Buckley resident Kelsey Macom was sentenced April 20 to 30 days in jail, three months of home detention with electronic monitoring and three years of supervised release for tampering with a consumer product.

Macom, 36, claimed in April 2008, that her then 7-year-old daughter was injured by a piece of glass in a bottle of Dasani water – a Coca-Cola company product. Macom demanded $3,000 from Coca-Cola to settle the matter. When she pleaded guilty on Jan. 13, 2010, Macom admitted she had made up the entire hoax.

Macom used her young daughter and her employment at a consumer-oriented agency, in hopes of getting a quick financial settlement. At sentencing U.S. District Judge Ronald B. Leighton labeled the crime “despicable.”

According to records filed in the case, on April 15, 2008, Macom, 36, contacted the Coca-Cola company in Atlanta, Ga., claiming that her 7-year-old daughter had been injured by a small shard of glass in a bottle of Dasani water. Macom used her home e-mail address on the initial contact, but later used the e-mail address and contact information for her employer – the Better Business Bureau.

A few days after her first complaint, Macom e-mailed Coca-Cola asking for a monetary settlement. Coca-Cola sent Macom a mailer asking her to forward the bottle and glass shard. When an insurance investigator contacted Macom, she claimed that her daughter coughed up blood – a claim she had never made in contact with the company.

On May 29, 2008, Macom was interviewed by agents from the Food and Drug Administration Office of Criminal Investigations. After agents confronted Macom with the fact she had filed a similar complaint against another product in 2007, Macom admitted that she had made up the entire story. In the 2007 complaint, Macom had received $1,500 after claiming her then 6-year-old daughter had cut her mouth on a glass shard in a chocolate bar.

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