Kyle McConkey’s family recently raised over $282K on crowdfunding site YouCaring for an experimental stem cell treatment in the hopes of saving their 18 year old son with leukemia. Over the last week it has come to police and media attention that a scam has popped up using Kyle’s photo under a similar name, Kyle McKlusky. The account raised almost $400 before the project was taken down.
Kyle, a Canadian teen, was diagnosed with leukemia when he was 16. After trying typical treatments including two bone marrow transplants that didn’t work, his family turned to crowdfunding as a last resort:
“Please help our son Kyle as he has weeks to live if he does not get to Seattle for an experimental procedure that could help save his life. We are at BC Children’s Hospital at this time and on December 10th we hope to make our way to Seattle Children’s Hospital to help save our son’s life. This procedure will cost over $250,000. We will sell our house if we have to but this means taking our home away from our three children and this would be very hard to do to our family.”
The real YouCaaring campaign for Kyle
Delta police were notified of the fake page on December 19 and quickly took action warning people about the scam on their social media and working to take down the scammer’s related website, crowdfunding page, and social media accounts.
Delta Police Department’s Warning on Facebook
This fraudulent campaign has a lot of people outraged just before the holidays. CTV News reported on the case, noting that the family is troubled by this attempt to use their family’s hardships to make a quick buck. Ross McConkey, Kyle’s father, said, “This is serious to us. It’s my son. We don’t want his images to be used like that.” Once was bad enough, but after the first fake page was taken down another appeared which was also removed.
Medical crowdfunding scams like these are not unheard of; some people have faked their own illnesses to raise money online! NPR wrote about a case where, “One user of GoFundMe managed to fool the company — along with his friends and family — and raised $2,000 around a false claim that he had cancer.“ These instances definitely strike a chord with the public, raising familiar questions about the prevalence and possible solutions to crowdfunding fraud.
A CrowdCrux guest post by Elena Mikhaylova gives some tips on spotting crowdfunding scams. One includes looking at the creator’s online presence and seeing if they’ve launched previous campaigns on the same or other platforms. Knowing the results of those projects can help you decide if you should support them. Another one to look out for is if:
“The creator’s social accounts are full of fake fans/followers. Anyone can buy thousands of Twitter followers or hundreds of Facebook fans on Fiverr for just $5. They are not real supporters of the project. Usually you can see no activity on the pages like that and lots of photos of teenagers with strange names. So, if the creator starts a campaign from fake social accounts, why should you trust him to deliver real results?”
Most crowdfunding sites have procedures to protect users from fraud, but occasionally projects slip through the cracks and manage to get funded. In most cases this leaves legal action up to backers. Educating yourself and being cautious are the best ways to avoid scams when donating to crowdfunding campaigns, aside from swearing them off all together.
