Funeral panhandlers spit, expose themselves and drive away when asked about signs
PHOENIX (AZFamily) — The bold signs with an even bolder claim resurfaced on Arizona streets. However, when Arizona’s Family Investigates went to ask questions about the child on their poster, the people did not act like a grieving family.
The unique signs resurfaced on city streets in January. They were in the same spots they had been seen months before, with a different child’s picture but similar writing and people holding similar plastic milk jugs to collect money.
Arizona’s Family Investigates showed up to ask the group about the child on their poster. It was reportedly an 8-year-old girl named Lola, who died of leukemia, and they were raising money for a funeral.
“Hi, I want to take a look at your picture,” an Arizona’s Family Investigates photojournalist asked.
Instead, the woman did not respond as a grieving family member would. She noticed the crew recording on a phone, spit at them and walked toward the rest of her group, where they became combative.
The group tried pouring water onto the phones recording video, and one man decided to bare his backside — twice — instead of answering questions about the girl.
Arizona’s Family Investigates ran reverse image searches on the photo of the girl on their sign, but there were no results. The signs were strikingly similar to those seen at the same Phoenix intersections months earlier, which had one woman sounding the alarm.
“Just seeing them every day for a few months. The same people looking like they’re in uniform,” the woman, Diana, said. “It sounds like there’s a ring or something going on.”
“Si, por que no tengo dinero por funeral,” one woman said in Spanish, carrying a sign in 2024 saying she did not have money for the funeral. But the girl on her sign, when the photo was run through a reverse image search, was a stock image, available for anyone to purchase online.
Her photo was on a sign with very similar writing and milk jugs seen in the recent encounter, and similar to those our sister stations have seen in Tennessee, Ohio, Indiana and Missouri.
“It’s very hard to trust somebody on the street corner with the sign asking for money for a funeral,” Lois Greisman, an associate director with the Federal Trade Commission, told InvestigateTV’s Kristin Crowley.
Greisman said people could file a complaint with the FTC. It is possible the agency could file a suit, but she said state and local authorities could also look into it.
Arizona’s Family Investigates shared what we had found with the signs in 2024 with Phoenix Police, who said it does not violate the city’s panhandling or aggravated panhandling ordinances.
Greisman said the best advice is if you question anything with someone asking for money, “keep driving, for better, for worse.”
But when Arizona’s Family Investigates came to ask questions about the signs, the panhandlers were the ones driving away.
If you need to submit a consumer complaint, you can do so through the following:
- Federal Trade Commission
- Arizona Attorney General’s Office
- Your local police department or sheriff’s office
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