Less than 48 hours after the deadly Lapu-Lapu Day Festival tragedy on Saturday evening, a GoFundMe fundraiser for a woman named “Reyna Dela Peña” began circulating.
The campaign described Dela Peña as a “loving mother and a great friend who worked tirelessly to support her two sons on her own” and claimed she had died while walking toward a food truck at the Filipino street festival in Vancouver last weekend, where an SUV driven into the crowd killed 11 people and injured dozens more.
The organizer of the fundraiser claimed to be a “dear friend” of Dela Peña and asked for financial contributions to return her body to family in the Philippines and support her surviving sons.
The money poured in, earning $57,680 in donations from more than 1,700 people by Tuesday morning.
However, that same morning, the fundraiser was paused, with a message from GoFundMe saying that the organizer had been contacted and “donations will resume once the issue is resolved.” The following day, the campaign was gone.
In a statement to CBC News on Wednesday, a GoFundMe spokesperson confirmed the campaign had been removed from its platform, and that the company had banned the organizer from any future fundraising, but it did not respond to questions about why, exactly, the fundraiser was removed.
“At no point did the organizer have access to the funds,” the company said, adding that all donations to that campaign were refunded.
“GoFundMe has zero tolerance for the misuse of our platform and takes swift action against those who seek to take advantage of the generosity of our community.”
The company urged people who want to donate to victims of the tragedy to visit its centralized hub of fundraisers verified by its “Trust and Safety team.”
On Thursday afternoon, a Vancouver Police Department (VPD) spokesperson said four of the victims who survived the attack were in critical condition and two others were in serious condition.
Kai-Ji Adam Lo, 30, has since been charged with eight counts of second-degree murder in relation to the crash. In a statement Sunday, the VPD said further charges are anticipated.
Raquel Narraway was compiling a list of fundraisers for victims of the tragedy when she felt something in the GoFundMe for Reyna Dela Peña “didn’t add up.”
“I don’t blame people who donated right away, because the story was really heart-wrenching, right?” said Narraway, a realtor based in Chilliwack, B.C., who said she wanted to use her social media platform to draw attention to the fundraising efforts.
But when she couldn’t find any information about Dela Peña or the campaign organizers, Narraway became skeptical, sharing her concerns on social media in the hope that someone would come forward with information that could lend credibility to the campaign.
“I still wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt,” she said.
When no one among Narraway’s 21,000 Facebook followers recognized Dela Peña, her suspicions grew, and she reported the campaign to GoFundMe and police.
She says that people who take advantage of tragedy to scam others make her angry. “But at the same time, we know that there are evil people out there.”
Soon, a Filipino woman living in Nevada commented on Narraway’s Facebook post to say her photos were used in the fundraiser without her knowledge, and noted that she had also reported the campaign.
CBC News has not been able to independently verify the Nevada woman’s story, but the public images on her profile appear to show the same woman seen in photos used in the GoFundMe.
After CBC News told Narraway that GoFundMe would be refunding the donations made to the campaign, she was relieved to hear that the fraudsters hadn’t been able to withdraw the funds.
“It’s basically stealing from people, right? So I couldn’t bear the thought of that.”
Speaking at a news conference Wednesday afternoon, Const. Tania Visintin said that while the VPD hasn’t received any reports of fraudulent fundraising accounts, “that doesn’t mean these accounts don’t exist.”
“We are just asking people to be aware, be mindful that fraud could happen,” she said.
“If anybody feels that they’re looking at a page and this page could be fraudulent, we ask that they reach out to the GoFundMe organizers directly … and they can confirm if the account is legitimate or not.”
Vancouver police warn about possible fraudulent fundraisers in wake of tragedy
She noted police cannot confirm the legitimacy of certain GoFundMe pages themselves due to victim privacy concerns — the same reasoning the VPD gave Narraway when she called to report her suspicions about the page.
GoFundMe says it has the “most robust donor protection processes of any platform of our kind” and that it will “always work with law enforcement when our platform is misused.”
