justice4falum - Tumblr blog

justice4falum · 5 years ago

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do NOT give money to tumblr user roboticwheelchair

Hi, so you’ve probably seen this post or some of its permutations on this website lately! (The old version of this post broke because I mistakenly deleted it. Let’s try this again, shall we?)

This is a “RAFFLE” for a Nintendo Switch Lite and the poster is asking people send them $10 to earn a spot in the raffle, of which there are 52. People have already sent money in.

This post was made by user roboticwheelchair and the name which currently displays on their paypal is “Mick Garcia” - it’s very possible you’ve heard their story already from several weeks ago. User roboticwheelchair claims that they were physically assaulted for being a transgender man, and that they sustained a concussion.

The BAD news is that roboticwheelchair is a blog which has been on tumblr for a very long time, and used to belong to someone named Falum Gibson. You may have heard this name from their #justice4falum campaign ages ago. They are a notorious scammer and has been doing this since 2016. LET��S REVIEW (LONG, LONG, LONG POST AHEAD.)

Part 1: #BieberMeetFalum and Meeting Ed Sheeran

In 2016, Falum ran a Justin Bieber fan account on Twitter called @bieberfreezer (account has since been suspended). They began a campaign called #BieberMeetFalum by posting a Twitter thread about their disability, cerebral palsy, and how they had intended to meet Justin Bieber personally because his music was important to them. However, the venue he was performing at was not wheelchair accessible and Falum uses an electric wheelchair. They were trying to get the attention of him or his team in order to ensure they met. (LINK)

This was a reasonable thing to post about! Accessibility is a necessity. We know this. And they weren’t asking for money. Twitter got this the attention it needed and they were able to meet Bieber despite the trouble. (LINK)

Later on, they gunned to meet Ed Sheeran and succeeded.

Part 2: #TaylorNoticeFalum

In 2018, Falum was on Tumblr as user taylorsgetawaycarxo. At this point they still say they have cerebral palsy, but has also said they have COPD (something they later will drop.) Claiming that they are terminally ill and has 2 years left to live, they talk about how Taylor Swift is their idol and they want to meet her before they die.

This came right after they had done the same thing with Demi Lovato fans, claiming they idolised Demi and needed to meet her, so on and so forth. They ran a GoFundMe for this.

The GoFundMe is now defunct, but the URL was “falumlastwish” I believe. Here’s where the plot gets a little lost, because the sheer number of different GoFundMes, donation posts, and meet-a-celebrity campaigns that Falum was running in these couple of years is... pretty wild. There’s a post from another blog here on Tumblr about the Taylor Swift fandom’s run-in with them. (LINK)

Here’s a GoFundMe they ran from a music fan account on Instagram, where they were asking for help escaping homelessness. They raised almost 5,000 dollars out of the 10,000 they were asking. (LINK)

At some point they also ran a GoFundMe for a PTSD service dog. I’m not sure how much they were asking for this one, but they apparently made $880 off of it.

Part 3: Ellie Elizabeth

This part is a little muddled, because the tumblr blog connected to it has been deleted and it’s really difficult to find archives of the posts, but at some point in early 2019 Falum started using the blog ellie-elizabeth21 to ask for money as well. The story was that they were being sent to conversion therapy for being bisexual by their father, who had them deemed legally mentally incompetent. Further stories they posted about were potential evictions, needs for grocery money, etc.

Here’s a link to an imgur album of some of the posts this account made. Many of them achieved their goal of over $200 or more. (LINK)

“Ellie” also ran a GoFundMe to escape conversion therapy. Although the person running the campaign was listed as Ellie Elizabeth, the “beneficiary” listed on the campaign is Falum Gibson, proving that Ellie was another pseudonym - just a better hidden one. Here’s the link to that GoFundMe, where you can see it for yourself. (LINK)

This was Ellie Elizabeth’s PayPal account at the time, I believe? And anyway, you might note that they apparently made nearly $6,500 on this account.

Part 4: #Justice4Falum

Now in November of 2019, Falum moved away from the world of Fan Internet and decided to try out something new. They made the blog roboticwheelchair in September of 2019 and reblogged a photoset of cats to it, which for a while was the only thing on the blog besides the donation post they initially made. They’ve gone through a cycle of reblogging and deleting things there, basically clearing out the blog every couple of weeks to make a new post.

At this point they were also @falumgibson on Twitter. The account has since been locked. This is when they posted a GoFundMe describing medical abuse they were allegedly undergoing at the Ottawa Hospital. Weird side note, this GoFundMe is still running and can be donated to, though obviously I’m recommending you don’t do so. (LINK)

They made several donation posts on Tumblr about this campaign, frequently linking it or their PayPal account and asking people to donate. Sometimes it was to go directly to their legal fund for this lawsuit, other times they were asking for money for medications or other immediate costs.

Side note, they had claimed to be in the hospital since August of 2019 due to suicidal ideation and claimed they had been psych warded. From what I can tell, the Ottawa Hospital General Campus they claimed to be hospitalised at does not actually have a psychiatric ward. It has a mental health team, but they appear to do outpatient work. It’s not really clear what they were in the hospital for at this point.

#Justice4Falum was originally about fundraising for a place to live because apparently they were in danger of being forced to leave the hospital due to homelessness. Later on they turned it into a legal fund to sue the hospital for mistreatment.

Part 5: Further Fundraising, Coming Out As Trans

While Falum was in the hospital, they started identifying as nonbinary. I’m not in any position to speculate about whether or not Falum is transgender, because that’s honestly not the point. Either way, they have started using their trans identity in much the way they use their disabilities - as a way to garner sympathy and trust, and to scam people out of money.

On their Twitter at this point, they did seem to have kind of a bizarre interpretation of how transition worked and appeared to be under the impression that the first thing trans men do is get top surgery? (LINK)

Shortly after this, still during the November that #Justice4Falum ran during, they began asking for donations to a different PayPal account than their normal one, because their stepdad was dying of cancer. There was a GoFundMe for this as well, but it appeared to feature their parents and was possibly not created by Falum.

No date on this tweet unfortunately, but right after that, they made a post about how they had been outed to their transphobic father and needed to escape living with him.

At this point, Falum has added several diagnoses to those they claim to have. In addition to cerebral palsy, they now claim to have multiple sclerosis and several mental illnesses. No more COPD, though! I’m very impressed that they recovered from a terminal illness!

Now that they’re out of the closet, in early December they begin making donation posts on Tumblr again and have now made a Patreon. (LINK: POST) (LINK: PATREON) Soon after this, they apparently left their home and became homeless, and started posting about this on Twitter and linking their PayPal.

In late December they posted on Twitter about having attempted suicide by taking 75 extra strength Tylenol. Warning for a photograph of their IV in this link. (LINK)

Not very long after, Falum returned to their narrative of being terminally ill by posting about how their multiple sclerosis (something they have only claimed since 2019, I believe) causes them over 20 seizures a day and will eventually kill them. (LINK)

Then they locked their Twitter account and decided to try something new.

Part 6: Connor Kay, “anontransman”

Enter Connor Kay. At this point Falum makes a new Twitter account called @ConnorIsTrans which eventually morphs into @anontransman. They initially link this account to their old main account, saying that they’ve switched in order to be openly trans on their new account because their transphobic father is stalking them. (LINK)

They continue asking for donations on Twitter, now with a Ko-Fi account called Connor Rocks.

They also post a story about an ex-friend of theirs spitting on them for being trans, apparently, and say they’re calling the police on her, which really doesn’t seem like something that’d be safe for a disabled trans person to do but whatever. (LINK)

On their blog at roboticwheelchair, they post stories about how they are being assaulted and mocked for being transgender. I should note that on Twitter they’ve said they are not out IRL and have not taken steps to transition.

Not only does this particular story sound kind of like the “down with cis bus” post, it’s also somewhat suspect that they allege they were called a tr*nny as an AFAB trans person, given who is generally targeted by that word. But. Moving on.

When the COVID-19 pandemic came around, Connor created a Facebook group for disability support. This was run by the Facebook account Connor Kay, which has since been deleted. It was the same account that they used to have and they’d not changed anything except for the name; prior posts showed it was Falum Gibson’s account.

It turns out they deleted this Facebook account because someone on Facebook posted about their years-long history of scamming people online. Here’s a link to an imgur album of some of the Facebook callout and the images the OP posted. (LINK)

So Falum, or Connor, decides to start anew with an all new PayPal, Ko-Fi, Patreon and Twitter account. At this point they begin to break away from linking these accounts to the name Falum Gibson and their past donation posts, although they are still using the same Tumblr blog. They change their Twitter handle to @anontransman and remove links to Falum. (TWITTER SCREENCAP) (KO-FI SCREENCAP) (PATREON SCREENCAP)

Then they tweet about how they have been diagnosed with cancer. (LINK) Then they begin asking for $100k to go to the US for treatment. (LINK)

Soon after, this Tweet has been completely deleted and they have instead started asking for money for top surgery. (LINK) I believe this is in reverse chronological order, but here are a week’s worth of tweets from them - all deleted at random times in order to make room for the others - asking for money for various reasons. Yes, this was all literally within the same week. (LINK)

Note the very last image of that album contains a reference to an “Amazon Raffle” - they were basically telling people that donations would win them a spot in a raffle for an Amazon gift card or something? It seems they moved on from the @anontransman account before the raffle could come to fruition, or possibly that they just deleted all references to it. Not sure.

In April of 2020, roboticwheelchair posted a specific donation post about being attacked for being transgender and sustaining a concussion. They said they did not see a doctor after the assault because they didn’t think it was important, so their concussion went untreated and because of it they were unable to get groceries. The donation post linked to Connor Kay’s PayPal account. It was deleted and reposted several different times, with basically the same text.

Part 7: Mick Garcia

This is a more recent post with the exact same story, now about their multiple sclerosis medication. The only difference is now that the PayPal link sends you to the PayPal of Mick Garcia. Mick Garcia has a different PayPal username than Falum, Ellie, and Connor did.

On April 12th, the @anontransman account deactivated after Falum, or Ellie, or Connor, or Mick decided to leave Twitter. Then yesterday on April 19th, it reactivated and they tweeted once again.

However, around this same time, another Twitter account under the name Mick Garcia with an icon @anontransman used to use and a very similar tone/style cropped up.

The Mick Garcia account has not tweeted yet, as it appears that they may be staying with @anontransman for their current purposes, but it appears that for some reason or another they’ve decided to start going by Mick Garcia now.

I guess it’s probably relevant to note that while I suppose there are probably some white people out there with the last name Garcia, Falum is really seriously white and it’s suspect they would pick out Garcia as a pseudonym, whether they list “white” in their Twitter bio or not.

More from the current state of the roboticwheelchair blog includes many, many posts where they’re either reposting their own petitions or basically grabbing for as many followers as possible. You can probably guess why. (LINK)

As of April 20th, 2020, there are 2 donation posts still standing on their blog. Here are both of them. (LINK)

Finally, The Switch Raffle

Literally today, April 20th, roboticwheelchair posted something that is allegedly a raffle. They claim to be giving away a Nintendo Switch Lite to a lucky winner. There are 52 slots in the raffle; they are asking that people send them $10 over PayPal in order to enter. They’re also claiming this is to further fundraise for their medication.

They are claiming their doctor has put them on an MS medication that costs $450 every two weeks. (Note that if they’re trying to make money for that right now and also going to buy a Switch for the winner, than they’d only have about half of that at the end? The Switch Lite is about $260 in Canada and their total earnings from a full raffle would be $520.)

You should not give money to them for this raffle, or for any reason. The reason I’m compiling all of this is because after months of seeing them pull this scam over and over again, they’re now promising people an actual product that given their history, I would say they are highly unlikely to deliver.

Given their past, it is most likely they will delete this raffle once they have the money they want, and refuse to allude to it ever again. Or maybe they’ll just disappear! Or hell, maybe they’ll have some kind of nebulous problem ordering the Switch when someone wins, and that’ll be that.

But it’s clear based on this history, I hope, that Falum or Ellie or Connor or Mick has a long history of taking lots and lots of money from strangers online. Like, a lot of money. My estimate is that they’ve made over $15k on this, and that’s exclusively based off of the visible numbers on their GoFundMes and Ko-Fi accounts.

Please do not give this person your money. They are not trustworthy. There are other people who need it - like you, or maybe like, someone you personally know and not some complete stranger who keeps telling people they’re terminally ill so they can meet a cool musician.

Disclaimer

I’ve compiled all of this information to the best of my ability, but I am just one person and it took a lot of digging due to the deleted accounts involved.

Falum is actually disabled; I believe they do have cerebral palsy and may have other disabilities. I do not know if they really have MS, but it’s hard to trust them because they previously lied about having terminal COPD.

I have no idea if Falum is really transgender or not. They have apparently taken no concrete steps to transition, which I know means very little. That being said, if they are transgender, they are leveraging their identity in dangerous ways against other people for money and sympathy. Their stories about being assaulted by strangers for being transgender are highly suspect, given their lack of transition and the fact that the scenarios they describe are highly cliche.

Finally, I’m not trying to harass Falum or threaten them in any way. I don’t know them. If they’re interested in talking candidly about what they have been doing all these years and why, that’s fine. I would honestly love to understand, but at this point it seems like the only thing they can do is apologise for their dishonesty and stop doing this.

Reblog this post if you want! The point is to get the word out there, because this person has been a pervasive presence on this website for some time and has not yet been called out.

#tumblr scam #signal boost #donations #falum gibson #roboticwheelchair #anontransman #connor kay #mick garcia #ellie elizabeth

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