Posted on 08/26/2018 4:25:19 PM PDT by NohSpinZone
Johnny Bobbitt, famously rescued from the streets of Philadelphia last October after word of his kindness to a stranger went viral and led to a $400,000 GoFundMe campaign, is once again homeless, drug-addicted — and panhandling for money.
The couple who started the fund-raiser say that in helping Bobbitt, they've spent or given him more than half of the money donated by thousands of people around the world and they are withholding the roughly $200,000 balance. Bobbitt says he fears that the couple, Kate McClure and her boyfriend, Mark D'Amico, squandered much of the money. He worries there may be little, or nothing, left.
(Excerpt) Read more at 2.philly.com ...
“She was a motorist on Interstate 95 – a major highway – in Philadelphia who found herself stuck on an off-ramp, scared and out of gas.
He was a homeless veteran who told her to lock her doors, then spent his last $20 (£15) on that day in October to bring her a canister of fuel.”
Yes, that’s the one. Thanks.
The couple can run another GoFundMe campaign for their legal expenses.
Too funny!Whatever you think of the homeless guy, they took money under false pretenses and enriched their own lifestyles with it....back home we call stealing that much “grand larceny”, not “doing the right thing”....
If the fundraisers kept any of the money, or used it for “expenses”, the IRS will want to talk to them about it.
That is taxable income.
.
If there is evidence, they will get whatever is coming to them!
Plead the Fifth!
Interesting. Pleading the Fifth sounds awfully fishy for what should be a simple case - either they used the money appropriately or they didn’t. I realize that it’s their Constitutional right but it sounds really, really strange.
Well, it is possible that the couple screwed up big time. It is also possible that by hiding the funds they are hoping the ambulance chaser who is hoping to get at least half the remaining money for himself... will just go away. When lawyers get involved things usually go from bad to worse. And the truth will probably never be known. It is sad to see a story like this one devolve into a tale of greed and human failings.
On this one I think this young couple saw all that money and could not help themselves. They are in big trouble with search warrants and seizures already executed against them.
Now, to your original point, giving the homeless guy all that money would have led to one gigantic meth-fest.
This was a lose/lose/lose proposition - the last lose is all the people who donated to what they thought was a feel-good cause.
Reading some more stories... it is starting to look like what happens whenever you give liberals money to “help” others. Clinton Foundation... case in point.
Exactly. Or giving government money to “help others” for that matter.
I don’t know about the legal issues involved, but clearly if they raised this money through GoFundMe under the pretenses that it would be used to help this homeless guy, it was IMO morally wrong for them to spend a cent of it on themselves, beyond any expenses they may have occurred in trying to help this guy. If they decided handing this dude any more money was a bad idea, they should have left it in the bank until they had decided how to proceed - setting up a trust, donating it to charities, or whatever. But to my mind, clearly spending money donated for another purpose on yourself is immoral.
I have on a few occasions donated to an open-ended GoFundMe, based on my impressions of the person asking. For example for help with medical and other costs involving an accident, or for help with their dogs. These were all people I had known for some time through various web forums. I didn’t inquire or care what exactly they did with the money, because I gave it freely for them to spend as they needed. I would hope that if they raised a lot more than they needed that they would have paid it forward, but that’s up to them. But they weren’t raising it specifically for the stated purpose of giving it to someone else.
I don’t know about the legalities. Fraud statutes seem to generally be pretty broad, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they could be prosecuted under them.
Good Samaritan homeless veteran will get all of the $400,000 in donations still owed to him, GoFundMe says
because they do not want a bad image. They make money on fees.
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