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By Michael Sol Warren | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
The saga of a South Jersey couple raising $ 400,000 for a homeless veteran hit the headlines. In recent weeks, the couple has been under surveillance, accused by the veteran of not having received the money.
Money-collecting platforms on the Internet have become popular over the last decade. Fundraising efforts have sometimes been revealed as scams with arrested and convicted perpetrators.
What's happening in South Jersey?
In case you have missed the incident that has erupted in recent days, here is the situation that has placed crowdfunding in the public eye.
On the last day of Thanksgiving, Katelyn McClure and Mark D'Amico, a couple from Burlington County, launched the online fundraiser for Johnny Bobbitt, a homeless veteran, after running out of gas in Philadelphia last year.
Stimulated by the end of the year festivities, donations of $ 400,000 were spent on the campaign.
But Bobbitt now says that he has not received any money. The couple said they did not give the full amount to Bobbitt immediately because he had battled drug addiction and feared he would irresponsibly defeat it.
Bobbitt is now suing McClure and D & # 39; Amico, and GoFundMe has promised to make sure it is complete. The stakes increased on Thursday morning when the police raided the couple's house in Florence.
Nevada Mom Breaches Death of Her Son, Gets Her Prison
Victoria Morrison of Carson City, Nevada, simulated the late-stage illness of her son Blake and launched a GoFundMe campaign to raise funds for the boys' bucket list.
Morrison raised $ 2,000 in the campaign, which lasted more than a month. Morrison was arrested in April 2017 and accused of obtaining money by false pretenses, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Morrison pleaded guilty in May. According to KTVN, she faces a minimum of five years and up to 12 and a half years in prison.
Prison time for stealing funds from the fallen agent
When Barry Sutton, a civilian contractor and former police officer, was killed by a car bomb in Afghanistan, the city of Rome, Georgia, was in mourning. A GoFundMe campaign was quickly launched in Sutton's honor, hosted by a family friend, Brandy Holder, to raise funds for a commemorative duck hunt for the daughters of deceased officers.
This hunt never took place.
Holder has removed nearly $ 5,000 from the GoFundMe campaign, according to the Washington Post. Sutton's family only saw $ 400 before Holder kept returning their calls.
Holder pled guilty to robbery by conversion and was sentenced to two years in prison and eight months probation in October 2016, according to the Rome News-Tribune.
