Last week, New Jersey prosecutors dropped a bombshell: that the heartwarming story of a homeless man who helped a stranded New Jersey woman buy gas with his last $20 was a scam cooked up to generate money via GoFundMe. Now, the lawyer for that woman says she was tricked into participating in the $400,000 scam. In an appearance on Good Morning America, Katelyn McClure's lawyer played a tape (which ABC News notes it hasn't verified) that he says shows "that [her boyfriend, Mark D'Amico] was the one behind this and he was calling all the shots." ABC News characterizes the taped conversation as "a heated and expletive-laced argument in which she put the onus on" on D'Amico. A sampling:
- McClure: "You started the whole f------ thing. You did everything. I had no part in any of this, and I'm the one taking [the] f------ fall."
- The response, allegedly from D'Amico: "You don't go to jail for lying on TV, you dumb f---."
- McClure: "But who made me lie on TV?"
- D'Amico, allegedly: "Who cares?"
James Gerrow says the tape shows the couple's relationship was an abusive one. He acknowledged the couple did buy two designer handbags (but noted both were used) and a BMW (a 2015, "hardly top of the line"), but he maintains she did think they were helping Johnny Bobbitt. Burlington County Prosecutor Scott Coffina alleged on Thursday that McClure texted a friend shortly after the GoFundMe campaign went live and revealed the story was fake. Gerrow's take on what she was saying in that text, in which she wrote, per
ABC: "Yeah, the story about the gas is not true, but the guy is real." That's because "throughout this entire matter, she believed that she was helping Bobbitt," Gerrow says. (More
GoFundMe stories.)
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