Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Fakes pose online as Parkland victims
Impersonators on social media are posing as the Parkland shooting victims and their family members — trying to dupe the public, discredit the victims or profit from deceit.
“That’s so sick,” said Marie Laman, whose 15-year-old son, Kyle, is among the wounded Marjory Stoneman Douglas students to recently be impersonated on Twitter. “Who does that?”
These fake social-media accounts spread after tragedies that attract worldwide attention, and the Parkland school massacre is the latest lure, experts say.
Scammers spin a story to make it ap-
pear credible and target people’s “emotional buttons” to make money, said said Gleb Tsipursky, a professor at Ohio State University who studies the circulation of fake news on social media.
The contentious gun debate in the U.S. might make the matter worse.
Many Stoneman Douglas students have emerged as leaders in the push for gun reform, so those who disagree with them may impersonate them, said Melanie C. Green, an associate professor at the University at Buffalo in New York who specializes in deception online.
The goal is “to discredit them — and by extension, weaken their political impact,” Green said.
Kyle Laman, 15, has been through three surgeries to repair the damage of a bullet that tore into the top of his ankle and faces two more operations. One of the Twitter impostors asked for money under his name, leading other Twitter users to notify Kyle’s family.
Meanwhile, Adam Pollack, the cousin of shooting victim Meadow Pollack, urged his followers not to follow a fake account with his name. “This is not me, they’re going around asking for money like my cousin’s death is some type of joke,” he wrote.
The account has since been removed from Twitter.
Andrea Ghersi, the sister of 17-year-old shooting victim Joaquin Oliver, posted on Twitter that the “same person that was pretending to be me is now pretending to be ‘a school survivor.’ ”
It’s unclear whether any of the Parkland impostors profited. FBI spokesman James Marshall said he said he didn’t have specifics about the Parkland cases, but he called such scams “common and costly.”
If caught, fraudsters face a variety of criminal charges, including identity theft, said Sarah Schall, spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
The Florida Attorney General’s Office has received about a dozen complaints and questions about potential fraud related to the Parkland shooting.
The office helped get a fake video removed from YouTube, one that claimed to show a Parkland victim’s funeral service. Someone notified the attorney general, concerned it was fraud. YouTube removed the video for violating its policies on harassment and bullying.
“We review and, when appropriate, actively work each complaint we receive to ensure that fraudulent or suspicious campaigns are shut down,” said Kylie Mason, spokeswoman for Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Victims of other tragedies across the U.S. have dealt with similar impostors.
In 2012, after the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, the family of one of the slain teachers said people were setting up fake social media accounts with her name.
The family applied to trademark Victoria Soto’s name in an attempt to stop others from misusing it on social media.
Her sister, Jillian Soto, said people’s fake accounts promoted conspiracy theories about the massacre, some of which were used to harass her and other family members. She said the misuse of her sister’s name also made it harder for people to find links to the legitimate Vicki Soto Memorial Fund, which raises money for scholarships for aspiring educators.
After the 2016 Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando, more than 430 fundraisers were posted on GoFundMe, the crowdfunding website. The fundraisers included travelers asking for cash, a practitioner of ancient healing, a personal safety instructor who sells quick loaders for assault rifles and even convicted identity impostors, the Associated Press reported.
After the Las Vegas shooting rampage killed 58 people last year, at least three campaigns were set up for apparently fake victims who were not listed among the dead, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.
It disturbed Kyle Laman’s family to find out somebody was using his name and image on a fake Twitter account. “He did not have a Twitter [account] till a couple of days ago, when he signed up to see what was going on,” his mother said.
The family alerted Twitter about the impersonation and the account was suspended. Now Kyle is on Twitter as @Kylelaman16, “the real kyle msd survivor.”