An official-looking website had been set up, with Pozner’s name as the address, featuring petitions on gun control, the Daily Mail reports. Badly written, with poor grammar, the site provided details about Noah, his funeral and his family. It requested visitors to send donations to an address in the Bronx, an address which the Pozner family had never heard of.
The fake website listed an NYC phone number to text with questions about donations. When a reporter texted that number on Wednesday, a reply came advising the donation go to the United Way.
Noah’s aunt, Victoria Haller, emailed the originally owner of noahpozner.org, one Jason Martin, who wrote back saying he’d meant “to somehow honor Noah and help promote a safer gun culture.” He added that he had “no ill intentions I assure you.”
CNN’s Anderson Cooper dedicated a segment of his show to the fraud, and sent a producer to the address in the Bronx, who confronted a woman named Noel Alba.
Alba told CNN that she had never sent that email but she has many enemies who may have sent the email out to slander her. She said that she has received about $300 in donations but also said that she returned those funds.
Alba had also set up a website to collect funds for victims of Hurricane Sandy.
Noah’s uncle Alexis Haller called the FBI to report the fraudulent site, and has purchased all of the domain names related to his departed nephew’s name, to avoid similar scams in the future.
The fraudulent site has since been taken down, and inquiries are directed to noahpozner.org, the true site run by the Pozner family.
