Marissa Layne is a mama bear who’s fiercely protective of her cubs.
As the mother of a son under 10 and a one-year-old baby girl, the married midwesterner thought she was protecting her little ones’ privacy by only sharing photos of them with a small circle of close friends and family members via her private Facebook profile.
But that protective measure wasn’t enough to prevent her infant daughter’s images from being secretly stolen and misused by someone Layne trusted with her life.
“My best friend of 15 years digitally kidnapped my baby,” the stay-at-home mother told The Post.
Having no idea until another mom tipped her off, the 25-year-old’s former close friend, whom she chose to refer to as “Lucy,” posed as the mother of her baby to colleagues and bosses, faked a birth story and disgustingly texted pictures of the little girl wearing next to nothing to strangers.
“It’s such a violation. It is so scary. It’s altered my brain chemistry in the most astounding way,” said Layne, who’s been prescribed anti-anxiety medications since learning of Lucy’s offense in March.
“[My family and I have] gone from feeling safe to not feeling safe. From being able to sleep to not being able to sleep. From feeling comfortable in your world to feeling like you’re exposed down to the bones,” she explained.
Unlike the extortion scheme of the same name — a con in which scammers use the internet or phone to trick victims into paying exorbitant ransoms for the release of their loved ones, per the FBI — the type of digital kidnapping Layne experienced occurs when ne’er-do-wells steal a minor’s photo from social media to use to their warped advantage.
A bone-chilling form of cyberstalking, digital kidnapping is in the family of online crimes that affect roughly 7.5 million people each year, with 67 percent of victims targeted by someone they know, according to 2026 data.
From reposting images of tots, passing them off as their own by creating a faux life with them, to more sinister acts, such as selling the snapshots on the dark web, perpetrators guilty of misappropriating a child’s name or likeness put youngsters at high risk.
In fact, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children received a whopping 21.3 million reports in 2025, and assisted in 53,000 law enforcement cases involving virtual crimes against kids, including child pornography, the online enticement of children and the misuse of digital images online.
Tragically, this crime is nothing new.
In 2013, Mommy blogger, Lindsey Paris, caught a catfish stealing photos of her 18-month-old son and posing as his mother on Facebook, saying the affront caused her to “melt” with mental and emotional anguish.
Three years later, Dr. Phil’s daytime talk show stage served as an interrogation room after a married couple, April and Nathan, accused a woman named Ashley of digitally kidnapping their identical twin daughters, displaying photographs of the girls on her website and throughout her home.
Then, in June 2021, Meredith Steele, a 30-something married mom of two, vowed never to show her children’s faces on social media again upon discovering that they’d been digitally kidnapped by fraudsters who’d stolen 30 pictures of her kids, giving new names and identities for their own online glory.
“It’s absolutely horrifying,” Steele previously groused, deeming herself a “bad parent” for leaving her little ones as prey to predators. “I don’t know who it was… [but] it was a real violation.”
Layne, unfortunately, knew her family’s digital kidnapper all too well.
When trying to get pregnant with her daughter, the midwesterner “walked through the pits of infertility hell” with Lucy steadfastly by her side, and was more than happy to post sweet stills and videos of her little girl online after finally conceiving and birthing the babe in 2025.
But Lucy, whom she considered a bestie since age 11, had more than social media access to pics of Layne’s brood.
“She was with my kids all the time, but she really [doted on] my daughter,” said Layne, who, after giving birth via C-section, suffered a severe abdominal infection, appreciated Lucy’s help as an unofficial “second mom.”
“She was always changing diapers, doing feedings, driving me to doctors’ appointments, carrying the car seat if my husband Shawn wasn’t available, and taking a lot of pictures of my daughter,” Layne recalled to The Post.
“Lucy would post pictures of my daughter on her Facebook with captions like, ‘My little baby,” and when she wasn’t around, she’d text me saying, ‘I miss my little girl,’ or ‘How’s my baby?’” she added, “but never mentioned missing me.”
But the bizarre behavior never fazed Layne, not even when Shawn and her grandmother called out Lucy’s antics.
“I defended her. She was my best friend, almost like an aunt to my children,” she explained.
Her tune, however, changed upon receiving a random Facebook message from a whistleblower this past spring.
“A woman from the town over wrote, ‘Mom to mom, you should know that your friend is claiming to be the mother of your daughter,’” Layne recalled. She immediately screenshot the message and sent it to Lucy, who labeled the woman, her coworker, “crazy.”
“Lucy called me, saying, ‘She’s crazy. Block her! Block her!” said Layne.
Rather than obeying her pal’s command, she continued communicating with the woman.
“The most violating and insane thing is that she created a fake birth story about birthing my daughter,” said Layne, who endured an intense labor and delivery. “She claimed to have had an epidural-free birth, minimal pain. Yeah, that’s completely different from my actual experience.”
Layne called her local county sheriff’s department, which dispatched a deputy to go to Lucy’s house and force her to delete all images, footage, and posts related to the infant. Layne, however, chose not to press charges.
She has, instead, permanently severed all ties with Lucy.
“This is something I cannot forgive,” said Layne, who, too, holds herself, in small part, responsible for Lucy’s transgressions.
“I wish I would have paid closer attention to her behavior, and not looked at her through rose-colored glasses,” she groaned. “I wish I would have thought more as a mom instead of as a best friend.”
“I wish I would have leaned into my protective, motherly instincts,” added Layne. “And I wish I’d never posted my kids on social media.”
“I was really ignorant to internet safety because I thought that if my Facebook is private, and I know who [my online friends are] that my children would be safe. That is not the case,” Layne lamented of her mistakes in “sharenting” — the parental practice of regularly sharing kids’ photos online.
Lesley Koeppel, a New York City psychotherapist, says the malfeasance not only places an innocent in harm’s way, but can also cause deep psychological wounds for the child and parents at the center of the misdeed.
“It is a profound emotional betrayal, not just a privacy violation,” Koeppel explained to The Post, noting the anxiety, paranoia, and hyper-vigilance endured by the beleaguered. “Even if no physical harm ever occurs, when something as personal as a child’s image is stolen, it can permanently change how safe a family feels sharing even the happiest moments of their lives.”
As no parent should ever experience this kind of trauma, Staci Sycoff, a Manhattan-area therapist, encourages parents to “think before you post your child’s image.”
“A photo shared without caution can become a story you never intended to tell,” warned the pro. “Taking a few extra seconds to protect your child’s digital footprint today may help prevent emotional, psychological, and even safety consequences tomorrow.”
Layne, now healing in the aftermath of the chaos, no longer plasters precious moments with her tykes on Facebook. She barely even talks to folks outside of her immediate family.
This digital kidnapping ordeal has left a stain on her spirit that the homemaker can’t seem to wash away.
“Don’t create a fake life with someone else’s child, a child who means everything to them,” she begged the “Lucy” types of the world.
“Please don’t [inflict] this kind of pain on another mother.”
