GoFundMe again

I'm kind of surprised that this case from 2017 is still dragging its way through the court system, but here we are in Pandemia, where everything is not like it used to be, and we are all stocked up on paper towels and toilet paper, but we can't find infant formula or peanut butter.

I asked Google why the Skippy shelf is so empty these days, and the answer I got had to do with Jif peanut butter. They had to recall 47 billion jars of Jif because of potential Salmonella contamination. Now, that sparseness of Jif means people are buying other brands, including my Skippy, resulting in a shortage that's causing a ripple effect on the availability of nutter butter everywhere.

Of course, my fear is that long-time Jiffers will suddenly realize "this is what peanut butter is SUPPOSED to taste like" when they try Skippy, and the shortage will not soon abate. And with school lunches right around the corner, well, Katie bar the door! Some states might even make it illegal to travel across state lines to score goober pâté. 

And I'll be writing this blog from federal prison, serving 5-10 on a peanutter rap.

Speaking of criminals, and things for which there is no shortage ever, here's a story we talked about when it happened five years ago, and there is no shortage of evil schemes people will concoct with the simple goal of separating honest citizens from their money in the name of "charity."

Her name is Katelyn McClure. She was not the mastermind of the dirty deal (her now-ex-boyfriend, Mark D'Amico, is the brains behind the scam scheme that raked in $400,000 with a fake story about a homeless man). McClure, 32, will be a guest of the No-Holiday Inn for a year, and will have to make restitution, and serve three years' supervised release down the road. Next month she will be sentenced on state charges and could get more time behind bars.

 

In 2017, McClure and D'Amico came up with a fable about a homeless veteran named Johnny Bobbitt, Jr. (not to be confused with John Wayne Bobbitt, the victim of an involuntary penectomy). The plan was to tell everyone that McClure had run out of gas near a bridge underpass where Bobbitt was staying, and that Bobbitt had spotted her $20 to get some gas.

The real story was that the three of them had met near a Philadelphia casino to concoct their story.

They spread the word through social media and it was picked up for local and national stories.  You can just imagine how it played on the morning news shows, and it worked! First thing you knew, over 14,000 people of good intention donated to a GoFundMe account in the belief that they were helping Bobbitt.

You know the story: three can keep a secret if two of them are dead. Bobbitt soon became enraged that he wasn't getting duked in on his fair share, so he filed a suit to get a bigger slice.

According to the federal criminal complaint, McClure and D'Amico spent the whole bundle by March of 2018, one casino trips to Las Vegas and one to fabulous New Jersey, a recreational vehicle, and a BMW.

D’Amico, known as the brains of this outfit, pled out in April on federal charges and was sentenced to 27 months in prison, plus he will have to pay the money back and be sentenced on separate state charges next month.

Bobbitt got five years’ probation on state charges and will be sentenced on federal charges next month.

And again, the old lesson about cheating and stealing being wrong rings true. What makes people think they can get away with this sort of crime?