A woman was sentenced Friday to three years in New Jersey State Prison for her part in a well-known $400,000 GoFundMe scam that defrauded more than 14,000 people.
“Katelyn McClure, 32, was not present at her sentencing in Burlington County as she is already serving her one-year federal term in the case in a Connecticut prison, according to the Burlington County Prosecutor’s Office,” the New York Post reported Sunday.
The state sentence will run concurrent to the federal sentence, the prosecutor’s office said, adding the former state Department of Transportation employee is barred from working as a public employee in the future.
Kate McClure, 32, charged with theft by deception in the $400,00 GoFundMe scam, with her lawyer Jim Gerrow Jr., in State Superior Court, Burlington County Courthouse, Mt. Holly, NJ, April 15, 2019. (David Swanson/The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP, File)
The Post article continued:
In 2017, McClure and her then-boyfriend, Mark D’Amico, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud after they invented a heartwarming but bogus story claiming that a homeless vet, Johnny Bobbitt Jr., had just spent his last $20 to help McClure fill up her gas tank while she was stranded on I-95 in Philadelphia.
The pair launched a GoFundMe campaign titled “Paying it Forward,” which donors believed was to get Bobbitt off the streets and into a home.
The GoFundMe’s initial goal was set at $10,000, according to Breitbart News.
In a few weeks’ time, the couple had defrauded thousands of donors out of $400,000, which was eventually transferred to their personal accounts where they spent most of it on themselves.
In November 2018, audio from McClure’s attorney purportedly recorded her speaking with her former boyfriend, D’Amico, in which a woman is heard claiming, “I had no part in any of this.”
Bobbitt eventually learned from the couple about what really happened. D’Amico reportedly later opened a bank account for the man and the pair deposited $25,000.
Bobbitt later admitted to helping the couple concoct the scam and was sentenced to five years probation, NBC News reported in April 2019:
D’Amico later pleaded guilty and received a five-year state prison sentence that runs concurrently with a previous federal term. In addition, the former couple was ordered to pay back all the money to GoFundMe.
Comments are closed.