In August of 2011, a group of people became friends in a chat room on the website hitRECord.org. This site is an online community made up of artists who are encouraged to upload songs, artwork, video and other creative projects. The terms of service for the site specifically states that each person must upload work that is their own. Occasionally, uploaded work will be used in a live show for the website or in a book and the submitter will receive compensation for their contribution.
Chelsea joined the group and was welcomed with open arms. Her artwork was very well received. In fact, two of Chelsea’s tiny stories (the site’s term for illustrated short fiction) were used in the collaborative book “The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories.”
Chelsea’s screen name on the site was chelsea.e. Very impressive artwork, right? She soon had a following of fans and her work was shared on Tumblr and other social media sites.
The hitRECord folks had several live shows, and Chelsea attended two of them, meeting her friends from the chat room. Soon, she shared with them she was tired and worried she might be sick. On November 11, 2011, Chelsea announced that she had been diagnosed with AML. Her friends were devastated and worried for her.
Over Thanksgiving, Chelsea’s hitRECord friends came to her house in Raeford, North Carolina to visit and show their support. It was during this visit that they helped Chelsea shave her head. Friends of “Chelsea” will recognize this picture, taken during that visit.
Soon, the hitRECord friends started questioning certain aspects of Chelsea’s cancer treatment. Doctors waited almost a month to begin chemo. Chelsea had to drive three hours to Washington DC for a spinal tap. When she was inpatient, the only person who was allowed to visit was her sister, and care packages had to be sent to her parent’s house in Pennsylvania. They pushed these questions to the back of their minds and concentrated on supporting their sick friend.
Then, Chelsea’s hitRECord contributions were found elsewhere online.
Check out this piece from a deviantART user.
And this turtle sketch also looks familiar.
While the plagiarism accusations were being investigated, Chelsea’s hitRECord friends began looking into her cancer story. She claimed she was receiving outpatient chemotherapy at Duke. Friends called the hospital and there was no patient by that name who had ever been treated there.
Duke also doesn’t do outpatient chemotherapy for AML.
Friends looked closely at her Facebook page and found that Chelsea had used the exact same picture of platelets that she used on her Cheecha Kicks Cancer blog. They found it elsewhere online, just like we pointed out in our first post about her.
Then, a social security number posted on a hospital bracelet picture from Chelsea’s Facebook turned out not to belong to her.
Finally, hitRECord went public with the accusations of plagiarism against Chelsea. Although she had received credit in the book, she had never been paid for her contribution. Immediately after being publicly accused, her blog, Tumblr and twitter were deleted and her phone number was changed. Any friends from the hitRECord community were deleted from her Facebook.
Another update will follow shortly. I’ve been contacted by a lot of people who were involved with Chelsea in the past and I’m trying to slowly sort through the information in a way that makes sense.
(Thank you so much to the many hitRECorders who contacted me with information about this).
Also, please refrain from name-calling in the comments section. Venting or giving new information is fine, but attacking other commenters is not. Please be respectful to both the victims and the person behind the hoax. I appreciate it.
Thank you for posting this. Taking artwork from others and trying to pass it off as her own isn’t entirely related to her faking cancer, but it shows the mindset of a person like her, and helps to establish a history of deceit. It’s also much more difficult for her to dismiss this action as “victimless.” Were it not for the suspicions and subsequent investigations by a few intrepid hitRECorders, she may have gotten paid for work that wasn’t hers (paychecks for this are set to go out next month). Fortunately, the two artists who actually did the work will receive their rightful paychecks. What they will not receive is credit for their artwork in the Tiny Book of Tiny Stories, Vol. 1, which will not be reprinted. So anyone who picks up a copy of that book and doesn’t know about this fiasco will think that a ‘chelsea.e.’ did those illustrations.
I wonder what the actual artists think of it…
The actual artists were contacted by hitrecord’s management so as far as I know it has all been resolved.
My name is Amanda Maxton. I am married to Brady and am Grandma Gar’s daughter in law, I am mommy to the 2 kids (whom I love as my own and are happy, funny, well-adjusted children that are being shielded from all this).
I don’t remember the exact date I spoke with Chelsea about her leukemia, but it was sometime in December of 2011 soon after she had been diagnosed. I will not share the details of our entire conversation, but when I read this blog I noticed a big inconsistency with part of what she told me. I’m not here bashing anybody or pointing fingers, I’m stating things that were said to me on the phone.
I was told that at first there were multiple symptoms that could easily be related to something far less serious than leukemia: exhaustion when just walking from room to room, a fever nightly, etc. Then it got to the point where she could not walk from room to room without having to sit and rest so she went to the doctor. The doctor’s office drew blood to look for what she thought could be mono or anemia. I was told the doctor’s office contacted her that same day to say she had to come in the next morning to discuss something with her blood work. She went back the next morning, got the diagnosis, and was started on chemotherapy the very next day.
Now, according to this blog post, the group wondered why the doctors waited a month to start chemo for her after being diagnosed. According to what I was told, this all was discovered and started being treated in a 3 day span. I have no proof that’s what Chelsea told me, I didn’t know I might need some later. But, that is what she told me and it conflicts with what is published above (and I have no reason to disbelieve the hitRECord group as I was also told her friends helped her shave her head before the chemo took her hair, which matches the post above). So here we are, again wondering why things don’t 100% add up. Maybe there’s a reason. And maybe not.
Everything she told everyone was slightly different. She came to my house in NC on 11/17/11 and supposedly started out patient chemo the next day, which only lasted until people began arriving at her house for Thanksgiving, around the 22nd of November, and then people stayed at her house for two weeks during which she had no doctors appts or treatments, they just stayed inside her house basically the entire time. And then she claimed she had to go to the hospital for 30 days of induction chemo once everyone left, in early December, about a month after her diagnosis on 11/11/11. What she told you lines up with the blogspot post archived in a previous post here and she may have changed her story to tell people. I obviously do not know her reasoning, I only know what I saw and what Chelsea told me just like you.
Amanda – The kids are lucky to have you and your husband. I shudder to think of how psychologically damaged they would have been if they’d remained with their “mother”.
As twisted as she is, I still hope Chelsea never has the misfortune to become seriously ill, or disabled because of a life-limiting or terminal illness. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. Why anyone would think it’s fun to fake it is beyond me. I wish I was faking!
On behalf of your kids – thank you for stepping up, for mothering them. Oh, and stay safe. Who knows what lengths Chelsea will go too.
Hugs.
Thank you again, Taryn.
I just want to say – to me, this proves beyond any doubt that Chelsea’s problem is beyond being ‘sick’ – she’s evil to boot. Human evil does exist. Sick people can be cured. Evil people, probably not.
It seems that if there is a way to lie, defraud, to play with people’s emotions, to hurt, to manipulate – she will find it and she will do it. I hope that she will reap fully the consequences of her actions.
I can’t imagine her being sorry, not one bit.
She does not have a conscience. She is in every way, a sociopath. She will probably never change. She has no reason to change. She obviously enjoys what she’s doing, enjoys other people’s pain.
My heart goes out to everyone affected and deeply hurt by this. Especially her family – I cried reading about her children, and how they have been neglected.
Amanda, I commend you for taking on such an ordeal…I can’t imagine what your husband, you and kids are going through- but it seems from your comment that you believe the cancer diagnosis for Chelsea and may be questioning Taryn’s research? I’m sure after all these years the drama has been growing and mounting and the ways you’ve dealt with all the new lies and stories is hard to keep from affecting the little ones emotionally and socially, and maybe now that it has all gone public- again- its bringing everything up fresh. However both you and your husband in another post say “when she was diagnosed” which makes me wonder, does her family really believe in the cancer diagnosis? Do you even think she’s faking it, even after all the evidence? I’m not sure I wouldn’t have cut this person out of my life by now, but it seems like family is sorta just standing by not sure what to believe. Chelsea prolly has everyone so wrapped up in stories.
I cannot speak for the Maxtons, but I know that Chelsea can be very convincing. For the art up above, she would describe her drawing process in ways that made it seem believable, like telling us how her entire arm was covered in graphite, it took her 14 hours to complete, she drank 3 diet cherry pepsis during it. We were too trusting but we had no reason to doubt what she said. It wasnt until someone mentioned how they had suspicions that not everything Chelsea was posting on the site was her own work because her illustrations would have very different styles and photographs seemed too much like stock photos. And once her cancer diagnosis went public, she started posting truly horrendous and juvenile illustrations, blaming it on shaky chemo hands.
So we picked one image and ran it through reverse google image, and it found a match from a Russian deviant art. So we tried another, same thing. We eventually found around 20 pieces of art Chelsea had posted that had exact matches elsewhere on the internet, all from different artists. We emailed our findings to the site’s management and they handled the very serious matter of contacting the original artists for the two pieces above to get permission and get them their compensation that wouldve gone to Chelsea otherwise.
But we were also investigating her cancer at the same time. That process only lead to one of us calling Duke, where she was allegedly staying, and them saying that there was no patient by any of her names, especially not one with AML. Our biggest piece of evidence besides that was parallels between her stories of chemo treatment and the movie 50/50. It became harder to dig any deeper at the time because once her art thievery was exposed, her tumblrs and facebook and twitter were deleted. All we had were our suspicions and what other people told us.
The point of my wall of text is that we really had no reason to doubt what she was saying as the truth, and sometimes it is easier to trust people than to start questionig everything they say. but once we realized she was capable of stealing art, a giant faux pas in hitRECord, something Chelsea herself would rail against for appearances, and getting it published, we knew she would be capable of lying about other things.
Jane- in short, no, my husband and I do not believe the “diagnosis”. We did not believe it at the beginning either, but after conversations with her about her treatments and the side effects, I began to. I walked in to this whole thing hearing about all the previous lies and deceptions, which my husband has proof of. So I, being naive, thought I would never let myself get caught up in the stories and drama and just kind of never believed a word she said. However, she was always very nice and personable and never tried to fight with me. So even though I had decided to not believe a word she said, after a phone call describing the treatments and side effects and pain, I believed it (I have no personal experience with Leukemia so it wasn’t hard to fool me into believing using medical terms and describing side effects). And really, I had never seen the lies in action and honestly think any person would fake leukemia.
Looking back, there were red flags such as: the doctors office taking blood and calling back to say something was wrong in the same business day!? That’s crazy fast and every time I or the kids or anybody got blood taken, results weren’t known the same day. So I figured, maybe if they suspect leukemia or mono or something they do get results sane day. I mean, they don’t want leukemia untreated and mono is contagious, so yeah, maybe they did find out right away.
Another flag (and I’m still not sure if this ever does happen or was completely false)- I was told she was in remission in late April 2012 but that right after Mothers Day in May had to undergo another 5-6 weeks of intensive inpatient chemo. It would be so intense I was told it was “taking you to the brink of death and pulling you back again”. However, Brady and I got married May 26, 2012, and the kids were a huge part of our ceremony (they were on our invitations, cake topper, they had their own part during the vows, and they were also the flower girl and ring bearer). So we were busy and excited and I didn’t really think about the inpatient chemo after remission or fact check it.
We did not hear from her again until September (even though our son’s birthday is in June), at which time she wanted the kids to take them to her “I beat leukemia” celebration.
The last red flag I’ll touch on is the fact that in late February or March of last year, she contacted me saying she was finishing up 5 weeks of intensive inpatient chemo on Friday and wanted to pick up the kids on Saturday. My mom called this one right away by saying “She’s not going to show up Amanda, you don’t get discharged from inpatient chemo and the next day drive 45 minutes one way to pick up two energetic children for the weekend. There is just no way. If she shows up, she’s not really sick, if she doesn’t show up, she probably is really sick.” Well, Saturday morning she did drive herself down to pick up the kids. Even after that I didn’t not believe her.
But today, after speaking with Taryn several times this past week, and hearing from several people who used to be involved with her, no, my husband and I do not believe it anymore. I won’t get in to how I feel about the situation on here because it isn’t the time or place and although she once referred to me as “the fat ugly girlfriend” (but not to my face), she has never been mean or nasty or fought with me. In fact, she has been nothing but nice. I will say I disagree with the fat and ugly part even though I’m no beauty queen!
Well, as others have said, I’m just very glad the kids have you and Brady and their grandma looking out for them. This aspect of Chelsea’s case, making her own kids think she has cancer, is what horrifies me the most. Just last night we were talking about how I had to miss my son’s first day of kindergarten because that was when I got sick (he’s in third grade now), and he teared up and said he didn’t want to “think about that memory”. This is a tough kid who doesn’t even cry when he gets hurt, getting ready to bawl in the middle of a restaurant. Having your mom sick, believing she might die…that is just devastating for kids. I can’t believe she would put them through that when it wasn’t true. Thank goodness you guys have custody.
Thank you Amanda, for delving into more details. I can imagine having your families personal life dished out in public space is hard. And Ann is so spot on, it is crazy for me to think someone would do this to their kids! It only makes me question moreso what happened to her leading up to all the hoaxing? What leads all these hoaxers to committing this fraud against their friends and families?
Ann, I wish you the best in your recovery. You and your kids have to actually deal with cancer– how could anyone want to even fake that blows me away… you seem so strong and I wish you and your family the best!
Amanda, any chance that Chelsea may actually seek help for all of this? Is anyone in the family talking with her through all this currently?
Amanda, I just wanted to commend you for bring such a great mommy to those kids and for protecting them from their real mom. I don’t understand how any “mother” could do those things to her own children but it’s so nice to hear they have people who really care about them!!! Great job and I’m sure you are a beautiful person inside and out!!
Who cares if you are/were fat? Why do stupid people think that is a hurtful insult?
Just wanted to mention that it appears Chelsea may have been part of the online ED (eating disorders) community. Grandma Gar mentions this issue, and the girl who was supporting her used words like “lovely” and “darling”, which may seem innocuous, but are in fact part of the language of this virtual community, in which ill young women use their Tumblrs and blogs to convince themselves that their approach to food is in fact healthy. My niece was caught up in this world for a while, and it really exacerbated her illness. These girls believe that they are healthy but are in fact tremendously vulnerable to emotional manipulation. Someone like Chelsea would find easy targets in that community. Anyway, what I was really getting at here is that the ED girls consider “fat” to be the highest insult (they call normal-sized people “fatties” on a regular basis), but it has nothing to do with the reality of what someone looks like….it’s simply a reflection of the disordered nature of their own thinking.
Will there be other updates with more information. I mean, I have no doubt now that she was lying, but I was curious to see what other evidence there is.
I am a good friend of amanda. It has been painful to watch her and the entire maxton family go through this. She is an excellent mother to the kids. She also isn’t fat or ugly. She has brought happiness and love into those childrens lives
Thank you for the kind words!! It’s been a journey.I’m not going to speculate if Chelsea will get help or if a member of her family is talking with her about it as she did ask that everybody not contact her family and I’ll respect her privacy regarding them. What I will say is that there is a history of this behavior, as my husband posted under the previous blog entry.
As for my children, I will absolutely do whatever necessary to protect them. They are unaware of this situation and don’t ask about their mother or if they can call her or see her as they are used to only seeing her a couple times a year.
As for another update, I am not sure. Although I am sure Taryn will keep everyone up to date!
Amanda, I did search for you on FB and I did find your profile. I have to disagree that you are quite beautiful–on the outside. However, your beauty and heart on the inside truly shines through in every post. I am sure it would be quite easy for you to belittle, berate and tear C apart, and yet you do not. You have not said one unkind thing about her–even though you probably have a significant amount of ammunition. You love children that you did not birth and have put their best interest above all else. All of those things are what give you a heart of gold and what true beauty is about. While C may be biologically connected to them, you are truly Mommy. As everyone else has said, they are truly lucky to have you, and their Dad unconditionally. Somehow, I think you even consider yourself the lucky one to have them. 🙂
I found her too and find her beautiful externally also
Same here. The comment above reads like “You’re not good looking, but that’s ok, because you’re a nice person”.
Talk about a backhanded compliment!
I agree with Boostick what a compliment…not! And I find it strange you went to the trouble of looking up a commenter on FB in the first place, weird!
@Boostick, that was not how I meant it at all. I said, she is quite beautiful on the outside. Maybe instead of “however” it should have said “in addition to the outside beauty, what shows is the inside beauty”. I honestly think she is a very attractive person for what shows in the mirror. I was only trying to state that her inside beauty, her heart, compassion, and love for her children is very apparent and can be seen throughout all of her posts.
Your first sentence was very clear…you thought she was beautiful on the “outside”. But these kinds of conversations are always tricky. Lots of room for confusion!
Here’s what you said:
How is that not backhanded? It reads “You’re not beautiful on the outside, but you are on the inside”.
How else is
supposed to read?
I may be ESL, but even I know that “I disagree that you are X” means “You are not X”.
That’s why I’m so baffled. If it is supposed to mean “I don’t agree that you’re physically beautiful”, why would you say that? If you don’t mean that, then what could you mean?
I read it the same as boostick hence my original comment
EKG has been quite complimentary. Boostick, you too have added value to the comments. But in this instance, you are being inflexible and perhaps too grammatical. EKG may have mis-typed or mis-worded — but her intent was clear to us — she was saying she disagrees with any idea that Amanda is not externally beautiful, but even more than outside beauty, she sees her inside beauty (too). Everyone is apparently tense. Everyone is upset. There is more spillage and bombshells here in our real world. Let’s try to be kind to one another on here.
Chill out! Maybe it was a typo.
Lighten up. Geez!
1. I wasn’t the only person to pick up on this
2. For the THIRD time, English is not my first language. I’m communicating in the third oral language I learned, so if someone’s comments apparently need deciphering/unravelling by native speakers, is it any wonder I’d find someone saying “I’d deny that you’re beautiful” to be weirdly insulting?
If she’d said “Whoops, typo!” initially after the initial comment by not-me, then it could’ve been avoided.
Please remember that not everyone on the internet is an American. We non-Americans/Brits/Australians speak English as best we can, and it’s hard work. Maybe cut us some slack once in a while?
BTW – If anyone knows of any non-US websites investigating FDIS/O* I’d love some links. I have a colleague from Israel and one from Greece who’re looking for resources.
I have an interesting American paper to share:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3510683/
*Factitious Disorder Inflicted on Self/Others.
I read it the first time and thought, “ouch”, but then I read it again an realized part was left to context and it was, “I have to disagree (with Chelsea, and) that you are quite beautiful–on the outside.”
Words can get tricky.
Tricky or not, the fact that she is looking up commenters on on FB to see what they look like is strange in itself!
This has become a hate blog
Taryn is the least hateful person ever, she’s incredibly full of empathy and compassion. This story seems to have hit a lot of people hard due to the longetivity, lack of remorse (to the point of threats) and sympathy for the children of this specific hoax. No one will be wishing ill of Chelsea, people just want to vent their hurt or feelings, just as many people use tumblr and blogs. Unfortunately cases like this make it harder for people suffering to vent on these places and receive support as suspicion is rife.
Agreed.
@Boostick, I TRIED (apparently unsuccessfully) to give support to Amanda and let her know that I disagreed with HER perception (she stated she was “no beauty queen”). Maybe it wasn’t too clear, maybe I could have said it better, maybe my sentence should have read, “I have to disagree, you are quite beautiful”.
I will leave it at that. End of conversation.
I think the whole thing was just a misunderstanding. Amanda is a lovely person, inside and out 🙂
EKG- I just figured it was a typo.
I’m curious about one thing with hitRECord; if Chelsea was caught plagiarizing – why didn’t JGL call her out? This says hitRECord went public – but when you search the site, nothing comes up (if I missed it, you should link your us). Where’s that article? He called out todd68976 and MissMurd3r_22 (http://www.hitrecord.org/records/219290) over two years ago, which would put that before Chelsea’s plagiarism. So if he’s called out plagiarizers before, then how come not Chelsea? To plagiarize something and get published for it is a big deal. Where’s JGL’s comment on that?
Not 100% sure, but if they ended up putting a system in place to track down plagiarists after this post was made, he probably had no need to call her out if other people made it known in the community she stole the artwork.
The site never publicly commented on what happened with chelsea.e. They quietly deleted her account, contacted the artists she stole work from, and made sure they received the compensation they were owed. Why they never publicly commented on it, I don’t know. But if you are very curious and want to ask them yourself, you can email their support email address.
They really should have said something publicly, like they did with that other member. We just have to take everyones word for what happened, which this blog is proving you just simply cannot do with anyone these days, the writers of the blog included!
Actually you’re not just “taking someone’s word for it” in the case of the plagiarism. In fact, Taryn posted clear evidence of it in this post (the images “created” by chelsea.e and the original images from deviantart). There were plenty of other instances of her plagiarism that were not used in monetized productions (in fact I have every instance of this plagiarism saved as I’ve been working on a case study about collaborative media and copyright for over a year now), but because they weren’t the ones used in for-profit productions, I’m assuming that’s why Taryn chose not to include those-but the hitRECord management still has evidence of each of these infractions. Their decision not to publicize it is theirs, but the important thing is that the proper artists were contacted, given credit and the payments they are owed, and that chelsea.e’s profile was deleted from the site.
I fail to see how JGL’s public comments on this would be needed as further evidence. How is taking HIS word somehow above what you can clearly see before you?
The reason the situation with MissMurd3r_22 was addressed publicly was because she was “outed” publicly in the forums on the hitRECord site. When the situation with chelsea.e was discovered, members of the community contacted the management, and, as R stated, she was quietly deleted from the site, and the original artists contacted and compensated. There are many instances of people uploading copyrighted material to the hitRECord site, either through sheer misunderstanding of the terms of service or the desire to gain fame through the hard work of others (though chelsea.e’s is one of the few where it was included in a monetized production), and the majority of the are dealt with quietly by the hitRECord management team. The only times they have really been dealt with publicly is when the offenders are “outed” publicly in the forum before the management team has been contacted. This is something they have tried to reduce through direct communication with members of the community through e-mails, and having a Community Director who acts as a liaison between the community and the members of management.
It’s also worth noting that though hitRECord is still the company run by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, his involvement with the company has decreased tremendously over the past few years, and most matters such as this are not dealt with by him directly, but other members of the hitRECord management team.
I have known Chelsea since she was in 10th grade and her Mother since she was 13 years old. Sadly, this is learned behavior as Chels Mother is a full blown narcissist and possible sociopath. While I don’t forgive Chels for what she has done, she has learned it from both of her parents.