Weeks after a Haitian American couple was kidnapped during a trip to the island, fake crowdfunding campaigns have emerged.
The profiles popped up after news about the family needing to raise $400,000 made the news.
Earlier in the month, Abigail Toussaint, and Jean-Dickens Toussaint, both 33, had traveled to Haiti to visit ailing family members and to enjoy this year’s Rara festival. On March 18, while riding on a local bus, the husband and wife were abducted by what authorities believe were gang members.
According to The Associated Press, the gangs noticed suitcases on the bus and identified their marks. Then they forced the bus to stop as it tried to cross Martissant, a dangerous enclave at the southern exit of Port-au-Prince.
“They stopped the bus at a stop and then asked for Americans to get off the bus and their escorts off the bus, and then they took them,” Jean-Dickens’ niece said in an interview with Local 10.
The area is known for its violent gangs with a surge since 2021 when the country’s President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated. In fact, the section is so dangerous some Haitians and tourists have opted to book air travel rather than risk being attacked by gang members, the Haitian Times reports.
In addition to the Toussaints, whose 1-year-old child is still in the United States with family members, another person was snatched off the bus during the kidnapping.
The kidnappers contacted the families and demanded $200,000 per person for the release of their loved ones — totaling, for the Toussaint family, close to half a million dollars.
“How are we ever going to come up with that money?” Nikese Toussaint, the sister to Jean-Dickens, said in an interview with The Associated Press.
Originally, the family thought of doing a campaign with Change.org, however, some of the family’s elders were against raising money that way because it would be too public.
Christie tweeted, “We had to close the…
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