Cyberbegging: Asking the Public to Pay the Bills

Jan. 19, 2007 — -- For 10 years, Dustin Diamond was America's most popular and beloved nerd.

Playing the character Screech on the hit Saturday morning sitcom "Saved by the Bell," he enjoyed childhood celebrity and a healthy Hollywood income.

"We were making great money for kids," Diamond said.

But, it has now been nine years since "Saved by the Bell" wrapped its last episode, and a lot has changed for Diamond, both professionally and financially. Amazingly, after earning much more money than most Americans could expect to take home in a lifetime, he had little to show for it.

Diamond says his parents lived lavishly from his earnings, so much so that in 2001 he was forced to file for bankruptcy.

"They had a kid that was bringing home the bacon," he said. "[My father] got caught up in the gravy train of the kids making money, and he was the dad and he could spend it, and live in … the good life. A lot of the money that I made … is now gone, and I didn't really get a say over that."

After filing for bankruptcy, Diamond moved from his Hollywood home to a modest house in Wisconsin. After getting caught up in what he says was a shady real estate deal, Diamond was left owing $250,000, with only 30 days to pay it back.

Diamond didn't have the money, and under threats of foreclosure and having lost so much of his previous earnings, he came up with an idea. Diamond went online to plead his case, and asked his fans for help. He created a Web site called Save Screech's House, and asked his fans to buy T-shirts to support his cause.

"I said, 'You know what? I'm going to sell this shirt, and I'm going to tell the public where this money is going if not just to save the house, I'll use the money to fight this guy off in court because this is wrong.' … We sold about 22,000 shirts," he said.

Diamond is a small part of a new phenomenon that's swept the Internet. Asking strangers online to help pay back debts is known as cyberbegging, or E-panhandling, and it is the brainchild of 30-year-old Karyn Bosnak.

A Chicago native, Bosnak migrated to New York in 2000, immediately becoming a "Sex and the City" style shopaholic. After racking up more than $20,000 in credit card debt from designer handbags and expensive clothes, she decided to ask the public to help her pay the bills.