News Calgary is reporting that Canadian police have issued an arrest warrant for a man charged with fraud and public mischief in connection to a fake GoFundMe campaign. The GoFundMe page was set up in order to alleviate the strain of his medical bills.
Stelianos Psaroudakis, 37, was scheduled to appear in court on Tuesday for charges related to an incident in early July where he claimed he had gotten clotheslined by piece of barbed wire strung across a trail near Bragg Creek while riding a mountain bike.
After the incident in question he started a crowdfunding page to raise money for his the cost recovery and to purchase motion sensor cameras on the trail to prevent similar situations.
After raising more than $850 towards a goal of $8,000 the campaign was abruptly stopped. Rachel Hollis, GoFundMe spokesperson, released this statement regarding the ‘Almost died on trail by barbed wire’ campaign:
“We can confirm that the organizer has removed the campaign and that we are looking into this. When a campaign receives complaints, as in this case, we place the funds on hold until additional information is provided by the campaign organizer. We’ve reached out to the campaign organizer for this additional information.
It’s important to remember that our platform is backed by the GoFundMe Guarantee, which means that we guarantee the money goes to the right place. In the rare case that GoFundMe, law enforcement or a user finds campaigns are misused, donors are fully protected and will get their money back.”
