A picture is worth a thousand words, but these pictures come with criminal charges.
A Pennsylvania mother allegedly made fake illicit videos of her daughter’s rival cheerleaders and sent them to coaches in an attempt to expel the kids from the team, officials said.
The fake images, which are manipulated so expertly that they are known as “deepfakes”, were also sent to at least three girls on the Victory Vipers cheerleading team, with messages asking young people to commit suicide, reported the Philadelphia Inquirer, citing the Bucks County district attorney’s office
Raffaela Spone, 50, has been accused of cyber harassment of a child and is accused of creating totally fake photos showing children drinking, smoking and naked, officials said.
Spone was arrested on March 4.
There was no indication that her teenage daughter knew what her mother was doing, according to court documents obtained by the newspaper.
In July, officers discovered that one of the girls was receiving text messages from an anonymous number, court documents say, and that her coaches received pictures of her naked, drinking and vaporizing.
Two more girls filed complaints about the fake photos showing them in bikinis, prompting police officers to investigate the anonymous number and content.
The police found that the photos and videos were fake – they look authentic, but have been digitally altered.
The investigators traced the number to the telemarketers and followed the data to an IP address from Spone’s home in Chalfont, about 50 minutes north of Philadelphia.
Victory Vipers told ABC News that it cooperated with the police during the investigation and that “all athletes involved are no longer part of our program”.
“Victory Vipers has always fostered a family atmosphere and we are very sorry for all the individuals involved,” the team said in a statement. “We have very well-established policies and a very strict anti-bullying policy in our program.”