Good morning, ladies and gents! As usual, I rolled out of bed this fine morning, sleepily threw the coffee on, filled my cats’ bowls to keep them from eating my brains for another day, and flicked through my Facebook feed on my still-charging phone as I am wont to do first thing in the morning. I had a message from a friend about a questionable disaster relief campaign out of Alaska, a few likes on a cat picture, a note from my host for Christmas that he’ll be picking me up from the train station, and then I found this:
“Donation for Christmas toyz all around the city do as much as you can to make them happy this year” LOL, mmkay buddy.
Everything about this guy’s public presence screams scammer, not least of which the fact that his entire timeline is full of various GoFundMe campaigns and obviously stolen photos. Oh, right, the photos.
Let’s start with his profile picture.
Running that photo through the handy dandy reverse image search, we get this:
“Kevin Bower” is really Rami Adham, a Finnish-Syrian dad nicknamed “Syrian Santa” for his work spreading cheer to children in war-torn Aleppo.
I mean, we knew this guy was a fake but Jeebus Christmas, at least try not to get busted out so easily. I haven’t even finished my coffee yet and this dude is already called out.
OK, let’s talk about these GoFundMe campaigns.
“My frend Andy we shot by hey ex husband because he found out she cheated she need surgery I’ve given her 500$ so Andy just need 800$ too cover her medical bills help please” Created 2 hours ago.
“I call him lucky found him walkn home in was shocked to know he was shot doc said he need surgery please anything would help .thank you you will be updated” Created 50 minutes ago. Oh, and yeah, there’s this. Damn you, reverse image search, foiled again!
This guy literally Googled “hurt animals,” I can’t.
He also wants to be a Homeless Helper and buy Christmas presents for unnamed kids.
You can report the fake Facebook profile, just hover over the three dots on the upper right of the profile and choose “report.” Facebook is pretty good about killing fake accounts, but surely this moron will just pop up as someone new. As for the fake GoFundMe campaigns, you can report them individually here, here, here, and here.
Yeah, I won’t be sharing that on Facebook. Well, I’ll share it as a scam but otherwise…
Doing a bang up job preventing fraud on your platform as always, GoFundMe. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to finish my coffee.
