A woman who became known online for saying that a man assaulted her with a brick outside of a Houston club was charged Wednesday with felony theft for the creation of a crowdfunding campaign in which people online donated more than $40,000.
Roda Osman, 33, is facing charges of felony theft by deception but has not been arrested, as her whereabouts are currently unknown to authorities. In September, she posted on social media following an alleged altercation in front of a club, saying that she was assaulted by a man who hit her with a brick after she turned down his advances. The post, which did not include footage of the alleged assault, went viral, launching debates online about whether her story was to be believed.
According to a charging document that the Harris County District Attorney’s Office shared with NBC News, police responded to the incident in September. Osman said she was hit in the face with a brick by an unknown man because she would not share her phone number with him.
Osman also said that she got into a car that she thought was an Uber, and that the driver tried to kidnap her, the report stated. According to the document, she said the driver tried to hit her.
Weeks later, the detective who wrote an affidavit for the district attorney’s office reviewed local surveillance footage of the moments leading up to the incident. In the video, Osman was spotted with a friend, and the man she later identified as the person who hit her. They got into a car together and then exited the car. The detective said the footage showed Osman slapping the man, and then he hit her back, with a water bottle in his hand.
“We think that’s what left the mark on her face,” Keith Houston, from the Harris County District Attorney’s Office, told KPRC, an NBC affiliate in Houston. “But it was mutual combat.”
According to the charging document, a friend who was with Osman the night of the incident told police that she did not believe Osman was hit with a brick.
However, the initial social media posts about the incident led to a fundraiser on GoFundMe, bringing in more than 1,000 donations totaling at least $42,000. The crowdfunding page has since been deactivated.
“GoFundMe has zero tolerance for the misuse of our platform and cooperates with law enforcement investigations of those accused of wrongdoing,” a spokesperson for GoFundMe said in a statement to NBC News. “The fundraiser has been removed from the platform, all donors have been refunded, and Roda Osman has been banned from using the platform for any future fundraisers.”
According to the charging document, Osman previously created another GoFundMe page in 2020 claiming that she was assaulted by a private security guard in Minneapolis and suffered a black eye, facial contusions and injuries to her leg. A fundraiser for that incident requested an estimated $5,000 to pay for Osman’s medical bills, legal fees and other costs. It’s unclear whether she received money in response, and that GoFundMe campaign has also been taken down.
A friend who previously stayed with Osman while living in Minneapolis said Osman’s claims were a lie and they “wanted no part of it,” according to the charging documents.
“I actually have things going on in my life,” Osman said in an Instagram post on Wednesday, according to KPRC. “I actually have real ways to make money. I don’t have to get a GoFundMe for money. I actually can earn income because I’m actually educated and I actually am talented.”
NBC News reached out to Osman via text for comment but did not hear back.
A spokesperson for the Houston police department referred NBC News to the Harris County district attorney for any further information on the matter, but requested that “anybody that has any information on her whereabouts can contact either the Houston Police Department or the Harris County District Attorney’s office.”
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