CBS employee goes silent after making baseless fraud charge about embattled Indiana pizzeria

Alix Bryan, who is part of CBS6’s media team, said Wednesday that she had flagged a GoFundMe account that had been set up to help the owners of a pizzeria in Walkerton, In. The owners of the shop have come under intense fire after a local ABC affiliate falsely claimed they vowed to deny all service to gay customers. A GoFundMe account was set up on their behalf after the family began receiving death threats and had to shut down their shop.

“I have reported the GoFundMe for Memories Pizza for fraud. Just in case,” Bryan said on Twitter Wednesday evening. In her account, Brian describes her job as being “1/3 of a kick-ass web and social media team.”

The Walkerton restaurant, Memories Pizza, became a nationwide target after a reporter for a South Bend ABC News affiliate accused its owner, Kevin O’Connor, and his family of refusing all service to gays and lesbians. In fact, the storekeepers, who are Christian, explicitly stated that they’d never turn away a gay customer who came into their store. They said they would not cater a same-sex marriage — in the unlikely event they would be called on to serve pizza at a wedding.

The GoFundMe account, which has so far raised more than $800,000 for the O’Connors, was created on April 1. It was initially set up with the fundraising goal of $25,000. But as donations soon surpassed the account’s initial goal, activists grew angry and confused.

“It would be pretty awesome if it was just a vigilante who wants to take money from bigots,” Bryan said later on Twitter as she questioned why anyone would chip in to support the O’Connor family.

The person who set up the account, Lawrence B. Jones III, is a contributor to Glenn Beck’s TheBlaze TV.

“What does the money go to? How will they use it?” Bryan asked Jones Wednesday — after she claimed she had already reported the account. (Jones did not respond to her.)

“I’m still scratching my head. Why does this pizza place need $25,000? And the fundraiser is being done by a news enterprise?” Bryan asked.

Jones later said that the GoFundMe account was approved and verified by the site.

When asked on Twitter Friday why she had charged the account with fraud, Bryan responded at first by claiming due diligence. Flagging the page “is totally acceptable to do. I also did research afterward and contacted person who started fund,” she said.

However, aside from her one tweet asking Jones about the authenticity of the account, Jones said she never attempted to contact him with questions about the fundraising efforts. And she quickly began threatening questioners.

Reporting the account wasn’t “bad faith, it was caution. Not sure what you want to prove but I can report you for harassment, & will if needed,” Bryan tweeted.

Soon after that, she went silent on social media.

As Bryan attempted to defend herself, TheBlaze’s Dana Loesch reached out to CBS6 to ask the station about its employee’s actions. An editor from the CBS News affiliate responded to say that Bryan said and did what she did on her own account. (The group’s Twitter account explicitly includes Bryan’s handle).

CBS6 did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.

Jones, for his part, appeared Friday on CNN to explain the GoFundMe account.

“One of the things that our show really wanted to do is make sure that they could handle some debt as well as repair the shop and do whatever they needed to do,” Jones said. “There’s been some graffiti and things like that. As well as if they needed to do some repairs or take care of some personal things ever since this happened.”

He said that the O’Connors would have a pro-bono financial adviser to help them get set up with their new-found wealth.

“I want to be clear that TheBlaze, as well as the ‘Dana’ show, is not getting any of those funds,” Jones said. “This is all going to the family.”

Update 11:00 pm ET: Bryan tweeted a statement Friday night addressing the issue. She also updated her Twitter account to remove all references to CBS6.

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This post has been updated to include comment from Bryan.