Full Report on the Scam and Harassment Campaign Running Under the Name Black Texas Trans Connection
An Instagram account running under the name Black Texas Trans Connection is a part of a widespread network of donor fraud, abusive behavior and extortion of multiple Mutual Aid Organizations
This article was written over the course of a year in collaboration with a ton of help from a team of organizers and activists, the majority of whom have chosen to remain anonymous to avoid being targeted by BTTC. For full disclosure, I called out this organization on Tiktok in 2022 and faced retaliation from the organization for several weeks. This story has previously been covered by the Daily Dot which I recommend reading in addition to this article.
Since 2021, a fake mutual aid Instagram account has scammed over $1 million dollars (at minimum) from donors. They have also orchestrated attacks on multiple mutual aid and charitable organizations with attempts at extortion. The Instagram account calls itself Black Texas Trans Connection (BTTC). BTTC claims to be a collective of Black Trans Women who operate a shelter called Thrive House in Houston.
Multiple organizers in Houston have confirmed that Thrive House does not exist. The organization has raised unknown amounts of money with multiple fundraisers, earning at minimum $1 million in donations, with no proof that any of this money has been used to support Black Trans people in Texas.
The account, and several affiliated accounts have intentionally targeted and attempted to discredit nearly every Mutual Aid organization in Texas and a few in Louisiana. They have used threats, fake screenshots, and attempts to get organizations “cancelled” online in an attempt to extort money from them.
At time of writing, they are attempting to raise money to relocate as well as retaliating against T Time Network which I have been able to confirm is run by Black Transgender Women. BTTC claims that they are a hate group. Their full post is below followed by a transcript.
Transcript: (For clarity this is all word salad and completely unfounded)
This is dangerous we are in danger by a hate groups that use one account that’s dedicated to destroying us by making a account and telling lies about us and messaging our followers to convince them to not support us while using another account to get donations from people and from those they convince to not support us to support them and recruit members to carry out a massive attack on us. Blacktransscam, queerjoyusa, _tbear are is a racist transphobic hate group of individuals recruiting members by the day to trin eith to attack queerjoyusa Partnering group of Proud boys are in Texas as undercover part in place underneath the name queerjoyusa they started fundraising onlone on November 5, 2023 they are reeling in other nazi’s but pretending to care for trans people all while raising money for guns, and to target black trans women in Texas. They are raising money and training people to harm us. They are doing this right in front of your faces. As they also spread hate abouy black trans women in Texas. They are raising money and training people to harm us. They are doing this right in front of your faces. As they also spread hate about black trans women on another account and have made Black Trans Texas Connection their target. White cis men are getting donations to attck us and recruit more members. They are using posts of other black trans groups to decieve people into thinking that’s them. They are not apart of any groups they post about. They are a hate group that is planning to attack us
Go through the slides shoe profile and come of their post.
@ ttimenetwork is a hate group and gets funds from trump and proud boys.
In September of 2023 they attempted to fundraise for a trans woman using a video from 5 years ago. (Thanks to T Time Network for discovering this one)
In October of 2023, their current target was North Texas Food Bank after just recently targeting the OKRA Project. An incomplete history of BTTC’s history of targeting organizations is included at the end of this article.
The organization also runs several affiliated accounts claiming to be members or those who have been helped in the past in order to lend credibility. It is unknown how many accounts are associated with this scam.
The organization is currently fundraising for their “founder” Sarah Pope on GoFundMe and has been for years. When our team of investigators used AI to reverse image search this photo, we discovered that Sarah Pope is an incarcerated cisgender woman in Georgia. We do not believe she is connected to this crime in any way.
The GoFundMe claims that Sarah Pope was the one who leased Thrive House to BTTC, while simultaneously claiming in a later fundraiser that they were having issues with their landlord and needed to raise $100,000 to buy Thrive House. These two claims contradict each other entirely.
They have consistently fundraised for Thrive House even after claiming to have purchased the location in 2022.
This organization needs to be shut down for the sake of organizations across the Gulf South. More than this, Black Transgender Women in Texas, many of whom face very real violence and homelessness, have had thousands of dollars from willing donors bottle-necked and stolen by this organization. This article is being released in hopes that these Black Trans women start to receive this funding.
History of BTTC and their affiliated accounts since 2020
The following information was collected by a team of roughly forty organizers, whenever possible, a screenshot has been provided.
An Incomplete History of BTTC
The BTTC account was created in the aftermath of the Texas Freeze in 2021 to support a similar scam account running under the name Precious.
“Precious” was an Instagram account claiming to be a Black Transgender woman. Organizers in New York City claim this started fundraising and targeting organizations in the middle of Hurricane Sandy.
The Precious account started fundraising during the Texas Freeze, claiming to be located in Austin. Organizers from New York alerted Austin Mutual Aid that this account has a history of similar scams. AMA rejected Precious’s request for financial assistance during the Texas Freeze.
The Precious Account responded by publicly demanding that AMA send her $50,000 for relocation costs, working to recruit multiple other Mutual Aid orgs and nonprofits to publicly call on AMA to meet their requests. All of this was organized through Instagram DMs. At one point, they called for AMA to disband the entire organization. They called on organizations to denounce AMA as racist and transphobic.
They reached out to Vice News to claim that AMA was not fairly distributing their funds. For clarity, Austin Mutual Aid has posted transparency for this period since the article was posted.
After this article was posted, Precious and multiple associated accounts started harassing and attempting to doxx Hannah Smothers, the author of the article, for not mentioning Precious and not reporting on AMA’s alleged racism and transphobia.
An associated account called People of Color Women Solidarity Network who had previously posted Pro-Trump content, started fundraising for the Precious account and started targeting the reporter claiming that Precious wrote the entire article. People of Color Women Solidarity Network claims to be a grassroots organization.
This is the moment when the Black Texas Trans Connection account was initially created, seemingly in direct response to this incident. They joined the call for AMA to send $50,000 to Precious.
One of their early posts has strange hashtags that lead to a Facebook page running under the name Mutual Aid Texas that was previously running under The Crime Record where they posted Pro-Police content. This account is run by a man named Volkan Kaban.
The BTTC account supported Precious’ GoFundMe as well as posted several other fundraisers. One of which used the exact same Paypal for both Precious as well as another trans woman who they claimed was shot in a mass shooting. This account was, in 2022, running under the name John Olt. This was the piece of evidence that made most organizations in Austin realize something was wrong and was the moment when BTTC stopped operating in Austin and moved on to Houston
During this period, BTTC started fundraising claiming to offer shelter during Hurricane Ida. They claimed to have housed 39 Black Trans Sex Workers. They started fundraising nationally to receive funding during the storm. In this period, BTTC was able to convince Future Front Texas to become a fiscal sponsor which allowed them to receive a large donation from the mutual aid organization For the Gworls.
During this, they targeted Mutual Aid Louisiana, who hit a Venmo limit during the storm and briefly stopped collecting new donations. BTTC, during the pause, inaccurately claimed to be fundraising on behalf of Mutual Aid Louisiana. They distributed amounts as low as 15 cents to people requesting funds. When Mutual Aid Louisiana told the truth about the situation, BTTC faked screenshots claiming that someone in the org called them “fruity fairy fagit”. Which led to Mutual Aid Louisiana receiving harassment
During this period, they ran several small fundraisers that were later deleted.
They ran a fundraiser claiming to raise $100,000 for Thrive House. Thrive House is a very real LGBTQ+ Youth Homeless Shelter in San Antonio, Texas. This Thrive House is not connected to this story in any way other than their name.
BTTC claimed that Thrive House was the first Black Trans Organization in Houston. At the time, the Mahogany Project was running in Houston. If you would like to support Black Trans people in Houston, please direct donations there.
Below are some screenshots from the era of this fundraiser.
The house featured in the final photo was pulled from google images
During this period, Quinn L Bishop (that’s me!) posted about the organization on Tiktok. During this period they called for harassment and for her accounts to be mass reported and posted where she works (to be clear this is public information) They made false claims that Quinn was DMing and harassing their supporters. They claimed to have received death threats from her, at the time, 1,000 TikTok followers. Later, in a lost screenshot, they claimed that I am an undercover police officer. During this period, I also posted a Youtube video about the subject which no one should watch because it is long winded, terrible, and I spend WAY too much time talking about myself.
At first, there were some who supported BTTC but nearly all public supporters, rescinded their support. Many donors asked for their funding to be returned. They claimed to have raised $40,000 overnight and claimed to have purchased Thrive House. They claimed to have signed the papers and now owned the house just days after claiming to be on the verge of eviction. As a reminder, in the GoFundMe for “founder” Sarah Pope they claim that she was the one leasing out the space while simultaneously saying their abusive landlord was threatening to evict them. In general their claims to have purchased the house are suspect
After receiving backlash upon the initial breaking of this story on Tiktok and in the Daily Dot. the organization briefly made their accounts private and took a break from using the account to scam. They have however returned and continue to harass and target organizations and individuals across the South, as discussed in the begining.
Their Instagram page remains active and posts fundraisers consistently. Any fundraiser run through BTTC should be considered suspect. This organization is not who they claim to be and has proven to be dangerous in the past.
Final Thoughts from Quinn
Without definitive evidence of who runs this account, I will not be speculating on who, or what, is running these accounts. Our best evidence traces the account to an IP address in Georgia or to Volkan Kaban. Due to the scale of the organization, our entire team generally agrees that this is being run by a group rather than an individual. We also all agree that it is likely to be connected to other similar scams. There are several conflicting theories of which group may be behind this.
The organization has found a way to weaponize white and cis guilt to recruit people willing to join their harassment campaigns uncritically. I have no doubts that this article will lead to harassment and claims that I am racist and transphobic. Their history of harassment is the reason I am putting this story out under my own name, to take the brunt of their harassment in order to protect my sources. I have already been targeted and am not intimidated by them anymore. This time, it’s personal.
This article implicates multiple organizations and individuals for their lack of a vetting process before sending money to BTTC. I hope this article encourages those organizations and individuals to make a greater effort to prevent similar incidents in the future. I personally was scammed by one of this organization’s associated accounts, to which I sent $150. I am empathetic to these organizations and believe the best of all of them. I strongly discourage blaming anyone for this except for the BTTC account itself.
I give anyone and everyone permission to reprint, quote, and redistribute any part of this article, provided that I am given the common courtesy of being cited as the source.
I will not be doing interviews over this article. I have further thoughts to share on this topic, especially in relation to my experience of their harassment and the online culture that has allowed scammers like this to proliferate. I plan on releasing those once this organization is exposed more broadly.