For years, Channel 11 has shared stories about Jamie’s Dream Team and all the ways it has supported people with medical challenges, disabilities or trauma. The founder of the organization says they need help of their own now after their accounts were hacked, forcing them to basically start over.
“We’re at a loss,” Jamie’s Dream Team founder Jamie Ward said. “We are at a loss.”
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Jamie Ward founded Jamie’s Dream Team. The nonprofit helps people living with serious medical conditions.
“I’ve worked tirelessly for 17 years building this organization,” Ward said. “I’m sick myself. I’ve had over 45 major operations. I get up every day to help people.”
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But over the summer, Ward says hackers gained access to her organization’s social media pages, email and bank accounts.
“Well over a $200,000 loss just in the last six months,” Ward said.
Ward says the hackers also posted explicit photos of kids on Jamie’s Dream Team’s Facebook page. That led Facebook to lock the page, forcing Jamie to create an entirely new one.
“We lost 18,000 followers on social media,” Ward said.
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In May 2025, Channel 11 interviewed Jamie after she said someone copied her organization’s logo and used the photos of the boy they were raising money for to set up a fake Venmo account.
“It all started there with Venmo,” Ward said.
Ward says the hackers threatened her and told her not to contact police. Despite that, she says she reached out to the FBI and turned everything over to them, including a list of logins and small incremental charges.
“You have to watch your accounts closely,” Ward said. “We were getting Facebook charges. We were getting Amazon charges.”
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Ward says those little charges led to a big nightmare. A nightmare that she says isn’t going to scare her away from helping hundreds of local families.
“We’re not going to give up,” said Ward. “I promise we are not going to give up. I don’t care what I have to do. I need the world right now to know we need help.”
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Channel 11 reached out to the FBI and will share the bureau’s response.
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