On July 15th of this year, 24-year-old Christopher Mathews — born Rikki Cisneros — of Santa Fe, NM took his own life.
As you can probably imagine, the sudden and tragic loss of her son left Chris’s mother Tammy Estrada reeling. So when a co-worker of hers took it upon herself to organize a GoFundMe campaign to cover some of the inevitable funeral costs, she says she felt “relieved” for the help.
That is, until it came time to cover the $14,000 funeral. Estrada says when she attempted to get the funds from her co-worker, she was told by the campaign organizer that the woman didn’t have access to the money.
That conflicts with a statement Estrada received from GoFundMe, which said that the funds had been released to the co-worker’s bank account in three separate transactions on July 26 and July 28 in the total amount of $2,437.47
“She basically profited from my son’s death,” she told the Santa Fe New Mexican. “And it’s devastating because there were other co-workers who donated, trusting that I would receive that money for the funeral expenses.”
We were unable to find a full cached copy of the campaign, however we did discover that $2665 was raised of a $2000 goal. If we subtract GoFundMe fees (5%), WePay fees (2.9%) and WePay transaction fees (30 cents per donation), we arrive at — you guessed it — $2437 and change.
The Santa Fe police have yet to release the name of the campaign organizer, however we have no problem sharing what bits of the campaign we were able to track down.
“It’s awful because my son’s death was such a devastating tragedy,” Estrada said to The New Mexican. “And now I’m having to deal with this.”
We’ve reached out to both Estrada and the Santa Fe police, we’ll update you if and when we hear back. The investigation is open at this time.