Under the guise of a sob story about a man allegedly assaulting her with a brick, Roda Osman raised over $40,000 via GoFundMe last year, but now authorities believe it was a scam.
After being “charged with felony theft by deception,” she “was expected to turn herself in to police, but didn’t show up [last] Thursday,” KPRC reports. And now she’s on the lam. If convicted, Osman could spend up to 10 years in prison for this crime.
It all started last September in Houston. Police officers were responding to an incident of aggravated assault. Per “the original police report made at the scene, Osman claimed that she was walking on Schumacher Lane where an unknown man threw a brick at her when she would not give him her phone number.”
In a social media post that went viral, Osman who appeared to be clad “in a hospital gown with a swollen face” tearfully addressed the camera. “[H]e picked up a brick in front of so many men, and was like ‘What you gonna do?”
She accused the onlooking men of standing idly by and doing nothing. “And I told all these men, like yo, why does this man got a brick on my face?”
Over the next two months, the “Help Roda Recover” GoFundMe page raised more than $42,000. The description of the now removed page read: “My good friend Roda was viciously attacked with a brick by a man she refused to give her number. She was surrounded by onlookers who stood by and did nothing to help her – not even calling an ambulance.”
Osman also told authorities that she subsequently ordered an Uber and was convinced the brick-thrower was her driver. She then made allegations that he tried to kidnap her, and stated that “The suspect was involved in human trafficking and had a large group of women in the car with him.”
As the investigation continued, however, evidence disproving Osman’s assertions began to mount. Houston police detectives obtained surveillance video which showed Osman “with a friend, and the man she later identified as the person who hit her. They got into a car together and then exited the car…[Then] the footage showed Osman slapping the man, and then he hit her back, with a water bottle in his hand.”
Keith Houston, an employee of the Harris County District Attorney’s Office said, “We think that’s what left the mark on her face…But it was mutual combat.”
“GoFundMe has zero tolerance for the misuse of our platform and cooperates with law enforcement investigations of those accused of wrongdoing,” said a spokesperson for the fundraising platform. “The fundraiser has been removed from the platform, all donors have been refunded, and Roda Osman has been banned from using the platform for any future fundraisers.”
Shockingly enough, this wasn’t even Osman’s first GoFundMe for an alleged assault. In 2020, she created a page claiming that a private security guard assaulted her in Minneapolis “and suffered a black eye, facial contusions and injuries to her leg,” as a result.
She requested approximately $5,000 to help cover medical expenses, legal fees, and other associated costs. We do not know if she received funds for this campaign, but it has also been taken down by GoFundMe.