Originally Posted by arg

Donovan, I'm not trying to pick an argument, but you asked someone to propose how the site's owner could get away with any kind of fraud. I will propose a scenario:

Rather than have donations go to the father's paypal account, or a 501(c)3 organization with audited finances, the site's creator could set up a paypal account for himself, using a hotmail address that doesn't really indicate where the money goes. Then he could write a check for any amount of money to the family or the organization they designate, and say that was all the money donated. It might be 100%, it might be 50%, it might be 10%. How would Larry King, the FBI, or anyone else be the wiser? I mean obviously with a search warrant the FBI could find out, but they'd need to show probable cause that a crime was committed in order to seize the records. It seems like if a person went this route, there would be no way to detect whether donations were embezzled or not, so the perpetrator wouldn't even need to run away and hide.

I don't know whether this fits with the current situation or not...perhaps the hotmail address listed for paypal donations is owned by the missing girl's family, and if so, that shoots down this proposed fraud strategy.