Prosecutors say homeless vet’s heartwarming story that garnered $400,000 was a lie

A couple’s feel-good story, about a homeless veteran who had helped a woman after she ran out of gas on a highway exit ramp, reverberated widely, drawing high-profile media appearances and more than $400,000 in donations that the couple said would go to help the veteran.

But on Thursday, the last vestiges of the story appeared to come tumbling down after law enforcement officials in New Jersey announced theft charges against all three individuals: the couple, Kate McClure and Mark D’Amico, as well as Johnny Bobbitt, the homeless man they said they were going to support with the money that had flowed in.

Officials said the trio’s story, which was published on GoFundMe with the title “Paying it Forward,” in November 2017, was all a ruse, a conspiracy on the part of all three to commit theft.

“The entire campaign was predicated on a lie,” Scott Coffina, the prosecutor of Burlington County in New Jersey, said at a news conference on Thursday.

Coffina said no assistance was ever given at or near a gas station, citing some of the more than 60,000 text messages he said investigators had pored over in the case.

“Ok so wait the gas part is completely made up, but the guy isn’t,” McClure texted a friend less than an hour after the GoFundMe page went live, Coffina said. “I had to make something up to make people feel bad. So shush about the made up stuff.”

“She did not run out of gas on an I-95 off-ramp, and he did not spend his last $20 to help her,” the prosecutor said.