Updates

We have had an influx of Pepe/Gina emails this week, as she was "exposed" on the AOL Horse and Dog chat rooms she frequents. Thank you to readers for sending us the following information.

Gina is posting under new user names - Eventing4Fun and eventer723.

She has a Wii. No word on if this is the original Wii, or a new one:
http://www.midwesthorsetalk.com/index.php?topic=5310.0

She has dropped the claims that she has Cystic Fibrosis, but has told people that she is "on board with the DWT team", and we tipped her off about our investigation. Right. She also claimed that someone stole her pictures and videos. She doesn't know who we are, and thanks to all the information everyone has spread around, her actions haven't fallen to the wayside on her favorite forums.
http://www.chronicleforums.com/Forum/showthread.php?t=168765

She stands by her claims she has Asperger's on a handful of sites, but she fails to mention Munchausen by Internet anywhere.

Kelsey Smith's site was up for about a day, but was taken down again, along with her Twitter account. We have received emails letting us know that she is NOT related to the children she watches, which concerns us. She has taken on some very dangerous story lines in emails about indeed being 32 years old, and her changing role as the caretaker of the children, which we're hoping she will quickly drop. If not, we will expose what we know, but for now, because of her age, we are going to give her an opportunity to toe the line and be responsible and truthful for who she is on her site.

Thank you for all the updates

Half a troll - My Sweet Life

My Sweet Life was a popular and active blog that followed the tales of three children - Dennis, Emeray, and Yasmine, and their caretaker, Kelsey. They jet-set all over, having visited Alaska, Mexico, and most recently, Europe, in just the last few months. The family speaks Turkish, and Kelsey commented on how she's been speaking Turkish as a second language for 15 years. This summer, producers of "Wife Swap" even contacted the popular blogger about appearing on their show.

Kelsey twittered here as well, and there were times stories that made Twitter did not show up in her blog. In Twitter, she was very politically active, and announced she registered to vote "for the first time" in August, and was excited about voting for McCain in November.

Only, Kelsey isn't eligible to vote. She's sixteen, and she's still in high school in Washington. On other various sites, Kelsey lists herself as "32" and her blog as "The snippets and ramblings about a family trying to survive in modern day suburbia. Armed with a camera, bible, laptop, three kids under four, two parents, and a blog about the extraordinary life of a average suburban family."

In a couple instances, she did correct readers by mentioning she was not the mother of the three children in her blog, but many commenters thought she was, and she did not correct their assumptions.

The site came down in early October, and her Twittering stopped. Her usernames can be found around the Internet, but for the most part, Kelsey seems to be a bored high school student whose blog and photography became popular, and who began embellishing her life at times. She does know the children from her blog -- the pictures and information were hers, and were not stolen from another site.

Because of her age and because her blog was harmless (no gifts, requests for money, dying individuals), we won't release any more of the personal information we have about Kelsey or the children in the blog.

Thank you to J for emailing us about this blog.

Article: Woman faked cancer three times

Suzy Bass had less than a year to live. The Knoxville, Tennessee, high school math teacher was battling stage IV breast cancer, and it had spread to her shoulder and heel. Chemotherapy no longer worked; an experimental bone marrow therapy she'd tried as a last resort appeared futile. Her students and colleagues were devastated. Bass, then 41, was a popular newcomer to the picturesque private Webb School near the Smoky Mountains that fall of 2007. "Ms. Bass was the cool teacher," says Michaelan Moore, 18, who was a junior in Bass's Algebra II class. "Everyone just loved her immediately. We could tell her anything."

http://www.aolhealth.com/condition-center/breast-cancer/awareness-month/faking-breast-cancer
Thanks to a reader who emailed this to us.

Offline, IRL Troll

Pastor Michael Guglielmucci spun gospel of lies
Duped Christians want their money back

Short story (shocking for this site, we know):

"{Pastor} Michael Guglielmucci, who inspired hundreds of thousands of young Christians with his terminal cancer 'battle', has been exposed as a fraud."

"Earlier this year, Mr Guglielmucci released a hit song, Healer , which was featured on Sydney church Hillsong's latest album.

The song debuted at No. 2 on the ARIA charts.

It since has become an anthem of faith for believers, many of whom are suffering their own illness and were praying for a miracle for Mr Guglielmucci, who has claimed for two years to be terminally ill."

He went so far as to deceive his own wife and family for those two years, convincing them he was dying as well.

He is purportedly getting medical assistance for his mental ailments.

The videos are gone off of YouTube, and his Facebook and MySpace pages are gone too, but you can still find mp3s of "Healer" around the 'net.

Reimbursed

We have been informed that the money has been returned to the people who donated to PayPal. It was sent by Gina to Paul, who credited the money through the donor's PayPal accounts. If you have not received a refund, please let us know. If you sent Gina gifts or donations privately, you might want to contact her personally about returning those.

On another note, when the CF community was told their donations were going to be returned, many asked that the money be donated to other CF causes. They said they had intended the money to be a donation, and they maintained they still felt that way.

We do not know anyone with CF, but can imagine the monumental cost of the health care associated with it, especially when a transplant is involved. We assume that young adults with CF hit their insurance benefit maximums fairly quickly.

And yet, despite everything, from the cost of their own care to the events that have unraveled this week, they continue to donate money to others.

What a fantastic group of people.

**Edited to add:**

If you would like to make a donation yourself, we have attached a link to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation's donation page. If anyone knows of any other non-personal CF organizations that need or accept donations, please let us know by email or comments, and we will add it here as well.

Cystic Fibrosis Foundation
Cystic Fibrosis Research, Inc
University of Minnesota - Fairview
Cystic Fibrosis Trust (UK)
Live Life Then Give Life (UK)

Responsibility

remorse (n) - "deep and painful regret for wrongdoing; compunction."
dictionary.com

***

Anti-social personality - Also called a psychopath, or a sociopath, this person is superficially charming and a habitual liar, has no regard for others, shows no remorse after hurting them, has no shame for behaving in an outrageously objectionable manner, and is unable to form relationships and take responsibility.
Dept. Social Services, Missouri

***

"Many authors have also underscored the co-occurrence (or causal role?) of some pathological personality traits and/or disorders.

In this vein the acceptance and even search of "heavy" diagnostic and therapeutic procedures was related to masochistic traits.

Identity disturbance, unstable interpersonal relationships and recurrent suicidal or self-mutilating behaviors are similar to those encountered in borderline personality disorder.

Deceitfulness, lack of remorse, reckless disregard for safety of self, repeated failure to sustain constant work behavior and failure to conform social norms are common features of factitious disorder and antisocial personality disorder."
http://andreisz.club.fr/Munchausen_genpres.html

***

"Pathological lying was originally defined as complex lies which are internally consistent, that may drag on for years and-- and this is the key point-- do not have an obvious purpose or gain. They are not lies told to self-aggrandize, or minimize guilt. They're not trying to con you into or out of anything. They're just making crap up."
http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2007/03/pathological_liars.html

***

"Most definitions of lying refer to the deliberate communication of information believed to be false and intended to deceive (although terms such as "the whole truth" and being "economical with the truth" suggest that the inclusion of false information is not necessary to the concept of lying in its wider aspects). Thus, patients who communicate false information in the context of a range of psychiatric states, such as when they are confabulating, have delusional memory, or are demented, are not lying because they are not deliberately misleading us."
http://www.jaapl.org/cgi/content/full/33/3/350

In a previous post, we commented on a lack of remorse from Gina for those people hurt by "Pepe". Originally, this angered everyone here at DWT very much. It appears now that this might be part of Munchausen Syndrome, according to one common theory. Other theories discuss the connection between Munchausen and antisocial personality disorder.

Non-experts refer to Munchausen as the pathological liar's medically-diagnosed mental illness defense.

Regardless of what you call it, the outcome is bleak. There aren't medications/legal actions/therapies alone/magic words that will cure or stop this behavior. The only person who can stop it is Gina herself, with or without the help of what all the experts agree is "intense psychotherapy."

We received an email from a real-life friend of Gina's, letting us know that if Gina committed suicide because of our "witch hunt", she would hold us personally responsible. We were going to reply to her privately, but decided we needed to share our thoughts with anyone interested.

We find death threats, as well as suicide threats, unreasonable and childish, as we stated before.

With that laid out, we would like to point out we have not outed a private person. Gina, as Pepe, put her story out there for everyone to read. She approached other people, and she, through her own admission, went to Paul and others as "Blake" about raising funds to send "Pepe" a Wii while she was in the hospital.

In doing so, she has made herself a public figure - a celebrity of sorts. We are still debating whether she could be labeled a "general purpose" or "limited purpose" public figure. Since nothing we have said here is untrue or knowingly false, we haven't done anything wrong.

How you feel about us listing all facts in one convenient place, and allowing people to comment on them depends on who you are and how you learned about this - as a friend of Gina Fiorentino, or as a friend of "Pepe". The information in this blog is evidence-supported facts, and the facts are not nice, for either group involved.

Next, we would like to point out that Gina first appeared on the Internet as a girl with CF in 1997. Another person who knows Gina says that the police were involved, and the ACMEpet boards were permanently shut down because of this, which our research has confirmed. However, Gina was a minor, and nothing came from it.

Since then, we have three other known times that Gina was "outed" for her lies. But still, two years ago, Gina resurfaced as "Blake", then "Pepe", on the most current boards.

This is not a first-time offender. And this time, she pursued money and gifts. Obviously, were Gina going to get help on her own, she would have done it before "Pepe". We have no doubts that had "Friends of Pepe" successfully disappeared, Gina would have been on to her next victims. She was already found in the Tuberculosis rooms, as well as Asperger's rooms.

We were accused of contacting the people in Gina's life, her employers and whatnot, and of giving out her contact information. We assure you, we did no such thing. We supplied readers with her name, usernames, and the city she lived in. What they did with that information is beyond our control.

The people we contacted are listed in this blog - those personally affected by, or directly doing business with, Gina Fiorentino.

Gina is the only person capable of breaking the vicious cycles she has been building for the past decade. Will she? Who knows. At 25, we maintain that she is still young, and getting help now is a blessing in disguise.

We are all given one chance to live, and since Gina has been blessed with a perfectly healthy body, she has the opportunity to turn her life around and start living a full life she (and her family and friends) can be proud of when her time to leave does come.

Fairview

Several readers have asked today about the hospital "Pepe" was allegedly staying at - Fairview at the University of Minnesota. We weren't aware it had been mentioned, but looking at caches shows it was. The hospital was not only used, but greatly abused, and readers were asking if there was a possibility for a defamation suit. There were many instances where the care there was questioned, even by FOP.

Monday, June 2, 2008
Truth

It has been another trying week for Pepe. For three days, she was vented but not making much progress. At the time of the intubation, her PaCO2 was well into the 90s, a record for her and nearly impossible to bear. Her O2 sat was 82, her fever 103. She resisted the vent as always, but numbers like these and the suffering they cause eventually have their way. By the second day, her PaCO2 was still in the 70s, and she became concerned that she wasn't bouncing back as usual. Then she reminded herself that she had much more ground to cover this time, having let the CO2 levels rise so high, and toward the end of the third day, her values began to look encouraging. The next day the doctors pulled the vent. So Pepe is nearly tube-free now -- sans chest or breathing hoses -- but her respiration remains labored and her fevers high, sometimes over 104. Yesterday, one fever spike prompted a grand mal seizure, an obviously frightening event, though one Pepe doesn't remember. In addition, she discovered her PICC line was infected, possibly leading to more sepsis. Lab cultures are growing. Today she met with her CF doctor to demand more answers, more aggression, and more ideas. Why are her sensitivities three weeks old while she's spiking 104.5 fevers? What, if any, is Pepe's pathway out of this mess? Through whose OR? Wednesday she meets with the transplant team to discuss what it actually takes to get new lungs at Fairview. None of this badgering is Pepe's style, especially when she feels like hell, but this is the Week of Truth. Let's send her the strength and confidence to be able to get the answers she needs.

***

Sunday, June 29, 2008
Unspeakable

Pepe was vented at 3 this morning after her doctors let her choke on her own lungs for over three hours, listening to all her monitors screech, refusing to help. It was an awful night, very nearly the final night -- too sad even to detail here. Too sad and too screwed-up for words. Sorry.

***

Sunday, July 27, 2008
Day Twenty-five

Sorry to report no improvement tonight. Pepe is in a great deal of pain, the worst thus far. For some reason, the weekend staff is skeptical of her complaints, contending that she is experiencing morphine withdrawal rather than legitimate pain. This far out, they say, such discomfort is abnormal. But Pepe did not have a normal transplant, which alone would be liable to cause substantial pain three weeks out. Instead, she was cracked open four times, the last time not long ago. She has had eight chest tubes -- over a small being's surface area -- and still retains three. And of course, she has incisions she has yet even to see or know the nature of. We can tell from experience, from the accuracy of Pepe's descriptions, and from the brute reality of what her body has endured over twenty five days that her pain is real, unembellished, and that she is on the edge of sanity for that single, entirely understandable reason. She is neither weak nor a drug-seeker. We've witnessed this over many months, when Pepe's moribund cystic lungs disallowed her from taking even sedatives during invasive procedures, let alone pain meds. She has proven her mettle. This is still your tough little nut, and she is resisting bravely as always. But she is miserable. She is suffering.

Tomorrow, she will take up the issue with her primary doctors and hopefully get some relief. Often it's a simple matter of exchanging one narcotic for another or adjusting doses. In the meantime, Pepe must get through the night. Her fever is way up, 103, probably an indication of the stress her pain is causing. Her O2 and PaCO2 are unchanged, 90 and 53 respectively. She is on ten liters via cannula, though she is having some trouble breathing through her nose. There was no X-ray today, so we'll learn the status of her pneumonia tomorrow, hoping for some improvement from the new drug cocktail. But for now, there are hours to overcome, a new narcotic dose at 2 am, and with luck, some sleep afterward. This is an incredibly tough process. It almost has to be experienced to be believed. Maybe that's one of the problems this weekend. But Pepe is -- entirely of her own volition -- committed to seeing this through with poise and dignity, despite whatever disbelief she encounters. For this, we stand in admiration. But we wish her more comfort and rest tonight.

We have not contacted the hospital, and don't know anything about the requirements for a defamation suit, or if they would pursue one. One reader did contact Fairview, though, and asked us to share their email as a post:

I simply wish to alert the medical staff of an online scam. For many months now, a girl who went by the name of "Gina" and her friend, Paul have been blogging about Gina's health crisis with cystic fibrosis. Many readers believed her to be in the care of the University of Minnesota. The posts were painfully descriptive, detailing the struggles of a girl seemingly on her deathbed. The site has since been shut down, but it was friendsofpepe.blogspot.com and entries can be recovered as the operator of the site, Paul, did not secure the postings.

"Gina" relayed information to Paul that made the medical staff seem incompetent at times. So far it doesn't appear anyone has turned down a transplant because of her scheme, but people have been thinking twice about the level of care offered at your facility and I think you have a right to know. Please forward this along to whomever it may concern.

The Google spiders are finally hitting the Friends of Pepe site, and pages are beginning to disappear. Before they do, we pulled down the second picture on the Friends of Pepe site, and are asking for anyone who might know her to identify her. We're not sure this is the same person as in the head shot used on the site: