Source: HelloBeautiful.com
The “Real Housewives of Atlanta” has another cast member at the center of fraud accusations.
This time, Cynthia Bailey is being accused of scamming through an online modeling contest that wasn’t living up to its promises.
The contest allows parents to submit photos of their children in an online modeling contest for a fee of $20 per submission. Each month Cynthia’s modeling agency is supposed to publish the photos of the winners on the website, but that isn’t exactly how things worked for several months.
The website had not published a new photo of any contest winners since October of 2013. The real problem, however, is that the website was still collecting the $20 submission fees from parents.
CBS Atlanta took a closer look at the alleged scam and discovered that over $1,500 has been collected from participants without any winner ever being selected.
“It’s just not right to be advertising that you’re going to do one thing and take people’s money from around the country and you’re not following through on what you’re saying,” said Dorothy Lewis, an Atlanta mother who paid to enter her child in the contest. “It’s like false advertisement.”
It is unclear what the collected money has been used for, but there is speculation that it isn’t being used the way the contest participants believed it would be.
Initially, the money was said to be going to the Atlanta Diaper Relief which is a nonprofit organization that actually closed down several months ago.
The website has since been updated to list Tameka Raymond’s charity “Kile’s World” as the new recipient of the money earned from the contest.
Bailey also released a statement recently where she apologized for her negligence and assured her fans that her efforts are still sincere.
“I apologize for any negligence on my part as far as my staff not keeping the website properly updated,” she said. “I hope after receiving all the correct and updated information from me personally, you can appreciate the sincerity of my intentions. I appreciate you for bringing this important matter to my attention.”
The website now features a list of all the winners since January 2013.
Meanwhile, Cynthia slammed the angry contest participants for being “negative” by accusing her agency of ripping them off.
“First of all I think that’s a very negative approach to the whole situation,” she said. “That’s not like their $20 wasn’t being used for what it was intended for. It’s just a matter of us being in transition on our side and we were just behind on the website.”
Of course, if that was the case, it may have done Cynthia well to put the contest on hold until the website was back up and running.
