Back on March 20th of this year, Shanesha Taylor was arrested and charged with child abuse after she left her two young children in her Dodge Durango with each of the windows slightly rolled down for over 45 minutes. The cause: she was homeless and on a job interview.
An easy target for a viral exposure leading to many donations, Taylor raised up to $114,000 with the help of a New Jersey woman. Once the money was on the table, prosecutors said she could avoid jail if she put $40,000 of the donations into a trust fund for her children. For some reason, Taylor did not make her “deal of a lifetime” deadline imposed by the judge.
“Yeah, too much money, ain’t enough money/
You know the feds listening… what money?” ~Lil Wayne
According to prosecutors, they believe that Taylor spent $4,000 a month on non-essential items including: designer clothes, family trips, outings in the city and out of the city. In fact, she is even believed to have spent thousands on her baby’s father’s rap album.
“We had someone call my office and alert her attorney to the fact that she spent $6,000 at a music studio in Tempe to finish her baby daddy’s rap album,”Reverend Jarrett Maupin told ABC. “That’s not what people gave her that money for.”
“I feel bamboozled and used a little bit, but I don’t regret it because on its face she was what she was,” Maupin went on to tell FOX. “Everyone had sympathy for her, but what she’s become is something quite different.”
In response to these severe claims, ABC caught up with the troubled mother. When asked about the claims she replied, “I haven’t spoken to [Reverend Maupin] since July 21st. He has not been part of my defense team. Anything he says is libel or slander.”
–Jamaal Fisher (@jamaalfisher)