Hi all
We're going to post on this thread rather than the others to keep it all in one place, and also because it cuts to the heart of the issue, we think.
The answer is, of course, yes - if we had evidence that a fraud had taken place, we would certainly pass that on to the police. Unless and until we had that information we simply couldn't act; so we'd always ask people to get in touch if they had it.
It's worth bearing in mind that a JustGiving page which doesn't benefit a registered charity isn't fraudulent in itself. Also that people who've been bereaved do often behave in ways that can seem, for want of a better word, odd. We can't vouch 100%, but as we've said on the other thread, we don't have anything that leads us to conclude that the fundamental, desperately sad aspects of this case aren't as stated - a wife who is very recently dead after a tragic illness, leaving a bereaved father and son.
We understand that some of you don't agree - and if you do think you've got something which would change our view, or you personally have been approached in an upsetting way, please get in touch. What we can't let you do is to speculate on the thread without evidence - that's troll hunting and is against TGs, so we'll have to act on that.
We also feel we'd be remiss if we didn't remind everyone that fraud is a very serious thing (obviously, sorry) - and that, when you post on a public forum you are legally responsible for your own words, should the person in question wish to take it further.
Generally, we're honestly trying to do the right thing in often cloudy circumstances - to balance the need to remind people to protect themselves, with the need not to impugn, without solid justification, the integrity of a possibly very vulnerable individual, for whom the consequences could be devastating.
But we hope that most of you can understand that we're just not set up to do forensic detective work. Usually all we can say is 'we've had a dig, and all looks okay as far as we can see'. In this instance it looks like some posters weren't convinced, so we followed up with the equivalent of 'yes, we've had a real proper dig, and we honestly can't see anything wrong'.
With hindsight, we should probably have just left it at the first post - and as I said on the other thread, we're going to think further here about how we can give MNers the kind of steer that they often request without appearing either to endorse individuals unreservedly or damn them with faint praise.
We're also going to change the rules so that only registered charities can be promoted on the charities' noticeboard - it's a shame because the board was in part set up for MNers to give a push to unofficial stuff along the lines of 'My child's doing a half marathon to raise money for his school' - but it's probably better this way. Clearly, our moving one of the original threads to that board appeared to many to be an endorsement - it wasn't intended to be anything other than neutral, but we can see that it was confusing and we're really sorry about that.
Once again, if you've got any evidence that you think would make us change our view, or you've been personally involved, please do get in touch via [email protected], but please don't speculate on this thread otherwise.
Thanks all
MNHQ