GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — "It's definitely affected my wife and my kids, my wife is a little concerned about our business and how it's impacting us," said Cody Kooman.
On Friday, Cody Kooman told 13 ON YOUR SIDE about rapid-fire accusations about him that had been posted on Facebook. Most of them accused him of molesting children, ripping customers off and encouraging people to write negative reviews about him.
The posts were almost identical and were shared from numerous accounts in Facebook groups from Holland to Ionia, Cedar Springs to Allegan, and even as far away as Traverse City. There was also a comment and review from a man named James Campbell posted on Wednesday.
"To use my likeness for that is incredibly deceiving. It's dishonest," said Campbell.
We spoke to the real James Campbell last week. He lives near Flint and said he never posted any of those Facebook messages.
The 13 Help Team tracked him down after getting a message from the fake James Campbell account threatening legal action if we did not remove the stories about Aron Calton and his businesses. He said he didn't send any of those messages and is very upset that someone would be using his name and picture.
"It's very weird, said Campbell. "And this is where I'm really confused, too, is I'm not even from the area. I would really like to know how or why my profile was settled on, you know, how I popped up, was it recommendation? You know, having no known associations, not living in the area. It's all very confusing to me."
Many of the accounts were flagged as fake and blocked by some local group administrators. The accusatory posts about Kooman were deleted.
One fake account was even created using Cody Kooman's own name and his wedding photo as a profile picture. The account was made seemingly to admit to all of the accusations being posted about him.
"I have my six-year-old daughter saying somebody is trying to kill us," said Cody.
Then over the weekend, things got more serious.
"If you don't take the posts down, I am going to kill you and your family," said a person on Cody's voicemail.
Cody said he got a voicemail on his phone at 2:00 a.m. Sunday morning.
"Now I drove past your house last night," said the unidentified person. "I took some pictures while you were sleeping."
Cody started getting threatening messages with pictures taken alongside the road outside his house late at night.
"We moved my family out of the home," said Cody. "They're in a secure location, and that's all I'm going to say about that."
He also received screenshots of his wife and kids, one of which said the following:
"If you want your family to be safe, if the slandering posts are not taken down, me and a few of the Gambinos are going to come to the address below and start destroying your stuff." It goes on to say "if the posts stay up we will whack you from this planet."
While Cody said he has an idea of who is sending him the messages, he said he never imagined sharing our story about Calton's Landscape Services and offering to help on Facebook would spark vicious attacks against him and death threats against him and his family.
"The threats are not going to personally scare me," said Cody. "You're scaring my family more or less, you're not scaring me, and I will not back down. I am not going to back down, it doesn't matter what happens. My family is safe at this point and there's no worries of anything happening to them. But for me as a father and for what, whoever this is has done, I will not stop until justice is served."
To be fair and complete, we did look into Cody Kooman's background and his business. We found nothing. He was the source of a media report back in 2016 about his snowplow business.
According to that article, he was responsive to customer complaints and issued refunds to unhappy customers. Kooman's current business, Custom Klean and Power Washing is accredited with the Better Business Bureau and has an A rating.