GoFundMe stops donations to page claiming to support Vancouver festival attack victim

GoFundMe has deactivated a page claiming to raise funds on behalf of a deceased victim of Saturday’s attack at a Filipino street festival in Vancouver.

The popular fundraising site says it is no longer accepting donations alleged to support the surviving family of a woman named Reyna.

Organizers behind the page claim to have been with Reyna at the Lapu-Lapu festival when she died.

“Reyna had asked me to watch her kids on the side before the food truck closed, while she walked towards one of the food trucks on her own. It was then that the tragic incident occurred,” a page author wrote.

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Names and remembrances of the 11 killed victims can be found online. No verified source has included a victim named Reyna.

1130 NewsRadio has reached out to a woman who claimed on social media that the GoFundMe page used her photos without permission.

Before the fundraiser was deactivated, it collected $57,330 in donations since Sunday.

GoFundMe says the donations are protected.

“We guarantee you a full refund in the rare case something isn’t right,” says a disclaimer by the company.

In a statement to 1130 NewsRadio Wednesday, the company says the page has now been removed, donations refunded, and the organizer has been banned from the platform.

“At no point did the organizer have access to the funds. GoFundMe has zero tolerance for the misuse of our platform and takes swift action against those who seek to take advantage of the generosity of our community,” said a spokesperson.

An update by the page author acknowledged that donations had “closed” Tuesday but encouraged people to donate blood or funds on the pages of other victims.

In response to the deadly vehicle-ramming attack, GoFundMe says it activated a global team of trust and safety specialists that is continually vetting and verifying all fundraisers for those affected and collecting the pages on a centralized hub.

The fundraiser for Reyna never appeared on the verified hub page.

“GoFundMe has the most robust donor protection processes of any platform of our kind. We have round-the-clock trust and safety support, humans and technology making sure funds will get to where they are intended. In the very rare case something goes wrong, all donors are protected,” said the company.

The Vancouver Police Department says it has not received any reports about fraudulent GoFundMe accounts related to the attack.

“That doesn’t mean that these accounts don’t exist. We are just asking people to be aware — be mindful that fraud could happen. And if anybody feels that they’re looking at a page and the page could be fraudulent, we ask that they reach out to the GoFundMe organizers directly, the people that are in charge of that page — that website, and they can confirm if the account is legitimate or not,” Const. Tania Visintin told media Wednesday.