Still strug­gling to raise funds for a life-sav­ing pro­ce­dure in In­dia, can­cer pa­tient Zelia Castel­lo now has to deal with un­scrupu­lous peo­ple us­ing her plight to steal mon­ey from kind-heart­ed in­di­vid­u­als.

Castel­lo told Guardian Me­dia that a re­port has been made to the po­lice and they have post­ed a warn­ing on Face­book ad­vis­ing mem­bers of the pub­lic to be wary of these peo­ple.

In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, she said, “Last night, a la­dy called me from Point Fortin and she said that week­end some young boys was in the area. They didn’t have do­na­tion sheets be­cause I have do­na­tion sheets ap­proved from the com­mis­sion­er, but they had en­velopes say­ing they from the Point Fortin Po­lice Youth Club and they re­ceiv­ing funds on my be­half to as­sist with the sit­u­a­tion. Some per­sons gave them and some peo­ple didn’t.”

Castel­lo, a woman po­lice con­sta­ble, said she spoke to the pres­i­dent of the Po­lice Youth Club, who in­formed her that an­oth­er woman al­so made a re­port at the Point Fortin Po­lice Sta­tion about the young men.

She said the po­lice are in­ves­ti­gat­ing and a res­i­dent has of­fered to share her CCTV footage to as­sist them in iden­ti­fy­ing and ar­rest­ing the sus­pects.

“That is crazy be­cause in a sit­u­a­tion like this, peo­ple ac­tu­al­ly us­ing that as an op­por­tu­ni­ty for them to do their own (thing),” Castel­lo said.

She made it clear that the PYC is not do­ing any fundrais­ing events on her be­half at this time.

“I’ve been telling per­sons once it’s not post­ed on the page, we are not aware of it. I don’t want no­body par­tic­i­pat­ing in noth­ing as long as I didn’t give the ap­proval for it, be­cause with­out my ap­proval it not sup­posed to be done,” Castel­lo said.

The warn­ing on Face­book ad­vised, “All fundrais­ers or­gan­ised by on ap­proved by the Help Zelia Fight Against Hodgkins Lym­phoma team, are pub­lished on the of­fi­cial Face­book page that is named “Help Zelia Fight Against Hodgkins Lym­phoma” as con­fir­ma­tion of le­git­i­ma­cy.”

Di­ag­nosed last Jan­u­ary, Castel­lo, a mu­nic­i­pal po­lice of­fi­cer, has been strug­gling to raise funds for a bone mar­row trans­plant in In­dia and has been forced to push back her trip.

The pro­ce­dure costs US$200,000 but the hos­pi­tal has agreed to a US$15,000 down pay­ment to start her treat­ment.

While she is not close to this, Castel­lo is still op­ti­mistic about go­ing to In­dia at the end of the month.

“It (do­na­tions) slowed down plen­ty from last week to now but it have one or two peo­ple still call­ing,” she said.

Castel­lo can be con­tact­ed at 329-1688 or do­nate to Zelia Chris­tiana Castel­lo First Cit­i­zens Bank ac­count num­ber 2283611. To con­tribute, go to the web­site https://go­fund.me/40f4d87e.