When the internet first came along, it seemed like a magical place that would make wisdom instantly accessible to all. We soon learned that, while wisdom exists, the internet has...um, issues. It makes it easy for the government to spy on us, helps pedophiles find children, and has too many porn and cat videos. It thrives on pushing cheap emotion the way a drug dealer pushes heroin. Sometimes, though, those selling emotions get stopped by hard facts, as was the case recently with the sobbing young mother allegedly abandoned by her family on her birthday.

Last week, Richard Hanania, a smart man and no one’s pushover, was representative of the literally millions (45 million on TikTok alone) who watched and were moved by this sad woman’s plight:

Make sure to give the single mother in your life a hug today 😢 pic.twitter.com/XAdtULhokq

— Richard Hanania (@RichardHanania) May 21, 2024

Some, though, were a little more cynical, for they recognized that a video like this doesn’t just happen:

This woman set up her tripod, pressed record, stepped back, began crying, made her cake, pressed stop record, went to her room, uploaded her file to CapCut, edited the video, added captions, added a sad song, saved the video, and uploaded it to TikTok

pic.twitter.com/2kkYHGvyxZ

— Mr Overprayed (@MrOverprayed) May 22, 2024

The cynics won on this one for all is not as it seems. It turns out that the young woman, Elizabeth Teckenbrock, of Florida, is a con artist, a very serious con artist—or at least, that’s what Andrew Cormier, her ex-husband, claims. He also seems to have the receipts to back up his claims, including her arrest records from last Fall:

@reinventingelizabeth #greenscreenvideo @morethanelizabeth is a fraud and a con artist! From fake chairities to faking cancer to leaving her kids! @morethanelizabeth @Newsweek @Netflix @sara eaton ☁️ 👱🏻‍♀️ #birthdaygirl #singlemom #morethanelizabeth #inventinganna #tampafraud #reinventingelizabeth #viral #conartist #fbi #fakedcancer #mrtodd #checkfraud #foryou #cakevideo #fraud #feartofierce @Fear to Fierce ♬ original sound - Inventing Elizabeth

Teckenbrock promptly pushed back, claiming that Cormier was an abusive husband and that she got the short end of the custody stick because she lacked the resources for a good attorney. Cormier, naturally, denied Teckenbrock’s charges.

If you check out Cormier’s TikTok page, you learn that this bitter once-married couple has been having a long-running public battle about who is the worst in the relationship. Currently, Cormier wins but only because Teckenbrock’s TikTok page seems to have vanished.

Custody and child support fights are always ugly, and this one is exceptionally so. My heart bleeds for the children at the center of all this. But the really important takeaway for us, the ones not involved in this custody battle, is to be very careful about any emotional pleas on the internet. Maybe they’re real, and maybe you’re being conned.

Image: X screen grab.