Federal officials are in the process of reaching a settlement with a Tennessee family who allegedly operated several fraudulent charities and used the funds to live large. The Associated Press reports that the family would “buy themselves cars, gym memberships and take luxury cruise vacations, pay for college tuition and employ family members with six-figure salaries.”

Chinese billionaire Chen Guangbiao garnered tons of publicity for his bizarre stunt luncheon at which he failed to give a promised $300 each to hundreds of homeless New Yorkers. But the real villain was not Chen—it was a charity that serves the homeless.

Adorable Hollywood couple Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield have discovered the best possible way to deal with the paparazzi that have become a constant presence in their lives: Use them to promote charitable organizations.

News has emerged that Lady Gaga's Born This Way Foundation could be a mere vanity project. Have you ever? Can you even? (No, you can't. You either already tweeted or are just about to tweet, "I can't with this," about this.) We all can collectively gasp while secretly saying, "Yaaaaaas," in our heads regarding Gaga's latest endeavor in hot messery.

Operation Smile is an international charity group that helps children with cleft palates around the world. It's a worthy cause. So it's too bad the group's job interview process is rather outrageous.

The Women in the World Foundation, former Daily Beast editor Tina Brown’s very own charity, is nominally devoted to “driving solutions that advance women and girls.” According to its sole IRS filing, the New York Post points out, Women in the World spent the plurality of funds raised in 2011, totaling more than a million dollars, on throwing lavish gatherings for its director and her connected friends. That’s one kind of solution!

Alarming news for music lovers: the New York City Opera, which has performed in the city for generations, will have to cancel the rest of its season and all of next year's season if it doesn't raise $20 million soon. A tragedy, for the arts. Still, no one should give the opera $20 million.

Mitch Winehouse, the father of late singer Amy, is returning donations that fans made to the Amy Winehouse Foundation. Why? Apparently because someone else is using the domain name he wanted.

Move over, Madonna: Yet another pop megalomaniac's educational charity has met a premature end, as the Kanye West Foundation is no more. But why that is, and where its millions of dollars in corporate donations have gone, remains a mystery.

All Madonna wanted was her own private school for impoverished African girls, just like Oprah has (minus the molesty stuff). What she got is a PR nightmare. Her mismanaged charitable foundation, Raising Malawi, is on the verge of collapse, and $3.8 million designated for the school have all but vanished into thin air.

Wyclef's campaign for the presidency of Haiti has brought predictable scrutiny on his time at the head of Yele Haiti—the badly mismanaged charity whose problems have been cataloged here before. But there's more—he rented a lion! For charity?

Wyclef Jean announced this morning that he's resigning from Yele Haiti, his scandal-plagued charity, to focus on his bid for Haiti's presidency, which he'll formally announce on Larry King's show tonight.

Mike Bloomberg—not only our selfless, dollar-a-year salary mayor, but a massive philanthropist, too. What's not to like? Well, how about the fact that his charitable foundation doesn't want to pay taxes here, in the United States of America?

Goldman Sachs is hoping to redeem its damaged reputation by giving away bundles of cash to charity. What happens when one of the world's most profitable companies announces that the checkbook is open and the pen is in hand? Non-profit groups come calling, obviously.

Would you pay $25,000 to sit in the front row at next month's Victoria's Secret Fashion Show? Because you could if you wanted to. And it's entirely possible the stars could align and and a little stray supermodel body glitter could fly off the runway and land in your lap, and that alone would be well worth $25K, wouldn't it? Thought so! [ALZ.org]

Ever wish you could rest your rear end in a seat where the President and First Lady once sat? Now you can! The owners of the Belasco Theatre are auctioning off the seats that the Obamas sat in when they attended a performance of "Joe Turner's Come and Gone" during their "date night" in NYC last spring. [NYP]

Just to make sure everyone is extremely clear on who did what here: the World Wildlife Fund is not just an innocent victim of a bad rogue ad agency in this whole 9/11 ad fiasco.

The junior committees at major cultural institutions around town are designed for younger—or youngish—people, right? Well, it seems some old-timers have been trying to slip by at the Museum of Modern Art, according to the WSJ's Speakeasy blog, and the museum isn't taking it anymore:

Gen Art is ostensibly a nonprofit organization dedicated to "showcasing" designers, filmmakers, and artists by throwing hipster parties and film festivals. Not quite Amnesty International, but whatever. But one pissed-off tipster tells us Gen Art is mismanaged, and deserves death.

Artwalk NY's Junior Committee held its summer benefit on Saturday night in support of Coalition For the Homeless. Hosted by Bettina Prentice at her home in Sagaponack, attendees at the event included Minnie Mortimer and Stephen Gaghan, Michael Musto, Liam McMullan, Dalia Oberlander, Alan Rish, Kipton Cronkite, and Lisa Salzer—each of whom chipped in $25 at the door to benefit the organization. (The $25 allows the Coalition to feed 12 homeless New Yorkers people for a day.) Cityfile correspondent Douglas Marshall caught up with writer and dapper man-about-town Peter Davis to ask him about two very unlikely things: homelessness and his brother and sister-in law, Topper and Tinsley Mortimer.