Taken

Note: Others have chosen to not talk about this directly. I am choosing to post this in all it's awfulness, not to give the scammer any more attention, but to alert others.

You know, I've never really understood scaming someone for emotional attention.

My brother the Pious and his wife who I like much more than my brother are waiting to adopt got emotionally scammed. They have a profile online and a lady contacted them, saying that she chose them to adopt her twins. They never met in person as the lady lived in New York, and the lady refused to go into the local office of the agency that Bro and SIL are using. She never asked them for money, and they never sent any, but she strung them along promising them that they could adopt her twins. She kept having crisis after crisis. People kept dying on her. My SIL spent hours on the phone and online with her, talking her through these crisis.

Then she was supposed to have the babies on Tuesday, then Thursday, then Saturday... She said she was over due with twins, and the OB was just waiting. I don't buy that and neither did my SIL. My SIL asked for proof that she actually was pregnant, and the lady disappeared.

SIL handled this quite well. Bro got nasty. They were both very hurt.

I felt for them, but thought that since I was not waiting to adopt, I was immune from this type of scamming.

I was wrong.

I hang out online at Mothering.com discussion boards. There was a posted who went by the handle Acamile14. She claimed that her name was Amber Camilleri, and that she was the mother of Sierra Louise Camilleri, a baby born at 26 weeks gestation. She also claimed that she was the wife of a officer in the army, named Ian.

She also had a livejournal page, but that has been taken down.

Again it was similar things. Lots of drama. Lots of very crisis. Sierra "went" through such medical trauma and procedures. If you questioned her at all on the main thread where she hung out, she flipped out, and threatened to leave. So we would all rush to apologize to her as no one wanted to hurt a NICU mom's feelings, not when her baby had to have dialysis. One time while chatting with her, I attempted to gently broach hospice care and to talk to her about her thoughts on that. She abruptly cut me off, and "yelled" at me asking why I wanted to kill Sierra. I was simply trying to see what options they had talked about, and to give her a safe place if she wanted to talk about ending treatment. The way she described her daughter's condition, Sierra was near death every day. "Amber" even concocted another user name "Luceegoose" to have a premature baby in the same hospital as her baby was in, so there was someone who had seen her and Sierra in the hospital.

Boy this lady was good. She had all sorts of stories. The baby was coding. She ended up spending the weekend in the hospital for dehydration. She goes home for the first time in months and the house is a disaster. She is so upset because she cannot see the baby. She was staying at the Ronald McDonald house. She was pumping. She had a neo she called Dr. Doom, whom she fired. She had a respiratory therapist that she hated and fired.

She lied, all lies.

I had this posted to my blog last Tuesday, it was the first clue something was wrong. I should have known something was fishy, but I fell for the whole story hook, line and sinker....

The person claiming to be the mom of a preemie named Sierra Louise is a fraud. She (or he) has been stealing photos of my daughter (born at 25 weeks gestation in Aug. 0f 2005) and posting them all over the Internet, claiming they are of her daughter. I'm working on taking action against this person, but in the meantime, you can visit my website (which has been up and running since the summer of 2005). I think you'll recognize the child in the photos: www.kristinaseleshanko.com/baby.htm

I don't know why sick people do stuff like this; it makes me cry and shake with anger that someone would take photos of my dear girl when she was in such a vulnerable and sick state and use them for their own weird desires.

Kristina Seleshanko

I clicked on the link. I remembered seeing this page when I was looking for information on preemies before I had Sydney. I felt like the world had stopped spinning. When I saw the identical photos, I was shocked and ill.

The rumour is that they were going to let "Sierra" go later that week. She had also told us that her DH was being deployed to Iraq, and had just gotten orders. Yuck, yuck, yuck.

Screenshot from the now defunct Livejournal site... http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v249/cerulean_me/sierrascreencap.jpg
Link to original picture http://www.kristinaseleshanko.com/9-18-05Photos.htm

It turns out that "Amber" was also on the c2pp.com board, scamming there. She has been banned from C2PP and mothering.com.

I later got this information on a message...

This is from another user who asked that I pass it along:The email of the woman
who's identity she stole is camillerip@apsu.edu. Phyils A Camilleri who is a professor at Austin Pea State univeristy. The IP address she has been posting from is an APSU IP address. Phyils is not Amber. However, she does have a suspicion of the student she thinks did it. Please email camillerip@apsu.edu and tell her what happened along with any links and pictures you may have.

These will be forwarded to the campus police. Also tell her if you sent "Amber" any gifts or money and what address you sent them to. Send this out to everyone.

See this is more than someone stealing pictures, and identity, and stories. I realized as I typed the part where she was so upset that she could not see Sierra, she could have very well stolen that from my blog. Amber asked for and got donations. She hinted she needed gas money, and it was sent. People shipped her goodies, gifts, gift cards, blankets. I was about to take up a collection to hire a maid to get her house deep cleaned.

The only thing toping this scam is the woman who claimed her DH was KIA on a military wives BB. That was bad.

She went and stole pictures of our babies when they were at their weakest. She stole our stories when we were most vulnerable. I'm so very angry and disgusted. It is despicable what she did.

She knew how to hit sympathy buttons. Military family, critically ill baby, overwhelmed mother. Bingo, donations out the wazoo.

Thankfully I am not out any money. I am out time and emotions. I prayed for this family. I put their name on the temple rolls for crying out loud. I spent hours chatting with her, talking her through a crisis. I neglected DH, DD, and my job so she could get her jollies. I'll never get that time back. I'll never get that energy back. I'll never be so trusting again.

Another concern I have is that people will start to suspect me for being a fraud. I'm not. I really had a preemie daughter. I really have a military husband. These are my true stories. These are MY stories, and not up for grabs by any psycho who wants to be disgusting.