LOS ANGELES – Relatives of actress Chanel Banks, who reported her missing a week ago, acknowledged Friday that she had been found and said they would return donations made to a GoFundMe page set up to help fund an effort research.

The family’s confession came after the the actress posted a video of herself on social networks Thursday evening, saying she was preparing to participate in a television interview.

This followed messages she had posted on Instagram Wednesday, insisting she was safe and warning 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 carried out at her apartment on November 8. November 7 and 8, but she was nowhere to be found.

SUGGESTED: Chanel Banks: Gossip Girl Actress FaceTimes With True Crime News After Family Claims She’s Missing

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

But when media reports began circulating that Banks had been found, Singh took to social media on Wednesday, posting an 8-minute video on Facebook denouncing the reports and insisting that her cousin was still missing.

She said a woman was in Texas, apparently in possession of a “10-year-old expired New York driver’s license” bearing Banks’ name. But Singh said the woman was not his cousin.

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

Singh said she saw video and audio of 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 single personal question, not about our family, not about herself.”

The GoFundMe page Singh created to help fund the search efforts had raised more than $4,100 as of Wednesday morning.

However, on Wednesday afternoon, a series of new messages appeared on Banks’ Instagram page, purportedly from the actress saying she had met with police and checked on her.

The message said that “all my life I have silently carried the pain of the ritual sexual abuse, manipulation and endless torment that I have endured continually since I was a helpless baby, at the hands of my own so-called family. all of whom are very “concerned” about where I am currently. »

The messages ended with the author saying that shortly before she left, she discovered that her and her husband’s family were planning to obtain guardianship over her to give them “complete legal control.”