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BayGBM:
Have you ever donated to a gofundme account or a similar service?  Would you?  These accounts seem to be all the rage these days.  I never give this way and here is one reason: there is no guarantee that the money will reach the intended target and there is little assurance that the collection is nothing more than a scam.

Online activists raised $60K for Tamir Rice’s family — so where did all that money go?
By Wesley Lowery

Shaun King was furious.

The author and life coach turned activist has been one of the most prominent online voices in recent months, as protests of police impunity that began in Ferguson, Mo., spawned demonstrations in cities across the country. For those following the ever-growing roster of names of black men and boys killed by police, he has been one of the essential follows.

But his latest tweet storm, published Monday afternoon, was not about a new police shooting. In fact, it was about an old one.

For King and many of the other activists who have been some of the driving forces online behind the Black Lives Matter protests, the shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice last November as he played in a park near his home was one of the most difficult of the many anecdotes.

For many of the most vocal activists, that Tamir was a child and that his shooting was captured on grainy camera footage makes this case the most difficult to stomach. When extended video of the shooting — which showed Cleveland police tackling Tamir’s sister to the ground as she ran to his dying body — was released late last year, one of the top protest organizers in Ferguson texted to tell me it had made him physically sick, imagining what he would do if his younger sister was wounded and he was tackled while trying to help her.

So when a new court filing in the Rice family’s civil suit against the city of Cleveland revealed that Tamir has yet to be buried and that his mother was, at least temporarily, living in a homeless shelter, King was incensed.

“Absurd!” he insisted to me in a direct message on Monday afternoon, especially, he noted, because just months earlier an army of online samaritans had raised almost $60,000 for the Rice family.

So where had all of that money gone?

Timothy Kucharski had been one of two attorneys representing the Rice family for several weeks when he got a call from a friend in early December, asking about an online fundraiser he was seeing in the Rice name.

Created on the Web site YouCaring.com, thousands of dollars were pouring into a fund for the Rice family. But Kucharski had never heard of King — one of the fund’s primary organizers — and Rice’s mother told him that she was unaware of the fundraiser.

As the fund surpassed $27,000, Kucharski contacted law enforcement as well as YouCaring.com directly, asking that the assets being donated to the fund be seized and held for the Rice family. He contacted King, who has previously used his social media following to raise money for victims of police shootings and natural disasters and who insisted that his plan was always to give the money to the family. As they went back and forth, a number of Twitter users — led in part by right-wing blogger Charles C. Johnson — began insisting that the fundraiser was a scam and demanding it be halted.

Online fundraising has become commonplace in these racially charged police death cases. Hundreds of thousands were raised for both the family of Michael Brown and for the legal defense of Ferguson officer Darren Wilson. Within hours of six Baltimore police officers being charged in connection to the death of Freddie Gray, a legal defense fund had been created and was being heavily promoted by the local police union.

Even as the confusion spread over whether or not King’s pledge drive for Rice was legitimate, the fundraiser still ended up netting almost $60,000 — money that, at the request of the Rice family attorneys, was seized by the court.

The court set up a trustee to manage the funds, placing all the money into Tamir Rice’s estate, meaning any withdrawal would require a judge’s ruling. Rather than being gifted the money directly, the Rice family would now have to apply for each disbursement.

“I never touched the money, I never had control over any of the money,” Kucharski said.

Not long after the money was handed to the court-appointed trustee, the Rice family shook up their legal team.

Kucharski and David Malik, a well-known civil rights attorney in Cleveland with a history of winning settlements from the Cleveland Police Department in use-of-force cases, were out. They were replaced by Benjamin Crump, who has represented the families of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown, and Ohio-based civil rights attorney Walter Madison.

According to people who’ve spoken with both the Rice family’s former and current legal teams, the shake-up stemmed from a number of disagreements. The new legal team felt as if the Rice family had been unnecessarily shielded from the media, a detriment to their ability to create public awareness of the case. The Cleveland attorneys felt slighted, that they had been ditched for higher profile attorneys without local ties and knowledge.

After concluding their service, Kucharski and Malik filed for attorney’s fees and were paid a combined $23,700 from the estate fund, according to court documents. Several other small disbursements have been made from the fund, to cover things including funeral costs and securing Tamir’s body — which has yet to be buried.

According to Doug Winston, the court-appointed trustee of the Tamir Rice estate, there is currently about $23,000 remaining in the Cleveland-based estate, but that money is restricted for specific purposes and cannot be used freely by the family at its own discretion — despite the fact that many had donated to the fund under that assumption.

“Technically it’s not their money, it’s the estate’s money,” Winston said. “Distributions from the assets of an estate have to meet specific guidelines, so to say that they would have free disposal to the money in this account would be inaccurate.”

As those tens of thousands of dollars linger in Tamir’s estate, Cleveland awaits news about whether or not the officers involved in the boy’s shooting will be charged.

City officials handed the investigation over to the county sheriff’s department, which has vowed to conduct a thorough and independent probe. On Monday, the Rice family held a news conference. Almost six months after the shooting, they said, they are tired of waiting.

“Less than a second, my son is gone,” said Samaria Rice, Tamir’s mother, during the news conference on Monday. “I want to know how long I have to wait for justice.”

In the meantime, the Rice family has continued to struggle.

“The incident has shattered the life of the Rice family,” the family’s legal team said in a court document filed Monday. “In particular, Samaria Rice, Tamir Rice’s mother, has since been forced to move to a homeless shelter because she could no longer live next door to the killing field of her son.”

Samaria Rice does not remain homeless, however. According to her current legal team, she has moved along with her other children into a modest apartment in Cleveland, where they have been since April.

BayGBM:
Another gofundme grab:  

PLEASE READ! Help out Dom Cardone's family
http://forums.musculardevelopment.com/showthread.php/149539-PLEASE-READ!-Help-out-Dom-Cardone-s-family

But when donors asked what the money would be used for they were told it was none of their business.  And the fund raising target kept going up.  It started at $10k then went up every time the goal was reached.  In other words the creator of this account decided to keep it going... as long as people were generous/stupid enough to keep donating.  ::)

blinky:
ive used them a couple times...and only for people who i know. (A buddy of mine was going to Thailand to train and fight so he was rasing money).

I would never do it for some random cause. Like u said , there are too many scams out there.

James28:
Gave 100 bucks once to a mate doing a cycle thing for charity. However, I would NEVER give a penny to someone trying to race money to go travelling or what not. Save the money yourself.

Victor VonDoom:
This gofundme site is endless . . . and not in a good way.  Almost everyone has a sob story and is looking for a handout.  You can search by subject (medical condition, fire, student loan, unemployed, etc) or even by zip code?  Do a search and find all your neighbors who are down on their luck and looking for a donation.  Actually recognized some people in my area.  

Can't wait to see a bodybuilder show up asking for $$ to help his contest prep.  Maybe someone will create a schmoe donation site specifically for bodybuilders? Stranger things have happened.

Bah!  Doom disapproves.

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