Updated: Someone is stealing pics of my kids and using them as their own. Again.

It has just come to my attention that once again someone has taken photos of my children and used it as their own.  I feel sick.

Even more concerning, they are raising funds for one of their children who supposedly has cancer and apparently the mother died yesterday.

The facebook page for the little boy with cancer already has 6500 likes.  6500 likes!  That is a LOT of people who were duped.  The mother supposedly died yesterday and already $1200 has been donated within a few hours (before I was alerted to the scam). 

I have to go out now so there isn't much I can do right now, but I have taken copies of everything.  What I want to do ASAP is stop people donating money to what is quite possibly a sham. Sickening.

The children 'Lily' and 'Jade' are Adam and Kate.  The photos are of them when they were about three years old.

Both the husband and the deceased wife have photos of my children on their FB profiles, including a photo of Adam when he was in hospital. That actually pissed me off the most.

Why do people do this? Why do they think they can get away with this?  This is the internet for heaven's sake!!! People read what you write. Jeez.

What should I do? 

**Updated:  The scammers have obviously woken up this morning to discover they have been caught out, the pages are slowly being taken down. The so-called 'husband' has also removed all photos from his FB profile. Bust!  For a full expose, read here:  http://warriorelihoax.wordpress.com/**

**Updated again:  The team from the fund-raising page has taken the page offline, thank goodness. Thanks to Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation for responding immediately and taking the page offline while they investigate**

I am obviously not wildly excited that he/she stole photos of my kids but what really, REALLY upsets me is that they played on the feelings of several thousand people by pretending to have a child with cancer. That to me is totally unacceptable. They should be prosecuted.

The fund-raising page: http://www.alexslemonade.org/mypage/83133

The father's blog: http://crazycanuckj.xanga.com/

The father's FB profile:  https://www.facebook.com/crazycanuckj

The mother's FB profile:  https://www.facebook.com/dana.dev

The FB profile of the boy with cancer: https://www.facebook.com/warrioreli

Photobucket page: http://s18.photobucket.com/albums/b140/crazycanuckj/#!cpZZ17QQtppZZ36

Some screen grabs:

More screen shots:

Comments

[shirley]

oh my goodness !!!!!!!!! this is crazy crazy crazy and sick ! i am thinking of taking down all my facebook photos of my children having read this. sob what a sick world we live in :(

[acidicice]

I am furious for you! I would be SO upset if this was my child. I'm sorry, Tertia :(

[InDueTime]

People are fucking morons. As soon as I saw it I knew I had to contact you. I wish I knew who the other kids were so I could tell their parents.

I just tweeted Alex's lemonade. I know you can report to Facebook that they are using your kids photos. I would also contact xanga.

[gabrielle]

Such bullshit. There is also this website: http://warriorelihoax.wordpress.com/

[Ali]

Definitely report it to Facebook, a) that they are using your photos but b) that it's a money making scam, I believe they tend to err on the side of caution and take these things down while they investigate.

So sorry this has happened, there are some real assholes in this world :(

[Concerned]

Report abuse to facebook and set your privacy settings so that only your friends an family can access your facebook page.

[Veronica]

Ugh, this makes me feel unwell. I know I rarely comment, but I've been reading here for years now. Stolen photos are awful.

[Ilze]

This is so so sick! I hope there is a way to stop them!

[blackhuff]

I'm so sorry that this is happening to you now. I hope you get this sorted out quickly.

[Julia Sadenwater]

Here is another one I found

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1749755018140&set=a.1715008069488.2092464.1066793495&type=3&theater

[Ali]

Oh my goodness, I just went and had a look through it... talk about elaborate! The amount of planning that went into it is just phenomenal. I'm so sorry you are caught up in this :(

[Julia Sadenwater]

Do we know that the wife is really deceased? Can't seem to find any news articles or info about this "accident"

[T]

Report all those FB pictures for the intellectual property thing. Other people can also report the page for being a scam.

I see there's also a contact page on that Alex's Lemonade page - they seem like a legit organisation who may be interested to know that people are donating based on a bs story.

[Vanessa]

Contact the police. Worse than a scam, this may be a front for something else. I hope to god it's just a scam to make money. As*holes!!

[Kristi Holland Tackett]

i am sorry this happened to you i am sharing the hoax page with everyone i know i follow other children with cancer and they have supported these people for along time i hope you get your pictures back its so sad that anyone would make up a child having cancer hopefully god wont let these people have nay children of their own they sure dont deserve to hear the words mommy daddy or i love you from a child

[Vivian]

Shocking, I keep warning friends. For instance the scam that if you share a page Face book will donate. No matter how often I tell people this is untrue they keep sharing those pages. On Facebook go and report it to this link https://www.facebook.com/thatsnonsense they report all scams. Please all other bloggers reading this blog join "that nonsense" on Facebook, "that nonsense" keeps you up to date with the latest scams. These people are vile and use any tragic looking photos etc. to spam or scam. Tertia my sympathies these people are disgusting.

[Miranda]

It is worth the time to visit the pages and report each photo individually as spam/scam, the more attention they get the sooner facebook will take care of it.

[mommyoftwo]

It looks like the Facebook page has been deleted.... I don't understand how people can do things like that and NOT care.

[Syanne]

Found another picture of Adam & Kate on their uncle "Willy"'s wall: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=286886321354703&set=a.286886318021370.70776.100001000114354&type=3&theater

So sick, I have reported all the pages to Facebook. So sorry!!!

[Student Mom (Jenn)]

OMG! My husband got a bee in his bonnet a couple of months ago and I deleted all the pictures of my kids from my blog and facebook. How did you discover this? How would I look to see if someone was using my daughters pictures?

[NickiD]

What the actual fcuk!?

[Toushka Lee]

you can use tineye.com and enter the url of your photos and see if they turn up elsewhere online.

[Karen at MomAgain@40]

Scary!!

[Suzanne]

I hope they hack up hairballs and die.

I AM the parent of an oncokid. We try to do fundraising for children who really has cancer, and people like this make it almost impossible.

[H.Wolfe]

I just was on YouTube saying how horrible it was that the mom died; then thank goddeness, someone let me know that it was a hoax, and I took it down from my CB page, I'd only been asking for prayers for the family. Those people should be ashamed of themselves!
Here's the page on CB:
www.caringbridge.org/visit/warrioreli

They restricted access to their page, guess they were found out by CB.
What morons!

[Daryl Faure]

I feel sick for you Tertia! Some people are just so warped. Now I understand why my sister is so anti facebook. Makes me want to go and remove every photo of Dylan I have uploaded.

[Chickenpig]

GAH! This is horrible. I'm so sorry Tertia. There probably isn't a wife, her picture is probably stolen too. I bet this whole think is done by some fat, pimply computer geek living in his parents' basement somewhere.

[melissa]

Unbelievable! I hope they are punished.

Maybe a watermark right through the center of your photos? http://cameras.about.com/od/photoeditingtips/a/How-To-Watermark-Your-Photos.htm

[Mel]

fucking wankers.

[Andrea]

Found this profile on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001000114354. He lists his hometown as Dundurn, Saskatchewan and has several pictures with 'JS'... You really need to contact the RCMP and report him for fraud, invasion of privacy and so on. They will fall on him like a tonne of bricks.

[Puryear]

OMG I read that page and believed that.. Why would u even do that on mother's day? This woman isnt getting enough attention at home that she pretends to die? So sorry to hear this happened.

[Cristy]

I'm sick to my stomach reading about this. The fact that someone would use images of someone else's children, let alone YOUR CHILDREN, for their own agenda is sickening. It sounds like you're doing everything you can to stop this, but it's appalling that you have to even do this. May justice be swift and the universe rain havac on his ass.

[Everyday-morning.blogspot.com]

I found your blog from the Warrior Eli Hoax blog. I can't even begin to imagine what you're going through knowing these sick freaks used pictures of your babies. I hadn't followed "Eli" for very long, only the last couple of days from seeing posts about his mom. I feel so stupid because I left them a comment to them pouring my heart out to them. My husband passed away last month and I felt this man's pain and I was sitting here in tears reading that she passed away. Then to sign on this morning to find out it was all fake. There is a special place in Hell for people like this, but I do hope they are charged with fraud and whatever else they can make stick.

[Tracy]

This is so outrageous! I'm so sorry photos of your children were stolen to commit this heinous travesty. My 5-year-old nephew has just spent the last five months in hospital with cancer. While my sister has medical insurance there are other children there who need fund-raising efforts to pay for their treatment. I am incensed that those real efforts are undermined by fraudsters. Eish! Blows my mind that people can stoop so low.

[Christina]

Oh my goodness!!! I follow you on FB and I saw a post about this "poor family" yesterday. I didn't donate, but I thought it was real. How sad!! Thank you so very much for the information you provided. I will be checking out everything from now on!

[Adele]

Speechless!

[http://www.designermama-manaallamano.blogspot.com/]

This is a crime! You must report him/them to the RCMP. Truly! I feel horribly for you guys!! There needs to be a way to protect your images...do you have a watermark? I could make a little PDF watermark for you to paste all over your images...

[Esther]

I'm saddened (and sickened) that somebody used my photos and the photos of my son to spout those stories over the weekend (as part of the "Warrior Eli" scam), much as they appear to have done with your photos.

What is WRONG with people?

THAT's ME (in the picture on Facebook), but I'm not dead... my son's not dead. He's healthy and happy. He did have cancer, but he's been in remission (I'm so thankful).

BUT, they did more than "just" lie! When those people use the stories of REAL kids (OUR KIDS) as part of scams, it makes it harder to raise money for our REAL kids who need it.

I've never been afraid to tell my son's story. I've told anyone who would listen, and even those who turn away. I'm not ashamed of my little boy; I'm so proud of what a strong little man he's become (he has conquered cancer, and he's the most amazing kid any mother could hope for). But, now, I understand why there are those who keep the stories (and the images) of their kids private and let their stories remain unsaid. When someone can tear at the very core of what he has gone through--turn it into something so wrong... play on emotions... How many people cried when they heard/read the story of the kid with cancer and the mother who was killed in a car crash right before mother's day?

Well, I'm upset... but it also makes me all the more determined.

It's not play. I look at the pictures that they stole, and I remember the moments that those images represent. My little boy almost died. The cancer kept coming back. I wouldn't wish that (any of it) on my worst enemy. And, yet, somebody tried to claim that the pain could EVER be theirs.

Ironically, while this person was spreading all their lies, my son and I were hanging out with the most amazing group of people, who were all raising money to let another kid have a wish come true (Make-a-Wish New Mexico). It's my wish that this horrible episode will be turned into something positive.

http://warriorelihoax.wordpress.com/2012/05/14/the-death-of-dana-dirr-16/comment-page-1/#comment-366

[Ingrid Milne]

I cannot actually believe that someone so sick out there actually did this. AND FOR YEARS! I love Facebook, but I can now see how it can be used to manipulate people and get their sympathy!

I enjoy following you on Facebook but hell I would never steal your photo's! And then con people! Disguising!

[Sam]

That is simply sickening! I feel so sorry for you, having to put up with some stranger stealing photos of YOUR children for THEIR own benefit! I hope karma gets revenge on them for you.