{"id":18500,"date":"2018-11-16T10:46:12","date_gmt":"2018-11-16T16:46:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/?p=18500"},"modified":"2018-11-16T10:52:20","modified_gmt":"2018-11-16T16:52:20","slug":"gofundme-fraud-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/gofundme-fraud-again\/","title":{"rendered":"GoFundMe Fraud (Again)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/gofraudme.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"lazyload alignright size-full wp-image-18501\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns%3D%27http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%27%20width%3D%27225%27%20height%3D%2750%27%20viewBox%3D%270%200%20225%2050%27%3E%3Crect%20width%3D%27225%27%20height%3D%2750%27%20fill-opacity%3D%220%22%2F%3E%3C%2Fsvg%3E\" data-orig-src=\"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/gofraudme.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"50\" \/><\/a>Things aren&#8217;t always as they seem. I&#8217;m often suspicious. It&#8217;s a hazard of being a fraud investigator. But sometimes we&#8217;re not even suspicious of the right things.<\/p>\n<p>Take the situation involving the homeless man (Johnny Bobbit Jr.) who allegedly gave his last $20 to Kate McClure when she became stranded on a roadside with no gas in her car. She and her boyfriend Mark D&#8217;Amico started a GoFundMe that ultimately raised over $400,000.<\/p>\n<p>And now <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/11\/15\/nyregion\/homeless-man-couple-gofundme-scam.html\">Bobbit, McClure, and D&#8217;Amico are being charged with fraud<\/a> because the whole thing was apparently made up. Police went over more than 60,000 text messages sent by McClure and D&#8217;Amico, and this one from McClure to a friend of hers has the punch line:<!--more--><\/p>\n<p><em>OK, so wait, the gas part is completely made up but the guy isn\u2019t. I had to make something up so people will feel bad.<\/em><\/p>\n<div class=\"css-u5vfum StoryBodyCompanionColumn\">\n<div class=\"css-4w7y5l\">\n<p class=\"css-1ebnwsw e2kc3sl0\">After GoFundMe took their cut, there was about $367,000 left, and all of it was spent.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"css-1ebnwsw e2kc3sl0\">There are a few lessons here:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>GoFundMe doesn&#8217;t care if campaigns are fraudulent or not. They make a lot of money from the campaigns and aren&#8217;t inclined to shut them down. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gofraudme.com\">Read more about this at GoFraudMe.com<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Be suspicious of fundraising campaigns, especially when you don&#8217;t know the people involved. How do you know that the cause is legitimate? How do you know the funds will be spent as claimed? Who is safeguarding the funds?<\/li>\n<li>When in doubt, donate your money to legitimate charities with missions that you support.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<aside class=\"css-1m2ozyi\"><\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"css-u5vfum StoryBodyCompanionColumn\">\n<div class=\"css-4w7y5l\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Things aren&#8217;t always as they seem. I&#8217;m often suspicious. It&#8217;s a hazard of being a fraud investigator. But sometimes we&#8217;re not even suspicious of the right things. Take the situation involving the homeless man (Johnny Bobbit Jr.) who allegedly gave [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[824],"tags":[2871,2869],"class_list":["post-18500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-consumer-protection","tag-gofraudme","tag-gofundme"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Z0e-4Oo","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18500\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}