CAMDEN – Mark D’Amico, who launched a phony GoFundMe campaign to help a homeless veteran and then spent much of the money on his own pleasures, traveled “a road to hell … paved with good intentions” according to his defense attorney.
“Initially, (his) intentions were pure and altruistic,” the lawyer, Mark G. Davis, asserted in a filing before D’Amico’s sentencing hearing Friday in Camden federal court.
Authorities say D’Amico and his then-girlfriend Kate McClure falsely portrayed their victim, Johnny Bobbitt Jr., as a Good Samaritan in need of a helping hand.
Their feel-good story, told with Bobbitt’s cooperation, raised more than $400,000 in donations.
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And D’Amico expected all of the donations would “aid and benefit Bobbitt in his road to recovery,” Davis claimed.
But more than $50,000 in gifts and cash given to Bobbitt only funded the former Marine’s drug addiction before D’Amico cut him off, the lawyer contended.
And then D’Amico surrendered to the lure of his own vices, Davis said.
The former Florence man “placed himself squarely in the middle of a media frenzy, with unfettered access to the remaining monies and a debilitating penchant for risk taking and gambling,” Davis said in a sentencing memorandum for U.S. District Judge Noel Hillman.
The memo urged Hillman to sentence D’Amico to prison time…
