Judge Orders Couple to Hand over Cash Raised for Homeless Veteran

A judge has ordered a New Jersey couple to hand over the last portion of the money they raised to help a homeless veteran, a report says.

When Katie McClure and her boyfriend, Mark D’Amico, first met homeless veteran Johnny Bobbitt, they volunteered to start a GoFundMe campaign to benefit the man, NBC reported.

But the veteran soon accused the couple of withholding some of the more than $400,000 the campaign raised. In the ruling, a judge in New Jersey also ordered the couple to provide an accounting of all the money earned through the Internet fundraising campaign.

The couple became invested in helping the veteran when he gave them his last $20 when he saw McClure on the side of a Philadelphia highway after her car ran out of gas.

But, their relationship soured when Bobbitt insisted that the couple had not handed over all the cash raised for him.

Other reports noted that McClure recently made a slew of high dollar purchases that she claims she paid for from her own funds. Some reports said McClure recently bought a new BMW car and took an expensive trip to California.

For his part, D’Amico said that they did not give the veteran the whole amount at once because they fear he has a drug problem and that he will not spend the money responsibly.

Indeed, the couple bought a camper for the veteran and even found a place on family property to park it, but the veteran was kicked out not long afterward making him homeless once again. D’Amico also said that they gave Bobbitt $25,000 in one chunk, but he spent it all in less than two weeks.

D’Amico said that there was still about $150,000 of the sum raised that remains in the account.

Indeed, D’Amico was belligerent over the situation. “Write what you want,” he told the Philadelphia Inquirer. “Giving him all that money, it’s never going to happen. I’ll burn it in front of him.”

An attorney retained by the veteran said that they feared that the money would disappear before an accounting was provided to the court but would not respond to questions about their intentions to sue the couple for money beyond that raised with the GoFundMe campaign.

Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston.