Jessica Chambers has lots of people who remember her, and hundreds more who want to help find out who killed her. Support for the family has been steady and deep.
But some people want to use the death of Jessica Chambers as an opportunity to put money in their own pockets, relying on public outrage over her murder and the kindness of strangers to bring in cash that the Chambers family will never see.
District Attorney John Champion has said that he has no new news to share with the public about the investigation into Chambers’ death. He did say that more people are donating to the reward fund for information leading police to Jessica’s murderer.
But local news is also finding that people in the area of Panola County, Mississippi are tired of talking about the whole thing. They want the police and FBI to do their jobs, but they want reporters and others to stop stirring for stories in the area.
It is in this setting that news of scammers seeking to profit from the grief of the family is found.
A friend of the Chambers’ family had helped set up a GoFundMe campaign to help raise money for covering all the “expenses for Jessica such as funeral, headstone and or Medical bills.”
So far, the official GoFundMe account has raised almost $21,000. That money will not go far. Jessica’s sister Amanda Prince has said that the family received “Jessica’s first bill yesterday which exceeds $13,000.”
This campaign is one of only two that the Chambers family acknowledges as associated with them. The other was set up to raise more reward money, but has since been taken down.
But it is not the only campaign of this type that has tried to get money in Jessica’s name. A woman named Janet Posey was arrested and charged with one count of attempted false pretense and one count of communications fraud for allegedly setting up a scam to fundraise donations for Chambers’ family.
“Family members and friends of the family brought their concerns about the site to our attention,” Attorney General Jim Hood said. “She was trying to get people to give money and acting as if she was a family member. We got online, found her internet protocol address, she tried to cover it up. Our investigators will continue to work and see who else is involved.”