Associated Incidents
The daughter of a Scot in a coma in Turkey has been left sickened by deep-fake scammers asking for cash.Teigan McMahon, from Glasgow, made a desperate appeal for help last week when her dad Peter suffered a heart attack on holiday.
Her family are facing mounting medical bills while the 52-year-old is being "kept alive by machines".
Now, Teigan has had to put a hold on vital donations after a vile fraudster set up a fake Facebook account in her name. The decoy profile, which is still active despite attempts to take it down, has ripped photos of Teigan and her dad to use as a profile picture and make posts.
There's also a further link to Teigan's fundraiser and a screenshot of donations with a post that pretends to be the 20-year-old saying: "Thank you all for your support. I'm glad donations keep coming."
The fake Facebook account says its location is in Dallas, Texas.
A total of £9,505 has been raised for Peter before donations were paused on Wednesday, November 26, although the family had a fundraising target of £12,000.
An alarmed Teigan told the Record: "I put a pause on my GoFundMe page as soon as I found out. I was told the profile was taken down but I can still see it."
Peter went into cardiac arrest in the early hours of Wednesday, November 19. His heart stopped beating for 70 minutes. The dad-of-five had flown out to the Antalya resort on November 14 for a week-long winter break.
Teigan flew straight out to be by her dad's hospital bedside. The devastated daughter told us: "I got a call on Wednesday to say my dad was in ICU after he had a heart attack.
"He had a mini heart attack a few months ago.
"This was totally different. They had to perform CPR on him for over an hour. His heart stopped beating for 70 minutes.
"It's caused damage to his kidneys and he is now having dialysis.
"He's still in a coma but he's able to breathe on his own. We are praying he wakes up. We are hoping for a miracle."
Peter, who owns a bodywork repair car garage, had flown out without insurance, and hospital costs had already stacked up to £7,000 in three days.
She added: "I can't stress enough how important every penny counts. This bill is increasing day by day and is far beyond anything me or my family can manage alone.
"I am not the type of person to ask anyone for a penny, but I will quite literally beg to save my dad's life.
"I will do absolutely anything to give my dad the best possible chance."
The Daily Record has highlighted multiple instances where fraudsters create fake fundraising pages exploiting real-life tragedies to scam grieving communities.
These include hacking into a Facebook account to set up a fake fundraiser after the death of champion horse rider Natasha Galpin, and the case of Nicole Elkabbas, who was jailed for nearly three years after scamming the public out of over £45,000 by faking ovarian cancer.
A GoFundMe spokesperson said: "We understand the fundraising page set up by Tiegan was shared by a fake social media account but we are satisfied the page is genuine."
GoFundMe has previously told us that it has a Trust & Safety team to detect fraud and typically refunds donations in cases where misuse of funds is proven or terms of service are violated. Police Scotland has also warned that "scams of this nature can be difficult to spot and anyone can be fooled".