As Australian comedian Celeste Barber found out the hard way, when people donate to a specific cause, the money has to go to that cause alone. Redirecting the funds elsewhere is called “fraud”. Which, as it happens, is a crime.
Crowdfunding platform GoFundMe likes to make up its own rules as it goes along and Big Tech generally seems to regards laws as something other people have to worry about. But when GoFundMe appeared to be conspiring to defraud millions of dollars donated to a specific cause, it got a rude reminder that the law still applies. For now, anyway. So the company was forced into a hurried backpedalling.
Online crowdfunding platform GoFundMe has permanently suspended donations for the Canadian truckers’ Freedom Convoy page which had raised over $10 million to support the ongoing protest against Covid-19 vaccine mandates.
On Wednesday, the prominent fundraising platform, that has been accused of hindering free expression and applying its policies selectively, suspended the ability to make donations and added an “Under Review” message to the page.
This is nothing surprising, of course. GoFundMe has long been notorious for censoring and blacklisting fundraising campaigns — always with an undeniable leftist bias.
But when the company appeared to be openly misappropriating funds, that was a new low. After arbitrarily deciding that the Freedom Convoy violated their terms and conditions, GoFundMe decided they were going to “send all remaining funds to credible and established charities verified by GoFundMe”.
Three guesses what sort of “credible and established charities” they were going to shower with defrauded millions?
It was the second time that GoFundMe had put some kind of hold on the fundraiser. The first time, the platform allowed donations but was withholding the funds, preventing them from being able to be withdrawn by the civil liberties campaigners.
Now, GoFundMe has permanently deleted the listing after allegedly consulting with local law enforcement.
The company then stealth-edited its announcement to claim that “we will work with organizers to send all remaining funds…” But even that would probably constitute fraud, given that the funds were donated for a specific purpose.
The fundraiser was created by Tamara Lich and BJ Dichter to raise funds to pay for fuel, food, and lodgings of those who are participating in the convoy.
A day later, GoFundMe backpedalled even further.
GoFundMe has now changed its mind and announced that they will be refunding all donors.
Reclaim The Net
What they can’t get their Big Tech enforcers to do for them in cyberspace, the Covidians are having to send their uniformed thugs to do in person.
Law enforcement officers seized gasoline cans from protesters and said that anyone “attempting to bring material supports to demonstrators could be subject to arrest.”
The Federalist
As some have argued, uniforms or not, forcibly seizing legally obtained and possessed goods at gunpoint without a warrant is surely classed as “armed robbery”? Canada’s “Plain View Doctrine” only allows police to seize goods without a warrant if they have “reasonable grounds to believe seized items are evidence at the time of seizure. They cannot simply seize items in hopes that they turn out to be contraband or related to a crime”.
Ottawa’s mayor ludicrously declared a “state of emergency” over the protests on Sunday, but it appears that police were seizing goods and threatening to arrest supporters well before that.
Like Big Tech, authoritarian governments apparently believe that they’re a law unto themselves.