial disclosure via those platforms [4] [7]. Independent observers have pointed to at least one year in which the group’s filings appear to have been skipped, a lapse that reporters say warrants further inquiry because U.S. nonprofits must file even in low- or no-revenue years, but that gap is not proof of wrongdoing [8].
4. How misinformation spread and why fact-checking landed where it did
The viral claim conflating broad historical trafficking scandals in Romania with EHLY’s later volunteer and sponsorship activities appears to have originated on social platforms and was amplified without documentary linkage; fact-checkers traced the rumor to misleading social posts and found no Romanian prosecutorial records tying EHLY or its projects to trafficking [1] [2]. Fact-check organizations like PolitiFact and Lead Stories relied on local reporting and court-record searches to rebut the explosive claim, a method consistent with standard verification practice but also one that depends on the availability and searchability of foreign records [1] [5].
5. Unanswered questions and reasonable next steps
Reporting establishes EHLY ran Romanian gift- and sponsorship-style projects and that available Romanian sources show positive references to that work, while U.S. nonprofit databases lack easily accessible 990 filings for EHLY—creating an administrative transparency gap that investigative follow-up could close by requesting IRS filings, interviewing Romanian agencies such as DIICOT for any records, and obtaining donor and shipping documentation for the Romania projects [2] [8] [4]. PolitiFact’s conclusion that trafficking claims are false fits the documented evidence; it does not, however, resolve all administrative or transparency questions about EHLY’s U.S. filings or internal records, which remain beyond the scope of the referenced reviews [1] [8].