pic via: The Dirty
A 28-year-old Canadian woman found dead and burnt to a crisp at a campground late last month was accused of stealing $24,000 through a fraudulent GoFundMe account, reports NorthernLife.ca:
CTV in British Columbia is reporting they have learned the victim is Vikki Heppner — officials have not confirmed her identity, pending an autopsy. Her body was discovered by a father who was walking with his children on a rural logging road near Stave Lake last Tuesday, according to media reports.
Heppner started a GoFundMe that was supposed to help the widow and two children of Roger Belanger, who died in a car accident earlier that year. Family members say they never saw a penny of the money, and Heppner skipped town once called out for the questionable fundraiser.
Roger’s sister Roxanne says GoFundMe was not helpful, and by the time the family was fully aware of what had happened, the money had completely disappeared, as had Heppner.
“And the person (who started the campaign) was basically giving us a lot of answers, but not taking any action … She would tell us she was going to do something, but then never do it, in terms of transferring the account over.”
As their suspicions grew, the family tried to work with representatives from the GoFundMe website to find out what was going on.
“They were not very forthcoming,” Roxanne said. “It took weeks for them to answer our questions regarding what we needed to do (to get information), because at that point we were very suspicious.
“We had to provide all this documentation to have access to this account that was supposedly ours — and by that, I mean our sister-in-law. But she needed absolutely no documentation to open an account for someone else. But we had to jump through hoops in order for them to even answer our questions.”
After eventually convincing the website who they were, they found out the person who started the campaign had withdrawn the donations.
“It wasn’t until we became very angry and very aggressive that they told us the account had been basically drained,” Roxanne said. “There were 22 withdrawals. If they would have just helped us at the beginning, then we probably could have avoided at least most of this.”
29-year-old Ryan Jack Armstrong has been charged with second-degree murder and indignity to a body in the case of Heppner’s death.
