Toronto man had to fight GoFundMe to get paid after organizer gambled away funds for his brother's funeral
CBC
In the aftermath of his younger brother's sudden death last year, Allan Oliver says he was surprised when a family friend set up a GoFundMe to help pay for the funeral.
"My first thought was like, 'Wow, I can't believe someone would do this for our family,' " Oliver told CBC News.
His brother, Aidan, a well-known figure in their community of Shelburne, Ont., was just 23 years old when he died after a medical episode on Oct. 30.
Oliver watched as donations from the community poured in — eventually, more than $15,000 was raised. He says his family then planned a larger funeral to make sure everyone could pay their respects.
"Through this fundraiser, there were hundreds of people helping us through it," he said. "And that was just really comforting."
Those feelings of comfort turned to anxiety in the months that followed, when he encountered repeated challenges trying to obtain the remaining balance of donations from the organizer.
On Nov. 11, the day of his brother's funeral, the organizer gave the family $7,000 of the $15,200 raised. But the remaining $8,200 had not been paid to him, and he had an outstanding bill from the funeral home to worry about.
"I was giving the organizer the benefit of the doubt," Oliver told CBC News.
His feelings of anxiety turned out to be warranted — months later, the organizer admitted to him in a text message that she had withdrawn the remaining money and gambled it way.
After public pressure from community members, Oliver says a relative of the organizer returned the funds to him this week — nearly seven months after his brother's funeral. CBC News is not naming the organizer as the funds have since been repaid.
Oliver is still pushing for policy changes at GoFundMe, and says the company needs to do more to ensure the intended beneficiaries receive the money that is raised for them.
A spokesperson for GoFundMe defended its current policies in a statement, saying misuse of funds is "rare." In the statement, GoFundMe also said it acted quickly to investigate Oliver's case and noted that it does have a Beneficiary Guarantee, which aims to ensure money gets to the intended recipients.
In January, Oliver reached out to the organizer via text to ask about the remaining funds so he could pay the rest of the funeral home bill. Texts reviewed by CBC News show the organizer responded and said she had "lots of things going on," but that she'd call him. Oliver says that call never happened, and the organizer didn't respond to multiple messages he sent after that.
At the end of February, he asked the organizer if he could take over the GoFundMe account, and she responded that she would reach out to GoFundMe to try to arrange that.
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