The lawyer for the woman accused in the GoFundMe scam has released secret recordings that she says prove her innocence.
The lawyer for the woman accused in the GoFundMe scam has released secret recordings that she says prove her innocence.
In the recordings, which were given to ABC News, Kate McClure can be heard shouting at boyfriend Mark D'Amico. McClure, D'Amico and homeless man Johnny Bobbitt are accused of making up a sob story to raise more than $400,000 on the crowdfunding platform GoFundMe.
"You started the whole f***ing thing, you did everything," McClure says in one recording, which was apparently made after Bobbitt sued the couple back in August. "I had no part in any of this and I'm the one f***ing taking the fall."
The pair can also be heard bickering over the money they spent.
"How much did you spend in Cali?" asks D'Amico in another recording. "$2,500? $3,700? So just right there is $40,000. Now, you want to talk about everything else? You act like you didn't spend a dollar. Stop it."
"I'm not acting like that," McClure counters.
In a third exchange, D'Amico calls McClure a "dumb b****" for worrying the alleged scheme could land them in jail.
"You don't go to jail for lying on TV, you dumb b****," D'Amico says.
"But who made me lie on TV?" McClure later adds.
"Who cares?" D'Amico replies.
The couple initially told the public last year that they started the GoFundMe campaign for Bobbitt because he’d used his last $20 to get McClure gas after she ran out while on I-95 in Philadelphia. The campaign then took off and attracted media attention. The trio was able to raise over $400,000 on GoFundMe, which was donated by more than 14,000 people.
But cracks began to show earlier this year, when Bobbitt sued the couple, saying he'd seen only a fraction of the money supposedly raised to help him.
Last Thursday, Burlington County prosecutor Scott Coffina announced the story was a "lie." "It might seem too good to be true and unfortunately it was," he said.
Coffina pointed to text messages McClure exchanged with a friend, apparently admitting the tale was fake. “I had to make something up to make people feel bad,” she allegedly wrote. It was one of more than 60,000 messages looked at by prosecutors.
But McClure's attorney has said she was not aware of the scheme, and pointed to D'Amico and Bobbitt as the real culprits, saying they used her, NBC10 reported.
“I’m confident that in the end the evidence will reveal that Kate had only the best intentions," James Gerrow said in a statement, according to NBC10. "She was used by Mr. D’Amico and Mr. Bobbitt and she thought throughout that this money was going to a homeless veteran. She was unaware that they had concocted this scheme. It wasn’t until September when meeting with prosecutors that she came to realize that she had been used by both of them.”
The trio have all been charged with second-degree theft by deception and conspiracy to commit theft by deception. They are due in court next month.
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