MOUNT HOLLY, N.J. – A New Jersey lady who took half in a rip-off to dupe hundreds of individuals hoping to assist a homeless veteran, has acquired a three-year jail time period for state prices arising from the fraud.
Katelyn McClure, a former state Division of Transportation employee, is also barred from ever holding one other place as a public worker, the Burlington County Prosecutor’s Workplace mentioned.
Prosecutors mentioned McClure and her then-boyfriend, Mark D’Amico, concocted a great Samaritan story in November 2017, claiming that homeless veteran Johnny Bobbitt Jr. had given his final $20 to McClure when her automotive ran out of gasoline in Philadelphia.
The couple launched a GoFundMe marketing campaign, ostensibly amassing cash to assist Bobbitt get his life so as. The marketing campaign, which featured a photograph of McClure, D’Amico and Bobbitt outdoors a gasoline station, went viral and a few 14,000 donors contributed $402,000.
However prosecutors mentioned McClure, 32, and D’Amico, 43, each of Florence, New Jersey, used many of the cash for private bills, together with playing journeys, a helicopter trip over the Grand Canyon and lavish purchases.
“Inside just a few months of the marketing campaign’s creation, all the donated funds had been spent,” the prosecutor’s workplace mentioned in an announcement.
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A felony investigation started after Bobbitt sued McClure and D’Amico in August 2018, claiming he had acquired solely about $75,000.
GoFundMe voluntarily returned the donations to contributors.
McClure, the final defendant to be sentenced within the case, didn’t attend Friday’s listening to.
She is serving a time period of 1 yr and a day at a jail in Connecticut, after pleading responsible final yr to a federal cost of theft by deception.
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McClure is scheduled for launch from federal custody on July 2, in keeping with the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.
McClure’s state jail time period for theft by deception will run concurrent together with her federal sentence, the prosecutor’s workplace mentioned.
D’Amico and Bobbitt even have pleaded responsible to their roles within the scheme.
D’Amico is serving a state jail sentence of 5 years and a concurrent 27-month federal jail sentence.
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A federal choose in October 2022 sentenced Bobbitt to 3 years of supervised probation for cash laundering conspiracy. He additionally was sentenced in state courtroom to a probationary time period and in-patient drug therapy.
McClure was sentenced Friday by Superior Court docket Decide Christopher Garrenger in Mount Holly.
