Not every act of charity is what it appears to be. That’s the lesson from a particularly cruel theft that took place in Australia recently.
Twenty-two-year-old Lachlan Morgantie has pleaded guilty to theft in the Ballarat Magistrates Court (Ballarat is a city in Australia). He admits that he stole $64,000 from a fundraiser that he himself organized, allegedly to support the family of murder victim Hannah McGuire. Mcguire was found dead inside a burned out car about 15 miles south of Ballarat on April 5. Her boyfriend, 21-year-old Lachlan Young, has been charged with her murder. He has not yet made a plea.
Morganti, who organized the online GoFundMe project for the family of McGuire, didn’t send a single penny their way. Hannah McGuire’s mother, Debbie McGuire, said Morganti not only violated her family’s trust but that of everyone in the community and everyone who donated to the cause. Mrs. McGuire never received any of the more than $64,000 donated in her slain daughter’s name.
She said that instead of focusing on Hannah’s murder, her attention has been “diverted elsewhere.”
Mrs. McGuire said that initially she did not want to believe anything bad of Morganti. One onlooker to the situation described him as “vile,” McGuire said while giving her victim impact statement, which she found “harsh.” But after considering what Morganti did, McGuire said she herself could not think of a better way to describe the man.
Morganti’s defense team tried to paint him as a victim of mental health struggles and as a man who was enslaved to a gambling addiction. Gambling is where the charitable money appears to have gone. The man’s lawyers said he’s had a problem with gambling since he was 18. By April of this year, they said, he had already spent $10,000 on his addictive hobby.
Debbie McGuire said the family will now not be able to spend the donated money as they intended to, and that she feels heartbroken for the people who donated it in good faith to honor her daughter.
Morganti will be sentenced on October 1.
