BEDFORD-STUYVESANT — A crowdfunding page claiming to raise money for an elderly Bed-Stuy woman evicted from her home has disappeared from its hosting website, days after a DNAinfo investigation revealed inconsistencies in statements made by the convicted fraudster who launched the effort.
The page, which was set up July 25 and claimed to be raising money for a woman named “Ms. Augusta,” who had been recently evicted from her home on Halsey Street, disappeared sometime between Sunday evening and Monday morning.
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It was not immediately clear if the page — which was no longer taking donations but had met its original goal of $1,800 — was taken down by the campaign founder or by the website. A spokeswoman for the crowdfunding site, GoGetFunding, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The site had contacted the fundraiser in an effort to verify the person's claims about the evicted woman, spokeswoman Amanda Bizzinotto said last week, but she did not clarify whether or not the website had managed to confirm the campaign’s validity.
If GoGetFunding determines that the campaign violated its rules, the site contacts the relevant payment services and encourages donors to report the issue to local authorities. But after repeated questions were posed to Bizzinotto about the “Ms. Augusta” fundraiser, the spokesman continued to demur about whether or not that campaign in particular had been identified as a scam.
“When a campaign is brought to our attention, in order to decide what measures to take we ask the campaign owner to provide proof supporting the claims in their campaign,” she said in an email. “Our decision to allow a campaign to continue or stop it will be based on the evaluation of such documentation.”
Meanwhile, the person claiming to be Ms. Augusta's niece, Roslyn Green, continued to dodge questions about the validity of the campaign, sending a panicked email to a reporter claiming to be trapped by flooding from Hurricane Harvey in Houston.
"Me and my family are in complete panic in Houston!" she wrote. "The city has not put in steady evacuation plan! Are you going to send relief and efforts to help us? I have confirmed this eviction to you, you have spoken to me, are you now going to send me relief!"
Several phone numbers for a Roslyn Green located in Houston were disconnected both before and after the storm, and another had a busy signal during each attempt to call it.
The fundraising campaign began on or about July 21, when Valeria Sansosa, a visual artist from Brooklyn who goes by more than half a dozen aliases, launched a page on GoFundMe under the name Mahlot Sansosa, which she uses in her work as an artist. That page was taken down by GoFundMe due to an unspecified violation of its terms of services, according to a spokesman for the company.
Sansosa then turned to GoGetFunding, a lesser-known website that takes less of a cut from donations, and publicized the effort on Facebook and the hyperlocal app NextDoor.
Sansosa claimed to have a direct role in helping Ms. Augusta, by going with her to housing court and putting her up for a night after she was booted from her home on Halsey Street between Throop and Tompkins avenues.
But a search of public records found nothing to corroborate Sansosa’s claims, as there were no records of any evictions on that block this year and no property records to back up statements Sansosa made about Ms. Augusta’s prior ownership of the building in which she supposedly lived.
A canvass of the neighborhood also failed to turn up anything, with more than two dozen residents and business owners on Halsey Street telling DNAinfo they had never met Ms. Augusta.
Sansosa, who pleaded guilty in March to charges related to credit-card fraud, has a warrant out for her arrest after skipping an August court date, according to prosecutors.
Sansosa disappeared from the picture entirely in mid-August, when ownership of the fundraiser page switched over to Green, who claimed to be visiting from Houston.
Green emailed back and forth with DNAinfo but refused to provide any information that could back up the validity of the fundraiser.
After sending the initial email about the flooding in Houston, Green did not immediately respond to further questions reagrding her whereabouts or about the deletion of the fundraising page.
