I should have gotten to this one weeks ago but alas, my assistant (read: cat) made a mess of my calendar (read: stack of Post-its I keep by my laptop) and it fell right off the map (read: was batted under the couch). Apologies.
Alright, let’s get right to it. The GoFundMe campaign has since been closed — as have the accused scammer’s Twitch and Twitter accounts — so this is the best you’re going to get:
Oh wait, we have this one too:
Patrick Bruno — better known as VibeMaGiKL or just Bruno — said he needed help paying for his mom’s liver surgery. Generous bunch that they are, help quickly came pouring in.
On May 1st, a flurry of tweets went out to @VibeMaGiKL, who apparently claimed he was volunteering to give up part of his liver to his mother and would be in surgery that day.
6 years and 6 days ago I donated half of my liver to my mother… and today @VibeMaGiKL and his mother did the same…. talk about the duo
— cashed (@CashedDaddy) May 2, 2017
But within a matter of days, the supportive tweets quickly turned into accusations that Bruno had misled the community and made off with thousands of dollars given to him over a lie.
In a TwitLonger post after the fact, @zachtehceo breaks down what happened. We’ll let him take it from here:
A few weeks ago I awoke to see the halo community all posting about @VibeMaGiKL Gofundme in regards to his mother needing emergency surgery. This hit home for me especially because I lost my mother and would have done anything in my power to have her back. I among most people within the halo community, instantly jumped to support him and his cause. Pro’s came to his aid, Am’s, Companies, and individuals that didn’t even know this young man all joined together and started helping.
I personally set up a charity stream that day to help raise money. MoneyMatches got behind the stream and our finance team declared that we would match every dollar donated during the stream. Within the first 6hours we had raised over $1200 USD. So we decided to keep streaming and keep bringing the donations in. At the end we raised a total of $2150 obviously equating to $4300 total with our match. Obviously this wouldn’t pay for the entire surgery so myself and my team stepped up and decided we were going to pay the rest of the balance.
How amazing is that? All these people with only Halo in common came together to help someone they thought was in need. It would really warm your heart if you didn’t know the rest of the story.
Our finance team then proceeded to call the hospitals financial department, in Bruno’s video [Ed. note: @VibeMaGiKL took down his Twitter after the scam was uncovered, video link used to be here: https://twitter.com/VibeMaGiKL/status/858987143171121152]. To our surprise there was no one by his name nor his mother’s name currently at that hospital. I personally then reached out to Bruno and he directed me to a separate hospital. Our team called again and to our surprise there was no one under his or his mothers name currently at the hospital either. I again brought this to Bruno. He in turn gave me an account number at the hospital that i could use to pay his bill. Obviously at this point suspicions started to rise. We used our sources (in real life business) to check into this. Turns out the account he gave me was for a prior visit to that hospital and did not pertain to his “mothers” sickness.
While all of this is going down, Jam and Xrossfade personally reached out to me to validate Bruno’s claims on what was happening because they had their own suspicions. They, alongside other members of the community, started to do their own digging and came to a very similar conclusion that my team had…. All of this was fake. To make things worse Bruno posted a photo of his mother laying in the hospital bed which we reversed and found that the photo came from a young lady of Asian decent [http://www.pictaram.com/tag/siloambali] Just cropped out and using it for himself.
I could go on and on with more evidence but frankly i’m so appalled that it’s pointless. He scammed everyone took our kindness for weakness and when caught in a lie tried to use my name as validity to his strings of deception. I will be reporting this to GoFundMe and I would recommend everyone get their money back.
Let’s just say the reaction to this scam was an expected one.
.@VibeMaGiKL My Mum is going through stage four bowel cancer, she’s on chemo, she’s on clinical trials. Is this fucking joke to you? Why?
— Chris (@Inexist_) May 6, 2017
@VibeMaGiKL was one of the last people that I would expect to pull something like this. Humanity can really be evil sometimes.
— Top Tier eBoy Con (@Conerd_) May 6, 2017
“It’s really too bad,” wrote @zachtehceo. “In a scene that is riddled with toxicity, this brought everyone together.”
Still no word on where Patrick Bruno is hiding, or why he did this in the first place. GoFundMe has been issuing refunds to donors who request one.
