Children with cancer scammed out of millions fundraised for their treatment

Re:Children with cancer scammed out of millions fundraised f... by eleveriven on Tuesday December 16, 2025 @05:20AM (#46286854)

The fact that families have to crowdfund lifesaving care creates the vulnerability but it doesn't force anyone to build an industrialized scam on top of it

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Re:Children with cancer scammed out of millions fundraised f... by MSFT_Edging on Tuesday December 16, 2025 @07:47AM (#46287842)

> doesn't force anyone to build an industrialized scam on top of it

The incentives are there. Our economy runs on incentives. Create a vulnerable group and the sharks smell blood in the water.

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Re:Children with cancer scammed out of millions fundraised f... by laughingcurve on Tuesday December 16, 2025 @08:58AM (#46288534)

Incentives don’t remove agency. They might have incentives… but these are awful scum who deserve nothing but contempt

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Re:Children with cancer scammed out of millions fundraised f... by MSFT_Edging on Tuesday December 16, 2025 @10:04AM (#46289376)

No but it provides a framework to begin thinking about ways we can protect the vulnerable from these contemptible but totally predictable bad actors.

For example, families forced to publicly beg for money to provide their sick children with treatment. What societal structures enable this situation to occur? Who is profiting off of this structure?

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Re:Children with cancer scammed out of millions fundraised f... by pbhjpbhj on Tuesday December 16, 2025 @02:23PM (#46293101)

You'd have to be inconscionably crass to profiteer off charities treating kids for cancer ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_J._Trump_Foundation "Granting money to charities that rented Trump Organization facilities".

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Re:Children with cancer scammed out of millions fundraised f... by IAmBroom on Tuesday December 16, 2025 @09:19AM (#46288778)

Well, that's a pretty bold stance. Scammers who steal from dying children are bad people? Geez...

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Re:Children with cancer scammed out of millions fundraised f... by xeonmc on Tuesday December 16, 2025 @05:36AM (#46286970)

    Local man embezzles $20,000 meant to keep 200 orphans from being crushed in the orphan-crushing machine.

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Re:Children with cancer scammed out of millions fundraised f... by lionkor on Tuesday December 16, 2025 @06:43AM (#46287402)

Orphan crushing machine operator: "If I don't do it, someone else will"

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Re:Children with cancer scammed out of millions fundraised f... by j-krieger on Tuesday December 16, 2025 @07:03AM (#46287530)

Orphan crushing proponent: "Why should I pay for orphans not to be crushed??"

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Re:Children with cancer scammed out of millions fundraised f... by fireflash38 on Tuesday December 16, 2025 @08:13AM (#46288094)

There's money to be made on arbitration of orphan crushing! If I don't do it someone else will.

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Re:Children with cancer scammed out of millions fundraised f... by reactordev on Tuesday December 16, 2025 @08:32AM (#46288285)

Introducing “The Automatic Orphan Crusher 9000” complete with conveyor belt fed chutes and titanium jaws, no orphan can escape! Just place a piece of candy…”

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Re:Children with cancer scammed out of millions fundraised f... by barbazoo on Tuesday December 16, 2025 @10:23AM (#46289651)

Does it have AI?

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Re:Children with cancer scammed out of millions fundraised f... by reactordev on Tuesday December 16, 2025 @10:56AM (#46290126)

That would be part of our Orphan Industries plan for managing output of your 9000s on the industrial floor. Sure. Monitor throughput and TTK right there from the app.

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Re:Children with cancer scammed out of millions fundraised f... by 867-5309 on Tuesday December 16, 2025 @06:01AM (#46287124)

there is no trolley

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Re:Children with cancer scammed out of millions fundraised f... by fwipsy on Tuesday December 16, 2025 @10:53AM (#46290085)

This framing is disingenuous. We're meant to say "tear down the orphan-crushing machine!" But in this case there's no machine, only human mortality. You're substituting a simple question ("why are we crushing orphans?") for a complex one ("who should pay for poor children's healthcare?")

Also, the scale seems much larger than $20k.

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Re:Children with cancer scammed out of millions fundraised f... by philipallstar on Tuesday December 16, 2025 @07:14AM (#46287603)

No-one is hoarding a free and easy supply of treatments. They're all hard-won advancements. The vulnerability is there by default.

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Re:Children with cancer scammed out of millions fundraised f... by delfinom on Tuesday December 16, 2025 @07:24AM (#46287684)

>but it doesn't force anyone to build an industrialized scam on top of it

I mean almost the entirety of the US healthcare system is a industrialized scam engineered by middlemen

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Re:Children with cancer scammed out of millions fundraised f... by hermannj314 on Tuesday December 16, 2025 @08:40AM (#46288359)

Whether taxes, health insurance, the Church, or gofundme, technically all life saving care is mostly crowd-funded. Maybe not in some Wild West dystopia, but generally the pooling of funds seems to work better than solo funding.

Involuntary, progressive crowdfunding through government threat of violence (taxes) seems to work better than the other methods and most consider it humane. Americans have shown little interest historically in doing the humane thing, unfortunately.

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Re:Children with cancer scammed out of millions fundraised f... by buellerbueller on Tuesday December 16, 2025 @09:55AM (#46289278)

Taxes: the price one must pay for civilization.

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