What kind of scam are you running here?

I don’t want to name names, but there’s a guy who runs a small collector/flea market-style convention who has been known to say some rather unkind things about other cons in his area. Well, apparently his house got robbed.

He set up a GoFundMe where he attempts to explain what happened. On the page, he says his house was robbed “two days in a row by a homeless drug addict.”  He says “the sherrifs”[sic] caught the guy on a third attempt on the third day.

He says the guy “took everything” including irreplaceable family heirlooms and “everything of value”. He says he was not insured and the police were unable to recover his property.

The GoFundMe is set for a goal of $20,000. He promises that “every cent” will be used for his event and that if he goes over the goal, he will “go out of my way” to get an “extra special guest”.

He says, “I can do without the property I lost” which begs the question of what this GoFundMe campaign is really for. He started his plea by saying, “I just do not have the funds to be able to do it on my own.” So was he keeping stacks of cash at home? He never said money was stolen and can apparently do without property, so I’m unclear as to how his property being stolen affects his for-profit event.

…and $20,000?! This really doesn’t add up. What needs to be replaced that was worth so much? I don’t want to victim blame, but this really does sound like someone is taking the opportunity to cash in on an unfortunate incident.

Buy insurance, kids!

UPDATE: On January 6, 2016 he was up to $485. The GoFundMe was later removed and there is no record of it on the site. (Previous GoFundMe fundraisers still exist, so he must have intentionally deleted it.)

December 26, 2015

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