A local food truck vendor is reporting a fraud incident to the Reno Police Department, accusing Shirley Burke of stealing her money she had Zelled over to be allowed to sell food at a fall 9U Pop Warner football fundraiser, which Burke had previously asked us to promote.
The food truck vendor showed us text messages and a receipt showing she sent Burke $50 on September 19th. The event was to be held October 5th from noon to 4 p.m.
Text messages shared with us indicated the setup for food trucks would be from 10 to 11 a.m. and takedown from 5 to 6 p.m.
The food truck vendor then received a text message from Burke on September 26th who wrote that the event had been canceled, indicating in her follow up responses that she would return the $50. Weeks later, though, despite repeated messages and call outs on social media, the food truck vendor has yet to receive her payment back.
When the food truck vendor posted about wanting her money returned on the public Lemmon Valley community Facebook page, Burke responded she had no right to post this. “I also don’t have the money to send back the $50 when I haven’t been working and in the hospital on and off,” Burke wrote in a reply that was screenshot and shared with us.
The food truck vendor said she wanted to make others aware of being more careful when paying upfront fees.
We wrote Burke on her social media accounts about this incident and received this response: “This woman has been harassing me about the $50 when I had explained everything to her and I even told her that I needed to talk to the league about it because I wasn’t the one who canceled the event in the first place, it was the league and the coach.,” she alleged.
“All I did was plan it and gave the money to the league when it came in,” her allegation indicates. “I personally don’t have the $50 to give to her. I almost passed away last week and I’ve been in and out of the hospital. This woman has no right to act the way she is towards me or put me down to anyone. If they want to make a police report, I’ll do the same! I don’t know why you’d get the police report anyway, this has nothing to do with you.”
We wrote to Reno-Sparks Pop Warned board member Danielle Morgan and Cassy Hodges, listed on the league’s media contacts, to find out if the $50 had been returned to the league as Burke alleges, but have not heard back.
Interestingly, Burke wrote us previously about the same exact event, asking for help to promote the fundraiser on our own social media. The date of her correspondence with us was on September 16th.
After several comments criticizing Burke were made on the post, she wrote “can you please take down the post you made? The coach said we’d do it differently I guess. Thank you. I guess my hard working hasn’t paid off for the team. I’ll just let them deal with it from now on.”
However, she was texting the food truck vendor after and received the money via Zelle on September 19th for the same event, which she later said had been canceled.
She also wrote us a cryptic message indicating “so that girl, [name redacted] that post on the post or commented on the post she needs to be blocked or she needs to be unfollowed by you due to the fact that her and her family put me through a lot because of her brother.”
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