Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/06/27/blog-exposes-fake-gofundme-cam.html
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I once faked being sick so I didn’t have to go to school that day, but only once.
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Fucking gross that people will fake cancer to satiate themselves on the goodness of others, but more than just a story of the greed of conpersons, this should go onto the pile of reasons for socialized medicine. People know cancer is horrible, and that it ruins lives and obliterates people financially. Clearly people want to take care of each other, badly enough that they will throw money at random GoFundMe accounts. Why not remove this grey-market guesswork, and just officially make sure everyone is cared for?
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Gofundmes for healthcare seem like such a quintessentially American thing.
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To be frank, the big scammers are the charity crowd-funders.
GoFundMe: Total fees are 7.9% + $0.30 per donation.
Donate $1, that’s 38c gone.
The tech behind these sites is not incredible.
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There’s also no great way to verify that the person setting up a gofundme is legitimate. Sometimes they’re started by other people on behalf of someone else, legitimately so. But I’ve always been weary about it because I have heard of instances of people setting up fake ones for real people in need.
At least in kick starter does their work to minimize fraud but I don’t know what gofundme does
Yes. If you want to know whether it’s a good idea to trust our nation’s healthcare to insurers, go check out all the GoFundMe’s. Many of the legitimately sick people are insured, and also financially destroyed. Insurers have a million ways to avoid paying for care.
We are technically uninsured this year, although we did join a healthshare and it seems to work fine so far.
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Man, it’s almost like GoFundMe is no kind of substitute for a decent healthcare system. Who knew?
Why not? Republicans.
Well, we’ve got nothing else…
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Yep – and kickstarter is more caveat emptor than gofundme etc. You know it’s a gamble.
GoFundMe comes across as all charity-like and shiny; these sites just aren’t. They take so much as their cut.
We have an annual “Movember” here in the UK - grow a moustache for November - the guys who set it up have totally cashed in.
I think if the GOP has their way…you are going to see a lot of GoFundMe’s for healthcare in the future.
My favorite on the GoFraudMe site so far has been reading the comments for the Reality Winner fundraiser. I especially liked the GoFundMe employee who used her work computer to post anonymously as well as the fundraising sockpuppets all accusing the site of lies.
As are pain clinics.
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I wish that site’s content plackards didn’t so perfectly resemble clickbait advertising
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Yet the GoFraudMe author seems reluctant to update that article with the news that one of those campaigns is legit, and the others have been removed.
I can at least have a modicum of respect for cons that target well-off greedy fools, but preying on people’s generosity is truly the worst kind of scam.
The first thing you do these days, if you’re running a Cancer Clinic With the Cure, is you generously provide potential customers with advice on setting up the GoFundMe account they will need to pay your fees.
Used to be, the prices that cancer scammers could charge was limited by the wallets of individual customers. Thanks to crowd-sourcing, now they can rack up the price and grift off entire communities… outsourcing the con to their clients / victims.
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They have little incentive to weed out the con-jobs.
As usual, I was just listening to a relevant podcast episode…
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