$204,000 Raised Online Won't Land Zimmerman Back in Jail, For Now
Update (11:24 a.m. EDT): After Friday's hearing, O'Mara announced a new, "official" website to raise funds for George Zimmerman. On the front of www.gzlegalcase.com right now, a statement from O'Mara says there were actually three websites raising funds for Zimmerman before he clamped down on Zimmerman's web presence. "One or two of them were run by friends of Mr. Zimmerman, and then there was the web site therealgeorgezimmerman.com, which George administered. Two accounts seem to have very little money in them, though I have not seen any records on those as they are not being administered by my client." Zimmerman's own site raised the bulk of the money, O'Mara said.
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Update (9:55 a.m. EDT): Judge Lester did not order Zimmerman back into custody, saying he would wait to make that decision until he had all the facts about Zimmerman's donations and PayPal accounts, according to the Orlando Sentinel's Trayvon Martin Twitter account. O'Mara reportedly said the fact Zimmerman's family didn't use the money to post his $150,000 bond meant they weren't trying to hide anything. He said money was still coming in from donations, but said it would be placed in a trust that Zimmerman couldn't access.
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Original: When George Zimmerman's website went dark earlier this week, it seemed like a move on his lawyer's part to control Zimmerman's sometimes unfortunate public statements, but as it turns out, the lawyer also wanted to control Zimmerman's rogue fundraising. Mark O'Mara, who wasn't taking a fee for representing Zimmerman last we heard, told a court on April 20 his client had no money. But late on Thursday night, he revealed to Anderson Cooper that Zimmerman had raised $200,000 from the now-dark site The Real George Zimmerman. O'Mara said he didn't know about the money until Wednesday, and it seems like Zimmerman didn't even really know what to do with it. As CNN reports:
"He asked me what to do with his PayPal accounts, and I asked him what he was talking about," O'Mara told Anderson Cooper. "He said those were the accounts that had the money from the website he had. And there was about ... $204,000 that had come in to date."
The upshot, now, is that Zimmerman could have his bond revoked, as the Martin family attorney Benjamin Crump has called for, after he "misled" the court about his financial situation. Zimmerman could wind up back in custody within the day if Judge Kenneth Lester decides at a Friday hearing that Zimmerman didn't act in good faith when he was granted bond last week.