Drexel impostors on Facebook

Monica DeFilippo lives in Staten Island, N.Y., vacations in Myrtle Beach and has a 20-year-old daughter named Brittany, who became captivated by the disappearance of Brittanee Drexel.

The missing woman not only shares Brittany's name but also her age and that same petite frame with blonde hair and blue eyes. Drexel, like Brittany, lived in New York. She stole away to Myrtle Beach on spring break in 2009, the last time anyone saw her.

DeFilippo took her daughter to an event to raise awareness about Drexel, and they followed her case in news reports. So it particularly chilled the family when DeFilippo's daughter received a Facebook friend request from a person who gave a different girl's name, but the photo was Drexel.

"She wasn't going to accept the friendship, but I made her," DeFilippo said. "Because you never really know."

Brittany asked the stranger in a message why she used Drexel's photographs on the Facebook page. The person replied that those pictures were her own, DeFilippo said.

When a reporter sent a message to the person communicating with DeFilippo's daughter, the person did not respond and blocked the reporter from any further interaction.

Monica Caison, founder and director of the North Carolina-based CUE Center for Missing Persons, said she has seen more than 35 false profiles using Drexel's image on social media websites since Drexel went missing in April 2009.

"This is the new wave of social media with missing person cases. The exploitation level is so high," Caison said. "It's not just happened to Brittanee. It's all the high-profile cases, especially the young girls."

One person used Drexel's photo to participate in an online promotion, and the picture wound up on a commercial that ran during the Super Bowl, Caison said. She reports the phony profiles to law enforcement officers, and they generally disappear within a week.

The fleeting impostors only light up tip lines and distract from more promising leads, Caison said. In some cases, strangers go so far as to set up websites that take donations for a missing person.

Caison worries that tips could come to those people with no law enforcement experience or connections, so she presses to get the websites taken down. On top of the investigative risks, the impostors place an extra emotional burden on family members, Caison said.

"I don't know what it is that people want to do this type of thing, but they don't understand how it destroys a family," she said.

Drexel's mother, Dawn Drexel, said she gives every tip a close and hopeful look and wonders what prompts the fake pages. She said some teenagers contacted her younger daughter, 14, saying they had locked Brittanee in a basement.

"She has a hard enough time, day by day, dealing with being a teenager and having her sister missing," Dawn Drexel said on Friday. "It's pretty sick that people do that and think nothing of it."

Drexel hopes that anyone with true information about her daughter would come forward instead of hiding behind a webpage. And she hopes that someone does.

"I've been working on her case for over two and a half years, and the holidays are very, very, very difficult for me," Drexel said.

This week, while decorating her Christmas tree, she placed a new ornament on the branches for each of her three children. While hanging Brittanee's ornament, she broke down.

This, she said, was her daughter's favorite time of the year.

Reach Allyson Bird at 937-5594 or on Twitter at @allysonjbird.