GoFundMe scammer sent to prison for one year for taking $400,000 from members of the public

What started as a spontaneous act of goodwill at a gas station has turned into a high-profile court case involving hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Katelyn McClure will spend the next 12 months behind bars after scamming the US public out of $400,000 with a GoFundMe campaign in honor of the homeless man who helped her out in her moment of need. 

Instead of giving all the money to him, McClure and her boyfriend Marc D’Amico kept the funds for themselves, living a life of luxury until they were caught by investigators. 

The background story

It’s a situation many of us have been in, but when Katelyn McClure’s car ran out of gas one day in 2017, she began to panic. Stranded on Interstate 95 in Pennsylvania with no cash, she had no way of refilling her car or getting home.

By chance, a local homeless man, Johnny Bobbitt Jr., happened to be passing by. He saw McClure in distress and gave her all the cash he had. It was only $20, but it was enough for her to load a jerry can with enough fuel to get her home.

 It’s a heart-warming story that comes with just one catch: it isn’t true.

McClure and her boyfriend made the story up and posted it on social media. Encouraged by the positive reactions, she set up a GoFundMe page with the aim of rewarding this ‘Good Samaritan’ for his ‘act of generosity’.

The campaign went viral within days as over 14,000 people donated to the fictional cause, raising $367,000 after fees. As major media outlets became interested in interviewing this generous homeless person who had helped McClure in her time of need, the couple needed a third person to complete the plan.

In stepped Mr. Bobbitt, who they found on the street and offered $75,000 to pretend that the event happened and that he was the worthy cause people should give their money to.

Life of luxury

Once the money started flowing into their GoFundMe account, McClure and D’Amico became more and more extravagant in their spending. They upgraded their car to a BMW and started to shop in high-end luxury stores; not content to bet in online casinos, they paid for first-class flights to Las Vegas for the New Year, where they spent thousands more dollars. 

Their spending spree grew as the months passed, and for two blissful years, the couple continued their ruse until a key part of their scheme began to come loose. Bobbitt Jr. became annoyed at the riches the couple had acquired thanks to him and demanded more. When they refused, he launched a lawsuit that became the basis of the legal trial that we’re seeing today and put McClure and D’Amico into the public eye.

The legal case

In a prime example of short-term thinking, Bobbitt’s lawsuit came back to bite him almost straight away. To make a claim against the couple, he was forced to admit that the whole thing was a scam.

The authorities swiftly charged him with theft by deception, a crime he’d already admitted to. The New Jersey native was given five-year special probation as well as treatment to beat his drug addiction in 2019.

Next in line was D’Amico, the boyfriend and accomplice to McClure’s master plan. After pleading guilty and agreeing to refund the donors, he was handed a 27-month sentence in state prison.

All what was left was McClure, who waited for her verdict until July this year. After seeing a text that she sent to one of her friends in which she admitted to making the gas story up, the jury had no hesitation in handing her a one-year sentence, three years of supervised release, and an order to repay the funds.

She did, in fact, get off lighter than her boyfriend, who the court concluded was the ringleader of the scam.

How to spot a GoFundMe scam

While the D’Amico/McClure case is probably the biggest GoFundMe fraud of all time, other smaller incidents do happen.

Events such as the Manchester bombing in the UK have, in the past, caused the creation of several fake accounts that seek to profit from the tragedy.

GoFundMe declares that it does everything it can to prevent this from happening, including refunding up to $1,000 to victims, but a few can slip through the net. Here’s how to spot them.

• Fraudsters often set up a social media account to support their campaign, so check its stats. If it has fewer than 50 friends and was recently set up, then it’s likely to be fake.
• Do a reverse image search on Google with the campaign’s profile photo. This will show if it’s being used on other campaigns, including the original one.
• Look for how the organizer is connected to the stated beneficiary of the fundraising.

By following these steps, it’s much more likely that you avoid becoming a victim of a scam, like the 14,000-plus people who donated to one of the biggest online frauds of all time.