[Closi]

In the UK it could be technically counted as fraud by false representation. The legal hurdles for this are:

* The patreon page was misleading (this post shows it was, including the use of old links and imagery to show association to a YouTube channel which was false)

* The person making it knows it might be misleading (they did - they said so in this post)

* The intention was to make a gain in money for themselves, others or to cause a loss to someone else. This includes situations where the gain in money is only temporary (again, technically yes.)

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/35/pdfs/ukpga_2006...

I'm not saying they should be charged with it as clearly they didn't mean to cause harm and were doing it to raise awareness, but it does seem to fit the definition.