Dr. She was fine, but her car was totaled. We weren't well off, so I knew this was going to hurt us financially.

A friend of mine told me about Go Fund Me. He said all I would need to do was provide some photos and a sad story about my mom's current predicament and people

would donate. A week later we managed to get about $2,000 from Facebook friends and

strangers. With that money we were able to fix her Honda and have money left over. It was truly a miracle.

This is the type of stuff I feel that technology was truly meant for. I started giving back to the online community myself, helping

people in need and sending a few dollars here and there for good causes felt great.

Then on August 17th I received an anonymous email with the subject line that was the first sentence of this post.

Brian Wilkins needs a new heart, it read.

The only problem is that Brian Wilkins is me. That is my name.

It seemed like a prank, so I went ahead and opened the attachment.

It came from a website called Crowdfund. onion.

I was aware that websites with the ending of dot onion

were associated with the dark web. This sparked my curiosity as I had

dabbled with the dark web back in college. I still had the door browser on my computer. I copied

and pasted the link. The site looked exactly like the GoFund Me site. The only difference

was that the website was titled Crowdfund.

My Crowdfund profile read as follows.

August 19th changed Brian's life forever when he was tragically stabbed outside of his apartment

by a masked assailant and left for dead. Local neighbors heard

him struggling for aid choking on his own blood and called 911.

Currently, Brian's receiving care at... I didn't even bother to finish reading the morbid article.

How could anyone write anything so perverse?

...