Last night, Manny Munoz, the founder of Gamerosity, received an email that surprised him quite a bit.
Gamerosity is a charity, started by Manny, that raises money to send out iPads, video games systems and other fun electronic goodies to kids fighting cancer. Manny is a cancer survivor himself, and his charity has done amazing things for kids with their Hero Packages.
Antranette Nolan had nominated Emily, the fictional daughter with cancer that she had invented, for Gamerosity’s Little Hero Wall, on April 24th. Last night, Manny received a second email from Antranette, inquiring on the status of Emily’s nomination.
Manny’s reply was priceless.
Antranette contacted us this afternoon confessing to writing the Emily is Strong Facebook page. She claimed she did it to raise money for a family member’s funeral expenses and that she only deleted the page when she realized that she didn’t actually need to pay the bills.
I’m not sure if that’s the truth, considering Antranette was contacting Gamerosity for video game systems, but she’s sticking with that story.
Wow, That’s all I can say…..
Do people ever feel hoorible for lying it makes me sick because it does make it hard to trust people ugh…. ;-(
So many sham-sters. How to show them that the “easy get” — whether it’s attention or monetary — will never satisfy them? Your heart fills up when you take care of yourself, or when you help someone else. It IS just that simple!! Turn in to help yourself, or turn out to help someone else — with an open heart and hands. What a tangled web we’d weave when we practice to deceive.
That reply is priceless. One of those ‘oh, BURN’ moments.
Wow. I had almost wondered if she had set up the fake pages to try and raise money for her mother that passed, maybe somehow thinking in her mind that more people might donate to a sick child than an adult. But the times of that happening don’t seem to add up.(her mother passed in March, and this started in April, if I remember, so unless there was some sort of snag about the burial, I don’t think she’d need funds for her mothers’ funeral expenses a month later) Also asking a charity to review a fake story to try and obtain prizes even after all this time, and just *now* saying she didn’t need the money and deleted the facebook-,yet still has the websites for the fundraising and the twitter up? Seems very scammy.
I completely agree with you, J. Wholeheartedly!
It sounds like the only thing real about this “Antranette” is that he/she is a scumbag — there is no other word for it anymore. How many fakes are getting caught these days? How many of them turn around & start another scam / hoax days later, I wonder? I would guess *almost* ALL of them. I know the actual conversations might be a bit different, but really, getting busted by this blog just doesn’t seem to be enough of a consequence for stuff like this.
And NO “it was just creative writing” or “I was just trying to raise awareness of ___ cancer” excuse even remotely makes up for trying to scam a charity out of gifts or money meant for REAL children! That’s utterly disgusting and people who do that are no better than rats. And the other ones, the scammers who befriend real parents and discuss treatments or “experiences” COULD very easily cause VERY REAL harm to someone else. Assholes. Fecking assholes.
I wish all charities that help our children that are actually fighting life threatening illnesses would require forms signed by physicians like some of the others do. Although I guess if someone is so mentally ill that they would fake a child’s death or illness it wouldn’t be difficult for them to forge a physicians signature. It’s a shame there is no system that would make it easier to call hospitals and get verbal confirmation that a child is being treated. I know with patient privacy laws those things are impossible but it would be so great to stop these people from sponging off of children and adults that are really living this life.
Who wakes up one day and decides to fake a dying baby to pay their bills? What a rotten thing to do