GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — Their signs tug at your heart: They need money for the funeral of a little girl, or a little boy, depending on which street corner they're standing on.
The men and women carrying them are showing up all over the Grand Rapids area. But where is that money really going?
Grand Rapids police warn it's a likely scam.
Target 8 encountered half a dozen men and women working the corners at Fuller Avenue and Leonard Street NE on Wednesday, each holding a sign asking for money for a little girl's funeral.
![A man holds a poster at the corner of Fuller Avenue and Leonard Street in Grand Rapids. (June 5, 2024)]()
A man holds a poster at the corner of Fuller Avenue and Leonard Street in Grand Rapids. (June 5, 2024) ![A woman holds a poster at the corner of Fuller Avenue and Leonard Street in Grand Rapids. (June 5, 2024)]()
A woman holds a poster at the corner of Fuller Avenue and Leonard Street in Grand Rapids. (June 5, 2024) ![A woman holds a poster at the corner of Fuller Avenue and Leonard Street in Grand Rapids. (June 5, 2024)]()
A woman holds a poster at the corner of Fuller Avenue and Leonard Street in Grand Rapids. (June 5, 2024)
"Don't speak English," said one of the sign-toting women, who pointed to a woman just a few yards away who, she said, spoke English.
This was mid-afternoon, the streets busy with traffic. She wouldn't say where the funeral was, or when the little girl died. The signs include a photo of a girl, list her name as Anna and say she was 6 when she died of leukemia.
The woman down the sidewalk refused to talk, other than to say, "What the (expletive), man?"
Then it was on to a sign-toting man across the intersection, who struck a Target 8 reporter with his sign.
A Grand Rapids police spokeswoman said the department has "information that this is a traveling group that is attempting to solicit funds with fraudulent means in the area."
While soliciting donations in public is protected by the First Amendment, the spokeswoman said state law and local ordinances prohibit it if it involves fraud.
In recent years, groups with similar funeral signs have popped up across the country, including South Bend, Indiana; Nashville, Tennessee; and Rialto, California.
"They're organized groups that go around soliciting money," Rialto Police Corporal Mike Martinez said.
It stopped about a year and a half ago in Rialto after police arrested half a dozen on fraud charges, Martinez said. He recommended that potential donors should not give.
"As sorry as it is to say, don't do it, don't trust them," he said. "It's unfortunate, but in these times, people are out there trying to make a quick buck and in this particular incident they are preying on people's feelings. We have good people out there. There's a lot of good people and they want to help, but unfortunately these groups take advantage of that and they know it and they make hundreds of dollars on the day per person.
"They do get aggressive, they're known to get aggressive," Martinez said.
Ruben Flores of Grand Rapids gave a dollar Wednesday to a woman who said she was from Ecuador. She and others took up all four corners at Michigan Street and Fuller Avenue NE.
"So that's your daughter? She die?" Flores asked the woman.
"Yeah, so thank you so much," she said.
After being told it was a likely scam, Flores confronted the group.
"One from Ecuador, one from Romania, one from Italy and the one who was here said she was from Mexico," he explained, while motioning from one corner to the other.
"When you have these people doing this and basically using a little child, they're taking advantage of people, they're taking their kindness for weakness," he said.
On Thursday, at Eastern Avenue and 28th Street SE, two women with signs and buckets weaved between cars. But instead of raising money for 6-year-old Anna, who died of leukemia, this was for 7-year-old Toni, who fell to cancer.
A Grand Rapids police car was parked nearby.
One woman had what appeared to be a plastic bleach bottle cut open to hold money. She had done well — the bottle was full.
When asked if it was her son in the photograph, she replied: "It's your son. It's not mine, it's your son."
Actually, it appeared to be a photograph of Gabriel Cruz, who was 8 when murdered in Spain in 2018. The woman refused to say where she was from before grabbing the lens of a TV camera as the police car drove by.
Back at Fuller and Leonard yesterday, answers were also elusive. The group refused to say where they were from or anything about a funeral.
"Report on your mother," one man told Target 8.
They started piling into a Kia minivan with temporary Arizona plates.
When Target 8 asked if it was a scam, one of the men replied: "It's a scam."
When asked how much money they'd collected, he turned and walked away.