Another day, another jerk stealing someone else’s story to try and turn a buck.
“We have to move. In an immediate danger kind of way,” writes Summer Heacock in her original YouCaring campaign, which so far has over 1000 shares on social media. It has raised over $31000. A quick glance at the campaign tells you why — Summer is an intelligent, caring mother with a terrible tale of bullying and general insanity swirling around her and her family in Indiana. She asked merely for help to get her family and “gaggle of rescue critters” to safety in Seattle, where her husband would be sure to get an IT job quickly.
If you aren’t in the mood to lose your last shred of faith in humanity, please don’t read her fundraising page and close down your browser. If you’re ready to get angry, continue on.
“We have to move. In an immediate danger kind of way,” writes someone calling themselves Summer Hiatt in a GoFundMe campaign started three days ago [archive here, Google cache here for the time being]. It has no shares and no donations. It features the same photo as the real Summer used in her YouCaring campaign, and copies the genuine plea word-for-word down to graphic descriptions of her kids’ bullying and the psycho-infested town these poor people currently call home.
Every. Single. Word. The only thing the scammer changed was Summer’s last name.
Thankfully, the real Summer spotted it quickly and the campaign has since been taken down. Still, it is a terrible reminder that human beings are basically a virus on earth and GoFundMe is often a Petri dish.
