Well, I've officially had the one of the most surreal 24 hours of my life. Given that this is completely uncharted territory, I'm going to try to explain this situation via a short timeline of events.
* After the events from Saturday night and Sunday morning concerning the safety of the Orangebloods poster
@hornsfan65, the Orangebloods staff spent the better part of Sunday and today working will law enforcement officials to confirm what had allegedly occurred on the message board. There wasn't a phone number listed in the user's contact information and none of the other listed information was current/correct, so initial efforts to provide both aid and confirmation were unsuccessful.
* By the end of this morning, we had very, very strong reasons to believe that the story that
@hornsfan65 had told on the site had been untrue. Anwar Richardson led the investigation for us all day today and eventually confirmed through Amarillo police that
@hornsfan65 was alive. The police had spoken with
@hornsfan65 and that he confirmed that he was safe and claimed his account had been hacked over the weekend. While on a three-way call with Anwar and the police officer, we requested that the officer contact
@hornsfan65 and ask if we could contact him.
* Less than an hour ago, Anwar and I spoke with
@hornsfan65 over the phone. According to him, he has not used his Orangebloods account in quite a while and he can't explain how this situation occurred or who might have made the posts under his account if it wasn't him. Honestly, we asked a number of questions that he just didn't have answers for and it means that as of this very second, I can't fully explain situation this with complete detail, even if I have strong suspicions about what happened.
The best possible news is that we didn't lose an Orangebloods member this weekend in horrific fashion. I keep reminding myself that this is all that matters. I want to express to everyone that I made repeated attempts to check on his safety and state of mind, imploring with him to talk with us if he needed someone to talk to. However, he was quite insistent that he was in good health and of sound mind.
The bad news is that the a lot of people, including myself, were taken advantage of. All the members of this community wanted to do was be there for someone in a moment of need and that amazing amount of good faith was taken advantage of.
I don't know what else to say other than these three things:
1. Everyone who contributed to the fund that
@echeese established in the last 24 hours will have their money refunded. I've told Chuck that I will work hand in hand in any capacity needed to make sure this is done in quick fashion.
2. There is still an active investigation about this on our end. I wouldn't normally write something before an investigation concludes, but this matter required urgent communication between myself and the board.
3. We will work to create a vetting process exists for any fund that is promoted on the site moving forward. We were all just trying to do the right thing, but in the future we're going to have to wait until situations are fully vetted before we support and allow for donations to take place.
A few people have told me that I don't have anything to be sorry about as it relates to all of this, but I don't believe that to be true. The buck stops with me and in retrospect, I would do things a little different today with the ability of a little hindsight.
My sincere apologies.
gk
