Criminals have targeted the real story of a Burleson infant’s struggle with cancer in an effort make money for themselves.
Kaelyn Hazelwood, 8 months old, has spent half of her young life in hospitals undergoing treatment for a rare form of brain cancer. She is currently undergoing chemotherapy at the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Tennessee.
To help cover personal expenses during the long hospitalization, Kaelyn’s parents created a GoFundMe page. The fund has raised nearly $18,000, with most of it coming from complete strangers, according to Kaelyn’s mom.
"It was pretty overwhelming," Kristin Hazelwood told NBCDFW. "For, like, the first month or two, I would cry, because I just couldn’t imagine that these people that I didn’t know personally cared about my daughter."
But Hazelwood soon realized others were watching, and willing to exploit that goodwill for their own benefit.
"One of the people who follow [Kaelyn’s] real account got a request from the fake account and they knew right away it was fake," Hazelwood said.
On the similarly-named FundMe.com there is a still-active fundraiser soliciting money called the "Jamie brain cancer fund."
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The photographs used on the page were taken from the Hazelwood’s Facebook and Instagram accounts dedicated to Kaelyn’s recovery, and the information it gives was copied and pasted directly from the legitimate GoFundMe page - albeit poorly.
The person behind the page for "Jamie" replaced almost every reference to Kaelyn, except for one found in the very first sentence:
Jamie , our firstborn and only baby girl is 4 month old. Friday ,August 21st kaelyn began acting very tired and sleepy , not eating well,adn began throwing up her bottles.
"I mean it’s horribly frustrating," Hazelwood said from the hospital in Tennessee via Skype. "I knew that it could happen, because now that I am in this ‘Cancer World’ unfortunately this is kind of the thing that happens."
The Hazelwood family is working with the Memphis Police Department to track the IP address from the people responsible for the fake fundraiser, as well as a different fraudulent page on a different site that was taken down days ago.
"In the back of my mind I’m like, ‘Is there one out there that is successful and I haven’t been able to find it yet?’" Hazelwood asked. "That’s always kind of my fear because it just makes me upset that some horrible person out there might be taking advantage of people’s goodwill."
