Do you remember the homeless bum who gave a stranded lady his last $20 to help her buy gas?
She and her boyfriend started a GoFundMe account for the guy. It raised over $400,000.
Turns out it was all a lie. The three got together, made up the story and posted it on GoFundMe.
It came apart when they started bickering over the money. They face 5-10 years for fraud.
Sadly typical of so many of these types of things.
I never donate, especially not to the ones I see in gas station. For instance I recall once seeing donation cans to a family who “lost everything” in a fire and had nothing left for their children who would now have to sleep in the car. I actually sorta knew the family and knew that the dad who lost his house was the non custodial parent who rarely even took his kids during visitation. But he played up the “children without a home angle” to get money. You just never know how much of the sob stories are actually true.
I give sometime to that kind of thing, but I know I shouldn’t. More often than not it’s a con job.
When I was a kid my uncle was killed in the war. An old lady down the street knocked doors and took donations for flowers. She kept the money. I’ve never forgotten that and should have learned from it.
Something related happened right in my neighborhood only a couple of weeks ago.
There is/was a homeless couple who have three wheeled bicycles that they ride to a couple of shopping centers and hang out most of the day “panhandling”. I put quotes around panhandling because I’ve never seen them actually ask anybody for money, but I have many times seen someone pull their car over in the parking lot and give them money. They are extremely skinny, practically boney, like they don’t get enough to eat, and the wife has no teeth. They never comb their hair etc., wear clothes typical of people who sleep under a bridge, the whole deal.
A couple of weeks ago they got arrested and their pictures were in the paper. They had on their persons 150 bags of “spice” and sixty five thousand dollars in cash. Not only that, they were arrested in their home, which they own.
They weren’t ■■■■■■■ panhandling, they were dealing! I want my money back that I gave them more than once out of the goodness of my heart. Also, I’d like to slap the ■■■■ out of the husband.
95% or more of the time you see a panhandler on the corner they are doing it for drugs or alcohol. Some may legitimately be homeless but many are not. Our local news did a story about panhandlers and interviewed many. One of the sob stories was later busted in the facebook comments as a lot of people knew him and knew he wasn’t actually homeless, he lived in his parents basement, and he refused to work but was willing to panhandle for alcohol money. He sobbed and sobbed in his interview about being homeless and how he couldn’t find a job. In reality he had a job as a truck driver but couldn’t stay sober and got caught driving the company truck while drunk so he was fired. So yeah no one would hire him because he was continuing to drink.
Go Fund Me should get a name change to Feed My Sorry Ass. I never log onto that site.
This thread reminds me of a letter to Ann Landers. A mayor in a small California town got sick of seeing a billboard that read like this:
“Mr. and Mrs. X are struggling to pay their bills. Mr. X hurt his back & hasn’t been able to work. Mrs. X works a minimum wage job. They have 7 kids.”
“I submit to you, Miss Landers, the problem with Mr. X isn’t with his back, but with his front. I will cut him a check for $,__ towards the payment of a vasectomy.”
Ann Landers asked was he sure he wanted his letter printed. “Yes. That’s why I wrote it.”
But it may jeopardize your chance for re-election. “That’s OK, I’m not running anyway.”
A scam on feedmysorryass, I mean gofundme, doesn’t surprise me at all.
“…they weren’t panhandling they were dealing.”
When my husband has been panhandled in the past, he has asked the panhandler can they guarantee it won’t go towards alcohol or drugs.
To their credit, they have admitted they can’t, not getting cash for their habit or an enabler in my husband.
That’s surprising to me, I would’ve thought they’d lie about it. This couple is so scrawny looking I just assumed they rarely got enough to eat.
65 thousand in cash, OY!
