A sick baby hoax is a

confidence trick A confidence trick is an attempt to defraud a person or group after first gaining their trust. Confidence tricks exploit victims using their credulity, naïveté, compassion, vanity, confidence, irresponsibility, and greed. Researchers have ...

where a person claims, often on a website, that they have an ill child (or sometimes a pet) and are struggling to pay for their medical expenses. Some versions of the hoax ask people to make a monetary donation directly, while others simply encourage people to share the story. Professional

beggar Begging (also panhandling) is the practice of imploring others to grant a favor, often a gift of money, with little or no expectation of reciprocation. A person doing such is called a beggar or panhandler. Beggars may operate in public plac ...

s have been exploiting sick children since ancient times. The success of such scams relies on a particular compassion in people towards children. When a child is sick, this particularly touches people's hearts.Patricia M. Wallace, ''The Internet in the workplace: how new technology is transforming work'', 2004,
p. 103
/ref> An early example of this kind of hoax online is the "sick child

chain letter A chain letter is a message that attempts to convince the recipient to make a number of copies and pass them on to a certain number of recipients. The "chain" is an exponentially growing pyramid (a tree graph) that cannot be sustained indefinite ...

", an email making the claim that "with every name that this etteris sent to, the American Cancer Society will donate 3 cents per name to her treatment". Social media, such as

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Mosk ...

, facilitate the following form of this scam. A photo of a sick child is posted online, commonly without knowledge of the relatives, accompanied by a heart-touching story and sometimes a request for donations, which are simply collected by the scammer. Often these photos become viral, so it becomes close to impossible to take them down. Since Facebook has been slow to address the problem efficiently (relying on user takedown requests and reports only), several scam- and hoax-combatting websites have worked together to raise the awareness of social media providers regarding this issue. There are also cases where parents exploit their own child with a legitimate sickness. However, raised funds do not go towards medical treatment, but rather to cover their own needs. Patrons donate money to parents' bank accounts, providing a convenient source of money. There have been several cases wherein parents posted several videos of a sick child and their wire-transfer information in a public channel.

References

Confidence tricks Hoaxes Fraud {{Scams and confidence tricks

See also

References