‘This cannot happen to another family like us’

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This article was published 11/11/2022 (731 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A grieving family is heartbroken after an online fundraiser using the name and image of their late son collected nearly $12,000 in allegedly fraudulent donations.

The reported fake online crowd-funding campaign was set up after 17-year-old David Bunguke died in a car accident last month and it purported to be supporting the teen’s family. But the fundraiser’s organizer was never in contact with the family and the listed beneficiary is not someone they know, said David’s father John Bunguke.

He said Saturday he’s filed a report with the Winnipeg Police Service. The police service confirmed it received a report Nov. 8 and its financial crime unit is investigating.

Initially, the family thought someone was organizing the fundraiser on their behalf (another GoFundMe page was set up by one of David’s close friends and has raised more than $7,000).

The title of the allegedly fake fundraiser is “David Saleh’s family.” Saleh was David’s middle name, so Bunguke said he assumed the organizer knew him. But after a week passed with no contact from the organizer, who didn’t respond when Bunguke reached out via the platform’s messaging feature, he said he realized “Something is fishy.”

Bunguke said he hopes the perpetrators are caught and that donors get their money back.

“This is very bad. Where is the money?” he said, adding he doesn’t care so much that his family lost out on donations that were intended to cover funeral costs; he just hopes the community can have “peace of mind.”

“It is very bad in society to have something like this, and someone take advantage of this. This cannot happen to another family like us.”

GoFundMe did not respond to requests for comment from the Free Press. A company spokesperson previously told CTV News the organization is investigating and has a donation refund guarantee “in the rare case something isn’t right.”

David Bunguke was a 17-year-old high school graduate and talented soccer player who died in a car crash Oct. 18 in Old St. Vital. The presumed fraudulent GoFundMe page raised $11,881 before the fundraiser was closed to donations. The beneficiary’s name was listed as “Alofideb Alhasgji.”

The Free Press reached out to that fundraiser’s organizer but didn’t hear back. The link to that fundraiser was shared by at least one local soccer club in an attempt to help his family in the immediate aftermath of David’s death.

During a livestreamed celebration of life for David on Oct. 29, his friends described him as positive and kind, with a lot of friends and a smile that could make anyone’s day better. His eldest sister described him as a “great man in the making.”

The family is Congolese and has long been involved in the soccer community. His father said David started watching soccer on television and playing it with his uncle in Nairobi when he was “too young” — two years old. He had a natural talent for it, and after the family moved to Canada, he began playing for a local league when he was nine.

David travelled all over Canada and the U.S. as a centre midfielder and represented Manitoba at this year’s Canada Summer Games. He was being recruited by several U.S. and Canadian colleges and universities to play soccer.

About a week before he died, his mother Sylvie Musobwa told him she was worried about him being out with his friends. He told her all of his friends were good.

“What I want to say to parents like me… pray for our children, because our worries won’t save them at all,” she said in Swahili, through a translator, and asked the community to continue to pray for their family.

David was a passenger in a car that sped out of control and hit a pole off of St. Mary’s Road. The driver was initially taken to hospital in critical condition but was upgraded to stable.

“We are very, very heartbreak about this issue. We lost our son. And then the money which they donated, this money again lost. So, like, we lost double,” David’s father said Saturday.

He said the family hopes to set up a youth soccer foundation in memory of their only son.

“We are thinking to create some legacies which will help other youth like David in the community,” Bunguke said.

“It will be there so other people will continue to remember him.”

katie.may@winnipegfreepress.com