Boy in the Balloon - Fraud?
I don’t know if it was fraud or not, but seriously… the boy in the balloon was a major emotional event for many of us.
What appeared to be a simple human interest story with a small boy climbing into a balloon and the balloon taking off without the knowledge of the parents has become a weird claim of fraud against a couple who seem to take any risk they choose to get the attention of the public. According to rumors, this is a common problem with this couple playing the part of victims to get attention and grab the media for their own selfish purposes.
Playing the swapping partners in the popular Reality Show - Wife Swap - grabbed the nation’s attention with a weather chaser from Fort Collins. And now, their son supposedly climbed into the balloon, and drifted off across the front range. National fame according to an error, when they find the son, he’s hiding in the attic? Isn’t this a bit strange, that a six year old would climb into an attic and hide out as a common every day event?
If this case wasn’t real, and the parents didn’t truly believe their son was in danger, I can’t imagine what these parents were thinking when they set off this adventure across the high plains. If anyone comes across a good excuse for this kind of bad parenting, I’d like to hear it.
Under the presumption of fraud — First, their son is unsupervised and climbs into a helium balloon to drift high across the skies. Now, that, I can actually excuse as a curious child getting into a situation of danger. But parent’s who would set up a hunt and search to take the media on a wild goose chase, frighten television viewers world wide, and ultimately create a HIGH-COST search and rescue, teaching their children to use fraud to grab attention and fame is outside my spectrum of understanding.
As a parent, I had tears in my eyes. Concern for the missing child, when the sheriff department broke up the balloon and no child was there. I couldn’t imagine the pain those parents were going through not knowing where their child was, and if he was even okay or not. I know there were other moms out there, concerned for the missing child.
This kind of fraud makes it more difficult to find legitimately missing children, because nobody believes the child is really missing. After this kind of fraud takes place, there’s so many who stop believing the children are really missing and it costs precious time, money and effort to find the child.
The boy in the balloon really and truly is a human interest story. If indeed the case is legitimate, then there’s no cause for alarm, the child is safe and that’s really all that matters. In the interest of missing children everywhere, if this is a case of fraud I hope this case is prosecuted to the full extent of the law, if those parents truly did set up a case of fraud for personal gain. At the risk of their own child, they deserve nothing less than the full measure of the law. Throw the book at ‘em Danno!
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