Posing as slain passenger's sister, scam artist capitalizes on bus killing

[Dion]

Friends of Tim McLean, who was killed in a brutal attack on a Greyhound bus in Manitoba in late July, say someone has been cashing in on the tragedy by posing as his sister to solicit donations.

The situation began when a man in Vancouver, Ron Schinners, launched a Facebook group with the angry title "Severed head killer!!! Cops should of killed you! R.I.P Tim McLean" in the wake of McLean's death aboard a Greyhound bus in Manitoba on July 30.

About a week ago, Schinners was contacted on Facebook by a person who identified herself as "Amanda McLean," Tim McLean's sister.

"She was saying that her family was having financial trouble and whatnot, and totally did the sob story," he told CBC News.

"She was giving me inside information, so-called, on her family's financial hardship. I did believe it."

Schinners felt sorry for the woman; he also felt an emotional connection to the case, since one of his family members was a murder victim. He made the woman an administrator of the Facebook group, and she set up a PayPal account to collect donations, supposedly for the family.

But he began to get suspicious when the person began making nasty comments online and provided no photos of herself with McLean.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/manitoba/st...ean-group.html

[4X4]

W.T.F.

And I thought that I couldn't be any more shocked after that church wanted to picket the funeral. This person deserves jail time. Lots of it. What a sick SOB.

[chris lindberg]

Hopfully this fraudster didn't get too much money, there's been a few identity thefts stories dealing with facebook now.

[SebC]

You knew Facebook would start having problems as soon as they started opening it up to everyone in search of higher profits. Can't wait for Facebook spam. At least when they started it, if you tried something like this, they'd have your university email address, and it would be pretty for police to indentify you. (And before that, it was just Harvard IIRC.)

[CaptainCrunch]

We need to give her a big hug, gently explain what she did wrong, give her a short sentence so that she won't go through any life changing experiences. I mean she's probably just mis-understood, and her parents probably said mean things to her when she was a kid.