Did Fake Facebook Likes Help Free Tom Randall?
When the Sankey orphanage was raided in the Philippines and Tom Randall arrested, social media went into overdrive to free him.
The “Free Tom Randall” page on Facebook  collected 25,000 likes the first week it was up.
Supposedly, these were “organic”…meaning real people had really chosen to like the page.
Then, according to this source, something “interesting” happened…
“Without warning and apparently for no reason, Likes started happening again – even faster than before, about 20 per MINUTE. But this time, in looking at a majority of the new profiles, they had no substance to them – very few updates, little to no history, just a pro-pic, a cover pic, a few more photos, and a few recent updates. However, these profiles had THOUSANDS of Page Likes and were predominantly from Turkey (approx 30,000) plus Azerbijan and Georgia, the country. Fortunately, one of our admin’s is a techie and created a bot to eat what we think were many tens of thousands of fake Likes – seriously.”
“Facebook then told us that someone “may have” paid for Likes to the page. We didn’t, but someone else might have?”
Now, that’s a good question…maybe we have clues to the answer.
Maybe…possibly… it was Joe Coffey of Christ Community Chapel… that now houses Randall’s ministry?
Lori Lenz-Heiselman works for Frontgate Media and Biscuit Media… companies that use social media to help advertisers…”Your Gateway To The Christian Audience”.
Lenz-Heiselman and Coffey are seen interacting on Twitter with Lenz-Heiselman taking an activist position on behalf of Randall.
Let’s follow the Twitter trail.
On Jan 14-15, Lori and Joe converse…and Biscuit Media engages as well.
On Jan 19th, The “Free Tom Randall” Facebook page has 20,000 likes…
From there the page ended up with over 65,000 likes, even after many were deleted as fraudulent by the friend of the ministry.
Why does this matter?
I’ll let one of the whistleblowers explain it.
” The huge number of likes was an influence on celebrities and political figures asked to intervene. Although Tom’s charges were quite minor compared to the actual accused perpetrators of child abuse, he was allowed to leave the country without trial and the abusers granted bail in a routinely non-bailable situation. Further there were no follow-up arrests of at least two other former staff accused of abuse by the young people themselves. Yes social media has power.”
This is dishonest and unethical no matter who did it.
To dishonestly influence the public in a case where children have been abused is the very definition of corruption and sin.
The questions never end in this case and no answers have been forthcoming.
We need more voices, asking loudly.
You can read all of our coverage of this case starting here…
Some blogs (not the PhxP) run scripts that make it appear that hundreds of people visit their blog everyday.
We do between 2000-3500 a day depending on what’s up on the blog.
Some days are way more, some a little less.
MLD has doubled the numbers on Sunday…I couldn’t be happier about that.
I try not to worry about it…never found a way to really monetize it.
I measure by how much community I see happening.
Other than the ones free of Tom/Toto’s control, there has been no therapeutic help of any kind provided to the other young people of the former Sankey home. I would like people to push for an independent investigation by a certified anti-abuse organization. If, as Tom claims, nothing at all happened and it was all made up, this should be easily confirmed by the investigating agency.
Joe,
Do you have names of organizations we could ask?
There has been talk of Facebook introducing an alternative to the Like button. Now would be a good time for it.
In whose bible does 1 Corinthians go up to chapter 29?
I might be time for someone who knows this story well to talk to Lori.
G.R.A.C.E. is one of the best that I know of.
is anyone else weighed down by all this corruption?
finally took time to read from the linkathon post: Farewell to the Missionary Hero… from Christianity Today – considering all the grief that the Phoenix Preacher is trying to sort through here now, it is a good read – IMV
this example is from the article, but the gist of piece is much more positive:
” In Miracle on Voodoo Mountain (2015), Megan Boudreaux writes about visiting the Son of God Orphanage in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, while working to establish her own nonprofit in the city’s suburbs. After multiple visits, she realized the orphanage was trafficking children. “Pastor Joe” collected money from US churches that sent short-term teams, but didn’t provide food, clothing, or basic medical care for the children. Boudreaux organized a sting operation that gathered evidence of his offering to sell children. Using the power of social media, Christians petitioned CNN to expose Pastor Joe. CNN’s subsequent investigation helped pressure the Haitian government to shut down the orphanage.”
From Lori’s tweets, it looks like Christian Post has a lot to answer for.
Michael, is there a way we can get an alternative page up and running, to spread the word, and generate _real_ “likes?”
Also, what Congressmen should we contact?
Essentially, in what ways can we combat this? I feel motivated to at least try…
Ryan,
We’re working on some things and I’ll present them when we have it together.
Right now, I need this spread far and wide…this guy travels the nation soliciting funds from local churches…even in my own damn town.
He may not want to come back here…
I want people to recognize him, question him, and cut off the money till they have real answers.
I also need to say that the folks helping on these articles have done some of the best and most diligent work ever seen on this blog and none of this would be possible without their work and support.
I still don’t understand the concept of inviting “outsiders” to come into your church to solicit your people for their cause.
Obviously no one vets the individual or the organization before the invitation.
Please spread this far and wide! Let the public and media see how seemingly corrupt this is, and the extent these people will go to protect the institution and their hides. So exasperating to see money, greed and power by maintaining the “appearance of piety”, all the while throwing the abused Sankey victims under the bus. Their actions are unfathomable and they should be accountable for their actions.
There are a lot of congregants and others who have seen actual documents and know what happened at Sankey but have chosen to turn their heads, put their heads in the sand or whatever rather than confront their beloved Coffey or Randall. All I can say is shame on you. Hope you can live with yourselves for turning your backs on these brave Sankey victims.
Michael,
I don’t have reason to follow or know the specifics of US criminal code regarding sex crimes committed by American residents in foreign jurisdictions.
But I believe the concept goes roughly like this.
If a missionary travels to a foreign jurisdiction and assaults a child, it is not a US crime.
If the missionary “intended” on traveling to a foreign country, “for the purposes of” assaulting children, it is a US crime. This is due to the preparation taking place in US jurisdiction.
If there was an effort to intimidate witnesses or obstruct in some way from the US, it might be possible to claim that US jurisdiction applies as well, provided certain thresholds could be met.
If someone had a “reasonable assumption” that they could be a target of a future US criminal probe, and obstructed or intimidated, it might be criminal.
Was he ever reported to authorities in the US? Was there ever evidence that US supporters ever acted on his behalf to cover up?
MLD @ # 10,
I don’t understand it either. From what I remember of Lutheranism before I lost my religion altogether, is that it had a strong central authority in place which made it difficult for outside chicanery to use the church as a marketing venue.
In my opinion Lutheranism is to be commended for this. Unlike the myriad of independent fundagelical sects who are easy prey for the Elmer Gantrys & con men, they are better able to guard themselves from such predators.
nathan,
There is a lot in the background here.
There are many suspicions and allegations, but in the Philippines money covers a multitude of sin.
We want an independent investigation opened.
From one of the whistleblowers…
“I don’t often share the updates on this case mainly because I prefer to focus my energies on the young adults we are helping and the whole thing is emotional exhausting. But this is such a good reminder of the need for caution when we are using social media as a source for information.
In my cover photo are three amazing women who were not afraid to speak out and stand up for their rights. They lost their “family” over it, and the man who promised to be there father abandoned them. They lost friends and were asked not to attend their church. But they never gave up. Unsure of where they would live and how they would pay for college they stood up and went against the flow. Folks, college students like that don’t show up every day. They are something special. Seeing them stand up in a court payed to be against them showed me how strong they and the young adults fighting with them are.
What breaks my heart is not that Tom had fake facebook likes, but that he was a fake father, a fake friend, and that the kids still under his control have not been given any counseling or care and continue to live in fear, even turning to sex, drugs, and alcohol and all the time reciting the Christian things they were trained to say. What picture of God could the have? Go to church every Sunday, make sure you lie, pretend you were never abused, do it for money. That’s what life is for many of them. Fake Christianity. Fake faith.
But fake is easy to do, for all of us, especially with social media. It’s so easy to fake a life on facebook, and social media is powerful, it’s important we make sure we are living real lives with real people and that we not only make sure our social media acurarely represents us but that we do our research and make sure what we read on social media is accurately represented. Most of the time it won’t matter, but sometimes, amazing kids like these girls will get thrown under the bus because we automatically trust what we see based on thing like “likes”. Just some thoughts today. I’m blessed with a bigger family and knowing those girls is a privilege. To many awesome opportunities are lost because of fakes though, too true.”
To Nathan- the U.S. laws have changed and US citizens are now liable for prosecution by US authorities for breaking any US law for any reason while overseas including, of course, failure to properly report abuse in your jurisdiction. My family has been criticized for reporting this to authorities but we would have been criminally liable had we not. (Of course our real motivation was to help the kids not legal fears). By Tom’s own admission there were two agents of the U.S. Embassy present at the raid of his “orphanage” when he was taken in custody. He also makes clear that while in detention he was questioned at length by US Homeland security.The U.S. position is that they will not act on a case involving a U.S. citizen until the local legal proceedings are finushed.