What are fakers?

Fakers (also called trolls on some boards) are people who pretend to be someone else or make up a persona and pretend to be that character or pretend to have or be something they aren't. For some reason, a lot of people decide to pretend to either be multiples or a parent of multiples online.
 

What do they do?

Most fakers make up lies about having multiples, posting about them on message boards and at websites.

Some fakers steal photos and pass them off as their own kids. Not all the stolen photos will be of children - some will be of houses, cars, rooms etc.

Some befriend real people for years, carrying on an elaborate fake friendship.

Some try and get people to send them gifts or donations for the children they pretend to have.

Some impersonate a real set or real parents of multiples, either by creating accounts and posting on message boards as them or emailing people pretending to be the real family.

Fakers exist in other online communities as well. You can find them anywhere, from medical support groups (interesting article called Munchausen by Internet) to military sites (many groups are dedicated to exposing people pretending to be military or pretending to have won military medals and honors) and "rate how hot I am" sites.

Some people have faked writing entire memoirs which are published as truth and turn out to be false, such as the James Frey controversy and the Margaret Jones memoir. See the NY Times article for info.
 

Why do they do it?

A myriad of reasons - bored teenagers who think it's fun, creative people that are playing fiction out for real, teens who feel they aren't welcome at parenting sites because they aren't parents, people who think their real self isn't interesting enough, people who like attention, people who want to get caught lying because it's funny when the board gets in an uproar, people who just want to do it because it's the internet and they can - there are so many reasons why someone would fake.

The most serious would be people who are so wrapped up in it they almost (or do) believe it themselves.

Some people want money or free stuff and like conning people. We call these people "criminals."
 

Where do you find multiple birth fakers?

The likely places for multiples fakers are message boards about pregnancy, parenting, baby names and multiple births.

You may find fake websites at babiesonline, photobucket, MySpace and other social networking sites.

In general you can find fakers everywhere - rating sites, journals, military sites, fandom sites, the real world ...
 

What should I do if I encounter a faker, or someone who might be faking?

My advice is to take every poster claiming multiples with a grain of salt unless they post a few pictures of the kids together and over time (if they are faking using stolen photos it'll get found out pretty quickly). Google them, see if there's any news articles - if it's quads or higher, there may be some. Check with other higher order multiple moms.

If a person is posting and you suspect they might be faking, either ignore their posts or tell the board moderator who can investigate. Most boards don't want you to call out the people yourself; check the board rules to see if this is allowed or not. You may think a poster with quints is faking but it could turn out to be true. The best thing to do is alert the board owner/moderator and let them handle it and just ignore the poster.

You also might think about letting some other people know via private message, just so other people the faker is in touch with don't get duped further. On boards where the moderators just ban fakers and don't announce what's happened to the community at large, the faker may have the opportunity to continue faking by privately messaging those they talk with and spinning lies about why they are banned. They may continue to be in contact with board members they've met via email, PM, or instant messaging, so it may be wise to give them a private heads up about the situation.
 

Big deal, someone's faking, why does it matter? Just ignore them.

I bet the parents of Megan Meier wish that faking didn't have dire consequences, but it does. The truth of the internet is you NEVER know who you're really talking to.

Many people DO ignore the fakers - after all, attention is what they are after and this is the best thing to do when you discover one. But if you're on a busy message board, chances are it isn't going to be ignored by everyone, especially if the faker has befriended many people. If you've been the one that's duped or you've lost money, it can be very hard to sit back and ignore them.

It may not be a big deal to those who can spot them easily, or have never had a faker lie to them or steal their photos or identity. Most eventually give themselves away - and sometimes they are good for a laugh because they suck at lying and the faking is very obvious.

I think it is fair to warn others on the board to avoid the person (in private message or email), especially if the person chatting with the faker seems to not have a clue about it and the faker has been around the board for awhile and has had the chance to make relationships with people. If you could prevent someone from having to take their family website down because people steal photos of their kids, or having to deal with someone who pretend to be them and opened an email account in their name, or prevent someone from sending gifts to someone who doesn't exist, wouldn't you want to do it?

Recently, a woman and her husband were sentenced to JAIL TIME for pretending to have sextuplets.
 

Someone is trying to get me to send them things, what should I do?

Do not send donations, gifts, food, clothing or ANYTHING to someone online that you have not met in person to verify their story. Even if someone provides a phone number and you talk to them still does not mean they are who they say they are. Unless you are willing to give your money up to someone who may not be telling the truth, don't donate anything. When the Everson's faked having sextuplets, a friend who believed them set up a website for collecting donations. So even a legitimate looking site may be run by someone who is also being duped. If you choose to give money or gifts, know that they might not be going to who you think they are and you may never see that money or your item may never get to anyone who will have use for it.

If you have sent gifts or money to someone you later find out is faking, and you have information on who this person really is, you can inform their local authorities, as accepting gifts under false pretenses is a crime.

Many message boards have exchanges - people will sign up, get paired with a person and exchange anything from candy to Christmas ornaments. While it's a nice idea, go into it with the knowledge that although you may keep up your end of the bargain and send something, you may never get anything in return. The majority of exchanges work well, but be aware it doesn't work out for everyone.
 

I found a website and I think they stole photos!

If you know this for sure (the real multiple family website has the photos that were stolen on it etc), alert the real family that their photos were stolen, then email the person who made the fake website and tell them that you informed the family their photos were stolen. That is usually enough to get the fakers to shut the site down. If they don't take the photos down, you can contact the web host - it is against the Terms of Agreement of almost every web host for someone to use photos that do not belong to them without permission of the photo owner. In some cases the web host will suspend the site to investigate. I've have seen quite a few websites shut down by various web hosts when they are informed the member stole the photos they are using, especially if the photos are of children.
 

Someone stole my pictures, what do I do?

If they are posting on a message board, report them to the board owner and moderators and let everyone on the board know they stole the pics. This usually results in the faker not coming back and the admin banning them from the site. Ask the admin if you can have the person's IP address - this will allow you to trace them back to their Internet Service Provider (ISP). There are many free services online to do a whois search, like samspade.org.

If they have created a website or photo account, ask them to remove the photos (if they have contact information), and also report them to the site operators. Photobucket, babiesonline, MySpace, Livejournal etc all have contact email. Tell them the pictures are being used without permission.

If you have their IP address and they have not removed photos, trace the IP back to their service provider (search Google for "free IP tracing" and you can find free sites that will do this). You can contact the ISP and tell them the IP address and what their customer is doing. Administrators of message boards and websites can request that a block be put on that person's account so they can't access certain websites (in case they find a way around being banned at a message board).

Photos are NOT in the public domain (free to use) unless the person who took them says "these are in the public domain" or it is 75 years after your death. So YOU hold the rights to your photos, and companies that offer web services (photo sharing, websites etc) should honour that right.

If you post pictures up on your website, you can try a few things to protect them.

• Place them on a page that is not linked on your website and only give the address to people you know. (This may not prevent Google or other search engines from accessing it and index it.)
• Password protect the page so that only people with the password can view it. Only give the password to those you trust and ask them not to pass it along.
• If you post them to Facebook or MySpace, make them visible only to a select Friend group that you know and trust - do NOT make them public.
• Tell your friends and family and anyone you send pictures to that they can't send them to others without permission from you.
• Watermark your photos. This can be done in most graphics programs - it does diminish the quality of the photos (a transparent image or text is placed over the picture). Fakers won't be able to use it if your username is transparently over the photo where it can't be cropped out.
• Don't post pregnancy belly pictures - there is a guy on the internet that collects them for fetish purposes.

The drawbacks of protecting your photos are a little odd, but true - the more your photos are hidden, the less chance a faker has to get a hold of them, BUT the less people there are to spot that your photos are taken. Almost all the alerts I get about photo stealers don't come from the victims themselves, but others who spotted it because they recognized the pictures.

Disabling right mouse 'click to save' on your website isn't that protective - people can still see the URL of the photo and can access it.

Article on Fair Use, copyright and photo infringement
 

Info for all the fakers out there...

You can be traced to your internet service provider by every email you send and every post you make on a message board. Anyone you send email to has your IP address (a unique number assigned to your computer every time you sign on to the net), and every message board owner (and many moderators, it depends on the board software and if the owner has enabled it) can see it as well. This allows them to ban you from their site and also trace you to your internet service provider, and complain about you to them. This could result in your internet service being terminated or suspended. You can also be permanently banned by your service provider from being able to access the websites you fake at.

If you use proxy servers (places that let you use one of their IP addresses), people will assume you are faking right away, because people without something to hide don't need to hide their true IP address. So you may think you're being clever, but you're really giving yourself away almost immediately.

Families with multiples are a very close knit community, and if you steal pictures or impersonate others, you will get found out, and people will research every bit of information you give out and will discover your lies. Often the people you have angered can find out who you really are.

Teenagers who have been caught faking have had their parents called by angry families who have tracked down their personal info, their schools and school boards have been informed in cases where they were using school computers to send messages, and in some cases local police and the FBI have been contacted if gifts or money have ever been offered or asked for. If you are faking and someone suspects, you can be very sure that many people will be researching your real information, and more often than not they will find it. The internet is not as anonymous as you think.

Legal action can be taken against a faker if they are impersonating a real family and stealing photos.
 

Some multiple birth hoaxes from the news.

Over the years there have been some multiple birth hoaxes that have made mainstream news.

Bernard Monyenye (2008)
This Australian Medicare worker invented multiple births to cash in on baby bonus payments.

Erika Nieves-Abrigo (aka Nancy Cantu) (2007)
Arrested for bilking people out of money and gifts when she claimed to be pregnant with quintuplets.

Mandie Clark (November 2006)
She scammed a lot of mothers on various boards for baby supplies and gifts. I outed her as a faker here, and the article written about her mentioned this site.

Swiss French Quints (June 2006)
A woman in France claimed she had quints by declaring the births to collect child benefits in France. She claimed they were born in Switzerland. She cashed 100,000 euros before being discovered as a fraud when clerks caught the names of two sets of quintuplets bearing the same first names and different addresses and surnames.

Rahman Septuplets (June 2006)
A Deputy Inspector General of Police in Bangladesh lied about his wife giving birth to septuplets, along with having 7 other children. Tests concluded the "septuplets" weren't even related, and that Rahman was likely trafficking them. He could be facing a possible death sentence.

Qiao Yubo (June 2006)
The Chinese woman announced she was having quintuplets and a news article appeared, and she recanted. Her husband had no idea she wasn't pregnant. She had been pregnant with twins that she miscarried. After her husband was injured in a car accident, she didn't want to tell him about the miscarriage and instead made up a story about having quints.

Everson Sextuplets (Hoax from April 2006)
Couple announced they'd had sextuplets a month earlier, going so far as to show reporters a nursery. The story was investigated by police and the couple was charged with fraud for accepting donations of cash and gifts. The husband got three years, the wife got four years. That's PRISON folks.  

Espinoza Triplets (May 2001)
Leontina Albina Espinoza claimed to have 7 sets of triplets among her 58 children. She was featured in the Guinness Book and on shows like Oprah until it was revealed that she only had 16 children, the rest were taken in by her, and there were not 7 sets of triplets. Albina died in 1988.

Perham Sextuplets (March 1985)
Kim Perham claimed to be pregnant with spontaneous sextuplets after her husband had a vasectomy. She was admitted to a psychiatric care when it was revealed she wasn't pregnant, and she believed otherwise. She was finally diagnosed with schizo-affective disorder. Today, she works with the National Alliance of Mental Illness as a chapter president, and is in recovery.

Chilean Septuplets Hoax (November 1952)
Papers in Santiago ran headlines announcing the birth, it was picked up world wide and finally traced back to students who had made it up to advertise their upcoming spring festival.

Reporter Makes Up Quint/Sextuplet Stories (1952)
Reporter Hugh S. Stewart wrote about the impending birth of "five or six babies", offering reasons why the mother hadn't given birth once the date arrived. He finally confessed it was a hoax after pressure from the newspaper editors. The paper had to print an apology to readers.

San Salvador Sextuplet Hoax (April 1938)
An unknown person started the hoax which was widely reported by American newspapers.

April Fool Sextuplets (April 1936)
Reported in a French newspaper as a joke (along with photo), it was picked up by a London newspaper who ran it for real, not realize it was a joke.

Bradlee Octuplets (August 1872)
Not revealed as a hoax for over 40 years, Eunice Mowbray (or Mowery) was the victim of an ex-boyfriend who published a small story in a local paper (he was a printer), claiming that "Mrs. Timothy Bradlee (Eunice's recently married name)) of Ohio had octuplets in 1872 (5 boys and 3 girls), along with two sets of twins and many multiples in her family. The story got picked up by other papers, despite it not being verified. It appeared in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal in 1872 as fact.

It wasn't until 1914 that a doctor in Massachusetts actually enquired to the county clerk for information on the family and was told the story had been the work of a prankster. He sent letters to Science magazine and the editor of the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, where the story was corrected.

Nevertheless, the story still made the rounds as truth for a number of years.
 

Faker Busting Sites

Expose Trolls - Dedicated to outing fakers around the internet.

Multiple Birth Fakers - For discussing fakers in the multiple birth community.

Faker's Busted forum - A forum for outing fakers all over the internet.

Faking Pregnant - LJ for those outing pregnancy fakers.

Fake LJ Deaths - For outing people who created a fake person and have them suffer from an illness or die to get sympathy.

LJ Fakers - For outing people on LJ and around the internet.

Cyber SEALs - Busts those faking being Navy SEALs

FaceTheJury.com: Spot The Faker - Forum for the picture rating site that calls out people using others' photos.

 © 1997-2009 Jennifer Samson
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This website and its contents are protected by copyright law. Facts may be used in news reports, newsletters, magazines, and message board postings as long as the site is credited by name (Facts About Multiples) and with a link (http://www3.telus.net/tyee/multiples/index.html). Cutting and pasting information is prohibited, as all writing here is copyrighted to the author.