Raffaela Spone, 51, of Chalfont, was convicted Friday by a Bucks County jury on charges she harassed three teammates on her daughter's cheerleading squad between July and August 2020. Spone could face up to a year in prison for using anonymous phone numbers to make inappropriate calls and send hostile messages to three girls, their mothers and the team's coaches.
Bucks County D A now says mom charged with harassing daughter s teammates did not make deep fake video, photo phillyvoice.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from phillyvoice.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
A Bucks County mom was ordered to stand trial Friday for allegedly harassing her teen daughter’s cheerleading squad teammates with anonymous messages and videos. Investigators are still trying to determine if "deepfake" technology was used to create the images.
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A Pennsylvania cheerleader s mom uses deepfake nudes in an attempt to get her teenage daughter s cheerleading rivals thrown off the squad, the Hilltown Township PD said.
Hilltown Township Police Department reported that a woman sent deepfake photographs and video of her teenage daughter s cheerleading teammates to their coaches. The doctored images that portrayed them drinking, smoking, and even nude were allegedly used in an attempt to have them forced off her daughter s squad, the Victory Vipers.
According to the criminal complaint filed by Bucks County District Attorney Matt Weintraub s office, the suspect, Raffaela Spone, 50, allegedly sent the fabricated images and video to at least three of her daughter s teammates and coaches. She also sent anonymous texts and made unsolicited phone calls to one of the victims urging them to commit suicide.
Spone targeted three underage victims who were part of the Victory Vipers traveling cheer squad based in Doylestown, investigators said.
The harassment first came to the attention of police when the mother of one of the girls reported that her daughter received texts and calls from a blocked phone number.
Some of the texts included photos that had been taken from the girl s social media accounts and doctored to make her appear nude, or as if she had been drinking alcohol and vaping, according to a criminal complaint.
In a deepfake video altered through software to make one person appear as another the same girl was depicted to be vaping. That video, obtained by NBC s Today, was sent to the head of the Victory Vipers in an apparent effort to get the girl kicked off the team, prosecutors said. The girl and her mother were interviewed by Today.