Relatives of LA actress reported missing admit she has been found – Daily News

On November 17, 2024By Littum

Relatives of a Playa Vista actress who appeared on several episodes of “Gossip Girl” and on “Blue Bloods” and was reported missing a week ago acknowledged Friday that she has been found and said they would return donations to a GoFundMe page set up to help bankroll a search effort.

The family’s admission came after the actress – Chanel Maya Banks, 36 – posted a video of herself on social media on Thursday evening, saying she was getting ready to take part in a TV interview.

It followed post she made on Instagram on Wednesday insisting she was safe and warns people not to donate to the GoFundMe page.

Banks was reported missing on November 8, and her family said their last contact with her was on October 30. According to the GoFundMe page set up by Banks’ cousin, Danielle-Tori Singh, a series of welfare checks were made at her apartment Nov. 7-8, but she was nowhere to be found.

On Wednesday, the Los Angeles Police Department said the agency had been notified by Texas authorities that Banks had been found safe. An LAPD representative told City News Service that no crime was involved and the case has been classified as closed.

But as media reports began to circulate that Banks had been found, Singh took to social media on Wednesday, post an 8-minute video on Facebook condemns the reports and insists that her cousin is still missing.

She said a woman in Texas was apparently in possession of a “10-year expired New York City driver’s license” with Banks’ name on it. But Singh said the woman is not her cousin.

“Please don’t stop looking for my cousin,” she said in the video. “… My cousin has not been found. Please keep looking for her.”

Singh said she saw video and audio from body camera footage showing the woman found in Texas, and she insisted it was not Banks. She said the woman in the video “couldn’t answer a personal question, not about our family, not about herself.”

The GoFundMe page set up by Singh to help fund the search effort had raised more than $4,100 as of Wednesday morning.

Late Wednesday afternoon, however, a series of new posts appeared on Banks’ Instagram page, reportedly posted by the actress saying she has met with police and confirmed she is okay.

The post said that “all my life I have silently carried the pain of the ritual sexual abuse, manipulation and downright endless torment I have endured continuously since I was a defenseless baby at the hands of my own so-called family who are all so much ‘concerned’ about my current whereabouts.”

The posts ended with the author saying that shortly before she left, she found out that her family and her husband’s family were planning to get a conservatorship over her to give them “complete legal control.”