Aug 3, 2009 5:35 pm US/Eastern
Photo of Abington Boy Used in Adoption Scam
ABINGTON (WBZ) ―
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The photo of Jacob Brennan used in the adoption ad.
WBZ
An Abington mother is trying to find the scammer who stole a picture of her son right off of her family blog.
Jenny Brennan enjoys blogging daily about her two children and husband and allowing family to follow the events in their lives.
But when a stranger contacted her to tell her that her son Jacob's picture was being used in a scam, she was shocked.
"A woman who is a stranger to us, contacted us via our blog to let us know that someone was using Jacob's picture in an adoption scam," Brennan says.
The woman had seen an ad on Craigslist out of London... about a baby up for adoption in Cameroon, Africa.
When contacted, the scammer responded with a baby's picture.
"If you hover the mouse over the photo of him, it gives the address of our blog," Brennan says.
It was a picture of Jenny's son Jacob at 7 months, ripped right from her site.
The mother of two told the scammer to stop but got no response… so she acted like a client.
Jenny contacted the scammer via e-mail and asked about the adoption.
About six hours later, the scammer sent Jenny a picture of her own son.
Many police departments across the state have cyber-crime units, but one sergeant says cases like this are difficult to trace.
"They're absolutely not easy to trace, especially when they're located in foreign countries," says Sergeant Scott Whittemore of the Wellesley Police Department. "It takes quite a bit of time and effort by cyber-detectives tracing something like this. The best way to protect yourself first of all, is to not to put anything on the internet that you don't want out there. The second best method is to password protect your blogs and your social networking sites."
Jenny has contacted alerted the Abington Police Department, the Massachusetts Attorney General and the FBI. She hopes they can stop the scammer but she isn't counting on it. She's focusing now on alerting other families.
Jenny says, "I think that I'm not the only one who this is happening to. I think I'm the only one who knows this is happening."
She has now made her blog private.
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