Military community rallies together to shut down fake Facebook account

A fake Facebook account created under Cpl. Nathan Cirillo’s name was shut down within two hours this week after the Veteran community from across the country rallied together.

The Facebook account used the name and photos of Cpl. Cirillo, who died on Oct. 22, 2014, when he was fatally wounded while on sentry duty at the Canadian War Memorial in Ottawa.

The account was being used to catfish women.

“I did not want this to tarnish the name, the picture, and the ultimate sacrifice that Cpl. Cirillo did for his country, and I did not want this to come to light to any of his family members. We had to protect his name, his reputation and, in the same line of thought, protect his family,” said Sylvain Chartrand, a director of the online group Canadian Veterans Advocacy.

Chartrand was first informed about the fake account Monday night and after verifying the information got to work to get the word out about the account.

“The mission was to rally the vets community to ensure that this fake Facebook account, which used the name of a fallen soldier who did the ultimate sacrifice…was to shut this down,” commented Chartrand.

The veteran’s advocate believes there is no way the person behind the fake account did not know who Cpl. Cirillo was.

“This is the lowest of the lowest I’ve ever seen and, in fact, I don’t have any very good qualitative word to describe this. It’s disgusting, it’s unacceptable, it’s immoral,” stated Chartrand.

Chartrand created posters to circulate on Facebook with information on how to report the fake account to Facebook.

“We could see very quickly, without any doubt, that people were disgusted,” noted Chartrand.

Thanks to the many veterans and military community members that reported the account, Facebook had shut down the fake account within two hours.

Chartrand thanks Facebook for their quick response and also all those who ensured that Cpl. Cirillo’s memory would not be tainted.

“This was a mission accomplished. Everyone who participated, who shared, the credit goes to them. They saw an injustice, they saw that this was wrong and they accomplished the mission,” said Chartrand.