Joplin Tornado Fake Charities Scam Thousands Of Dollars

Authorities: Order unlikely to stop phony Internet tornado scam

By Jeff Lehr news@joplinglobe.com

The Joplin Globe

Fri Aug 19, 2011, 07:56 PM CDT

JOPLIN, Mo. - A Jasper County judge issued a temporary restraining order Friday against an Internet radio business operator accused of falsely claiming to help victims of the Joplin and Tuscaloosa tornadoes through T-shirt sales and phony benefit concerts.

Circuit Judge David Mouton issued the order against Steven Blood II and his company, Georgia Triangle Broadcasting, at the request of the Missouri attorney general's office, but acknowledged the state court's limits in issuing such an order.

Blood, who uses the Internet aliases of "Cowboy Bill" and "Woody Nelson," first prompted legal action by Attorney General Chris Koster in July by falsely claiming on his three websites and on various Facebook pages to be helping tornado victims in Joplin and Tuscaloosa with the sale of "Storm Aid" T-shirts and by setting up benefit concerts in Missouri and Alabama and selling sponsorships for those concerts.

PayPal links on the websites allowed Blood to receive about $20,000 from donations or T-shirt sales by early July, without any of the money having been passed to tornado victims, according to court documents filed by the attorney general's office on Wednesday.

In the meantime, Blood's PayPal account remains active and all he would need to resume collecting donations and engaging in sales of merchandise would be to place a link on any of the various pages, according to court documents.

"Taken as a whole, it looks as though Defendant Steven W. Blood II is creating another set of websites, Facebook pages and other social media outlets and is poised to restart his scheme of creating and soliciting for fake charity concerts," the court documents read.

Mouton's order prohibits Blood and Georgia Triangle Broadcasting from soliciting charitable donations, selling merchandise or concert tickets or advertising on behalf of Joplin tornado victims or any other charitable cause. It also orders the surrender of any funds thus solicited or collected to the Missouri attorney general's merchandising practices restitution fund.

But the judge's order also acknowledges that online charitable solicitations and merchandise sales made in other states fall outside the Jasper County Circuit Court jurisdiction.