A viral fundraising campaign that collected hundreds of thousands of pounds for a homeless military veteran was an elaborate scam planned by the supposed good Samaritan and a New Jersey couple, US federal prosecutors revealed.
More than 14,000 donors gave around $400,000 to the GoFundMe campaign after reading an emotional story about Johnny Bobbitt Jr, a homeless veteran who supposedly spent his last $20 to buy petrol for a stranded driver on a dark highway in Philadelphia. An investigation led by the US Attorney's Office for the District of New Jersey and local prosecutors found that the three people had made up the entire story to take advantage of public generosity.
All three people involved later faced state and federal criminal charges for their roles in the scheme.
Viral story built on falsehoods
The campaign, called "Paying It Forward", was launched in November 2017 by Katelyn McClure, then 28, and her boyfriend at the time, Mark D'Amico. According to court documents filed by the US Attorney's Office for the District of New Jersey, McClure and D'Amico posted a story claiming that McClure was driving home on Interstate 95 when her car ran out of fuel.
The couple said Bobbitt saw her stranded by the roadside, walked to a nearby petrol station, and used his last cash to buy a can of petrol so she could get home safely.
The GoFundMe page initially aimed to raise $10,000 to cover Bobbitt's housing and living costs. The story quickly attracted attention from national news outlets and social media users. Within three weeks, the campaign had raised $402,000. Burlington County Prosecutor Scott Coffina revealed at a press briefing that the story had been completely made up.
McClure had never run out of petrol on the highway, and Bobbitt had never spent his last $20 to help her. Court records show that less than an hour after the campaign went live, McClure sent a text message to a friend admitting that the story was false. "The gas story was completely made up," McClure wrote in a text message quoted by Prosecutor Scott Coffina. "I had to make up something to make people feel bad." In another message, McClure told her acquaintance to "shh about the made up stuff."
Money diverted to luxury purchases
The US Department of Justice confirmed that D'Amico and McClure transferred the donated money from GoFundMe into bank accounts they personally controlled. Within three months of receiving the money, the couple had spent most of the donations on luxury items and personal expenses. Investigators from the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation division and the FBI found that the money had paid for a BMW car, designer handbags, clothes, expensive holidays, and large gambling losses run up by D'Amico at casinos in Las Vegas and Philadelphia.
In mid-November 2017, when the campaign had raised around $1,500, D'Amico and McClure told Bobbitt about the page and their plan. In December that year, the couple opened a bank account for Bobbitt and deposited $25,000 of the money raised through the scam. The arrangement began to fall apart in mid-2018, when Bobbitt hired a lawyer and sued the couple. He accused them of keeping his fair share of the donations. The civil lawsuit led law enforcement agencies, including the Burlington County Prosecutor's Office and Florence Township Police Department, to begin a full criminal investigation into all three people.
Federal convictions and full refunds
The criminal investigation eventually led to federal charges of wire fraud and money laundering against the three people involved. During court proceedings before US District Judge Jerome B Simandle in federal court in Camden, McClure pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Bobbitt pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering. D'Amico was later convicted for his central role in planning the scam.
After the fraud came to light, crowdfunding platform GoFundMe stepped in to refund everyone who had donated to the campaign. GoFundMe spokesperson Bobby Whithorne confirmed to CBS News that the company used its own money to provide full refunds to all 14,000 donors, including processing and administrative fees. "All donors who contributed to this campaign have been fully refunded," Whithorne said in an official statement released by GoFundMe. "GoFundMe will always protect donors and ensure that funds raised on our platform reach the intended beneficiaries." The platform also said fraudulent campaigns make up a tiny fraction of one percent of all fundraisers hosted on the site. It added that it works directly with law enforcement agencies to prosecute people who try to misuse its service.