It's hard to tell looking at the smiling young boy, but 5-year-old Gianni Incandela has a rare brain tumor. The cost of his radiation treatment has made money tight for his family in Rossville.
"He is a very happy fun loving boy,” his mother Kelly Incandela said. “He always has a smile on his face and that's what gets us through the hard times is that even though he's suffering."
His mother, Kelly Incandela, and grandmother, Dee Tirado, set up a GoFundMe Page to help. But then they began receiving phone calls from friends claiming a woman and her son were using Gianni's photo, and cancer diagnosis, to collect money without their permission.
The friends sent Tirado a photo of the woman. She was someone Tirado remembered seeing in her Park Slope office.
"She must have taken his flyer off my desk and utilized it for her own benefit,” Tirado said. “Utilizing his picture to tell people he was sick and needed money."
Tirado learned of the woman’s identity and told her friends the woman was not authorized to collect money on behalf of her cancer-stricken grandson.
"It sickens me to my stomach that families have to go through this and you know we have the heartache of having a child with such a terrible illness, and we're not the only ones,” Tirado said.
The story took another strange turn when the woman and her son allegedly walked into Tirado's office Monday with that photo of Tirado’s grandson, asking for donations.
Tirado said she locked them inside her office, and called the police.
"You don't know who I am?” Tirado exclaimed. “You stole my grandson's identity, you took the picture of Gianni and made it about you."
According to police they weren't able to make an arrest or file a report because no money was actually exchanged in this particular interaction.
Other businesses gave money though, like Zambrand Auto Repair. Natalia Fernandez said she remembers making a donation to the woman and her son.
"It disappoints me because I'm trying to help a person that really needs the help and sometimes people that doesn't need it get the money,” she said.
We got ahold of the woman who told us she did solicit money. But she claimed it was on behalf of another child with the same name with a brain tumor.
"I'm hurt by it,” Kelly Indandela said. “I feel like something like this shouldn't have to happen, innocent families who are already going through a difficult time shouldn't have to deal with something like this."
And that difficult time isn't over yet for Gianni Incandela, but he continues to get through it with a smile.