Less than 48 hours after the deadly tragedy of the Lapu-Lapu Day Festival on Saturday night, a GOFUNDME fund collection for a woman named “Reyna Dela Peña” began to circulate.
The campaign described Dela as a “loving mother and a great friend who worked tirelessly to support her two children alone” and said he had died while walking towards a food truck at the Filipino street festival in Vancouver last weekend, where a SUV taken to the crowd killed 11 people and injured more dozen.
The fundraising organizer claimed to be a “dear friend” of Dela Peña and requested financial contributions to return her body to the family in the Philippines and support her surviving children.
The money came, winning $ 57,680 in donations of more than 1,700 people on Tuesday morning.
However, that same morning, the collection of funds stopped, with a message from Gofundme saying that the organizer had been contacted and that “donations will resume once the problem is solved.” The next day, the campaign was gone.
In a statement to CBC News on Wednesday, a Gofundme spokesman confirmed that the campaign had been eliminated from its platform, and that the company had banned the organizer of any future fundraising, but did not answer the questions about why, exactly, the collection of funds was eliminated.
“At no time the organizer had access to the funds,” the company said, adding that all donations to that campaign were reimbursed.
“Gofundme has zero tolerance for the misuse of our platform and takes quick measures against those who seek to take advantage of the generosity of our community.”
The company urged people to donate to the victims of the tragedy to visit Its centralized fund collectors center Verified by its “trusted and security team.”
On Thursday afternoon, a spokesman for the Vancouver Police Department (VPD) said that four of the victims who survived the attack were in critical condition and two others were in serious condition.
Kai-Ji Adam Lo, 30, has since been since then accused of eight positions of second degree murder In relation to the clash. In a statement on Sunday, the VPD said more positions are anticipated.
The story of the campaign ‘No are added’
Raquel Narraway was compiling a list of fund collectors for the victims of the tragedy when he felt something in the Gofundme for Reyna Dela Peña “do not join.”
“I don’t blame people who donated immediately, because the story was really heartbreaking, right?” Said Narraway, a Root -headquarters agent with headquarters in Chilliwack, BC, who said he wanted to use his social media platform to attract attention to fundraising efforts.
But when he could not find any information about Dela Peña or the organizers of the campaign, Narraway became skeptical, sharing her concerns in social networks with the hope that someone will present with information that can give credibility to the campaign.
“I still wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt,” he said.
When no one among the 21,000 Facebook followers from Narraway recognized Dela Peña, her suspicions grew and reported the campaign to Gofundme and the Police.
She says that people who take advantage of the tragedy to cheat others make her angry. “But at the same time, we know there are evil people out there.”
Soon, a Filipina woman who lives in Nevada commented on Narraway’s Facebook publication to say that her photos were used in fundraising without her knowledge, and said she had also reported the campaign.
CBC News has not been able to independently verify the history of the woman in Nevada, but the public images in their profile seem to show the same woman seen in the photos used in the Gofundme.
After CBC News told Narraway that Gofundme would reimburse the donations made to the campaign, he felt relieved to hear that the scammers had not been able to withdraw the funds.
“Basically he is stealing people, right? So I couldn’t bear the idea of that.”
CAUTION PROPERTY presides over the Dona
Speaking at a press conference on Wednesday afternoon, const. Tania Visintin said that while the VPD has not received any report of fraudulent fundraising accounts, “that does not mean that these accounts do not exist.”
“We are only asking people to be aware, keep in mind that fraud could happen,” he said.
“If someone feels that they are looking at a page and this page could be fraudulent, we ask that they communicate directly with the organizers of Gofundme … and can confirm whether the account is legitimate or not.”
Constant Tania Visintin, of the Vancouver Police Department, says that there could be accounts for collection of deceptive funds and that the public should be “conscious” and “conscious” of potential fraud. She says that people must communicate directly with Gofundme to confirm whether a campaign is legitimate or not.
He pointed out that the police cannot confirm the legitimacy of certain Gofundme pages due to the privacy concerns of the victims, the same reasoning that the VPD gave to Narraway when he called to inform his suspicions on the page.
Gofundme says that it has the “most solid donor protection processes of any platform of our species” and that “it will always work with the application of the law when our platform is badly used.”
