The largest Black Lives Matter group on Facebook has been determined to be fake. It turns out the page was being run by a white guy in Australia who had been diverting money raised by the group to bank accounts in that country.
The page, simply titled “Black Lives Matter,” had almost 700,000 followers. That’s twice as many as the “official” one. It also ran a related Facebook group that had over 40,000 members.
According to CNN, the page connected to fundraisers on platforms such as PayPal and Patreon. It raised at least $100,000 that was supposed to go to Black Lives Matter affiliated-causes in the U.S., but much of the money wound up in bank accounts in Australia.
The pages linked to websites run by Ian Mackay, who is an official with the National Union of Workers in Australia. Among Mackay’s websites was blackpowerfist.com, which became a Reddit-like discussion, and blacklivesmatter.media.
An anonymous Facebook poster named “BP Parker” shared a link to the blackpowerfist.com website a few days after it went online. “BP Parker” was also an admin of the Black Lives Matter group. Another anonymous account, “Steve Parks,” also linked to the websites and was an admin on the page.
The page ran fundraisers purporting to raise money for the cause. “Our mission is to raise awareness about racism, bigotry, police brutality, and hate crimes by exposing through social media locally and internationally stories that mainstream media don’t,” one of the donation requests read.
Mackay denied running the Facebook page. He told CNN that he bought the domain name to flip it to another buyer. He refused to clarify his role further.
Facebook has since taken down the page, and various fundraising platforms including Patreon, Paypal, and Donorbox have suspended the related fundraising campaigns.
This instance is not the first time people under the banner of Black Lives Matter stand accused of scamming supporters. In 2015, the Daily Beast ran a story claiming BLM activist Shaun King of squandering millions that he raised for everyone from Haitian orphans to the families of African Americans killed by police. King was also accused of pocketing some of the money. He denied all wrongdoing.
AAN Staff
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