Nonprofit says pro wrestler took their money and ghosted them

we are hoping that with that we will get the money back that he owes us at some point now to Nina where a local non-profit is going public with a story of a pro wrestler who they say took payments for an appearance and then never showed up now more organizations are saying they've experienced the same thing your Nina neighborhood reporter Darby McCarthy went to Jake's network of Hope to learn more do what you love and you never work a day in your life and that is true here at Jakes Jen Harper is

the director of development at Jake's network of hope she says she loves how rewarding her job can be by helping underprivileged families and other non-profits every day at Jake's here we only have five full-time staff and then we rely on about 8 000 hours of volunteer time a year but in April this non-profit encountered something unexpected Jake's decided to put on a wrestling event fundraiser hosted by Lawrence University one of my old co-workers is an ex-professional wrestler and he's like h

ey I gotta I know a guy like are you interested and I was like yes yes we are they booked names like Billy Gunn Vampiro Tatanka Brian pillman Jr and then Jacob Fatu but when the day came Jen says Jacob called out Jacob called and said that there was a family emergency we gave him the benefit of a doubt at Jake's we are 100 about family and I said if you can't make it that's fine Jen says all she asked was that her non-profit be reimbursed for the money they spent booking him and for the plane ti

cket we rescheduled the flight that he missed originally um and about an hour after that flight took off we were made aware from him that he wasn't coming um after that he goes in us he ghosted the production team that puts together the wrestling show and he ghosted the person that booked him for us Jen says she and the staff Jake's initially planned to keep quiet about the whole ordeal until they saw posts on social media from other organizations saying Fatu had done the same thing to them but

some good has come of it Jen says that a major name from Jacob fatu's wrestling family heard about the incident and though that person does not wrestle anymore they reached out to offer an appearance at Jake's wrestling fundraiser next year was kind of really out of the blue to get a phone call from somebody of that magnitude to say hey what what can we do how can we help I reached out to Jacob fatsu at the numbers provided by organizations who had been in contact with him he has not responded t

o requests for comment on the situation at this time reporting in Nina Darby McCarthy NBC 26