MASON, Ohio — One mom said she was "disappointed in humanity" after learning that someone posing as Bengals receiver Ja'Marr Chase signed her son's jersey.
Megan Dashley said her family was already planning to go to Kings Island on opening weekend, but when they learned of rumors that her 10-year-old son's favorite player would be at the amusement park at 2 p.m. on opening day, they made sure their plans matched up with his alleged appearance.
Those rumors started when a TikToker under the account Prodigy Sports made multiple videos claiming Chase would be at Kings Island.
"On the TikTok, he photoshopped a (poster) that made it look really real and he made it look like Kings Island actually posted that picture — it said 'Ja'Marr Chase, Kings Island 2 p.m.,'" her son Grayson said. "It tricked a lot of people into wanting to go, especially a lot of my friends."
Dashley said her son got off a ride and heard people yelling, "It's Ja'Marr!" When they saw the fake Chase and an entourage, with multiple people recording and crowding him, they assumed it was the real deal.
"There were a lot of red flags that in the heat of the moment we didn't think of," Dashley said.
One of those red flags was the fake Chase's height. In a picture Dashley posted on Facebook, it appears the imposter wasn't that much taller than her 5-foot-1 son.
"That was one of the first things he said when we walked away was, 'He's a lot shorter than I expected.'"
Dashley said her oldest son said she didn't think it was Chase, but didn't want to hurt her younger son's feelings. Once they walked away, they noticed the autograph looked "nothing like" Chase's signature.
The imposter later posted a video on TikTok after moonlighting as Chase, telling everyone, "All y'all got pranked! It was me!"
In one video, he specifically shows Dashley's post.
"Y'all thought this was Ja'Marr Chase? This the Dollar Tree Ja'Marr Chase," his friend said in the video.
"I made all y'all fall for it," he said.
Dashley said the prank wasn't her issue, "it's about the morals of this scenario."
"You're playing with kids' emotions," Dashley said. "They were there because they wanted to see their idol. They wanted the opportunity to meet Ja'Marr and he literally crushed their dreams... He could've stopped the prank at any given point in time, but anything for social media right?"
The fake Chase most recently created a video calling on Dashley to delete her post. She said the entire situation grew to be even bigger than she imagined when she wrote the post.
"It's been a great lesson that you can't always believe what you see," Dashley said.
Dashley said the good news is the signature was in pen, so they were able to wash it out. She said she doesn't want anything from the fake Chase, except for him to understand that "he can't be playing with kids' emotions like this."
"He was afraid to go to school today because he didn't want to get made fun of," Dashley said of her son.
It appears the real Chase has no awareness of the prank.
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