City Not Raising Money to Repair Statue

A fraudulent GoFundMe page was trying to raise money to "restore" the Native American statue at Noble Park, but the page has since been removed.

On Sunday and Monday, several people shared images of the page on social media while alerting everyone that it was fake. Others were alerting friends about a "City of Paducah Official" Facebook page that shared the GoFundMe link, but both web links are now inactive. The fundraiser page was reported as a fraud multiple times before it disappeared.

An image of a vandalized "Wacinton" statue, carved by Peter Toth in 1985, accompanied the fundraiser, saying the city needed donations to restore "Chief Paduke." Besides the incorrect name for the statue, the page had several spelling and grammatical errors.

A man who runs the original "City of Paducah Official" Facebook page and posts satirical content, was forced to publicly distance himself from the fraud. He said another person has been copying his comedic posts onto another Facebook page with an identical name, and that person created the GoFundMe page. The man said, "we will never promote violence or illegal activity and we won't ask for money under the guise of official city business."

If a GoFundMe page is determined to be fraudulent, any donations are refunded.