12 year old girl counterfeited Tim Horton's Contest

Matthew de Jong, an 18-year-old house painter from Parksville, claimed he won a 2009 Toyota Venza as part of the chain's popular "Roll up the Rim to Win" contest, with a coffee cup he bought in Parksville in April. People across the country calling on the coffee-shop chain to do the right thing.

Tim Hortons officials said on Thursday revealed it as a fake and that the cup was a counterfeit. That claim was verfied on Friday when Nanaimo resident Pam Geddes Skelding revealed the cup was fabricated by her 12 year-old daughter, Chloe, as an April Fool's Day joke. The forgery that had the country abuzz was created by a 12-year-old girl as one of the April Fools pranks she pulled off on her mother.

She said the cup disappeared after being left on her kitchen counter while de Jong was painting in the house.

Skelding said she "thought nothing" of the cup's disappearance until she read about de Jong's claim to the car in the Friday edition of the Nanaimo Daily News.

De Jong acknowledged Friday that he did buy a coffee from Tim Hortons while on his way to Skelding's house to paint her kitchen and he said it may have gotten "mixed up" with other Tim Hortons cups that were in the kitchen at the time.

"I guess I accidently picked up the wrong cup while I was at work, assumed it was mine and that it was a winner," de Jong said after hearing of Skelding's claim. "I guess it's game over for me getting the car."

Tim Hortons' spokesman David Morelli told the Daily News on Thursday that two "outside firms" verified that the cup was lacking a number of security features the company uses to guard against forgeries and the matter was under investigation. He said at the time that the case may be handed over to the police. Morelli couldn't be reached for comment on Friday.

Skelding said her daughter used her computer to type the winning phrase on a thin strip of grey paper that she attached to an old Tim Hortons cup in an effort to pull a practical joke.

"It really wasn't that elaborate a job and Chloe's computer lacks a 'c' key so she put a star symbol where the copyright symbol would have been," she said.

"We didn't think about it again until we saw the newspaper article and the television coverage and Chloe recognized the sticker. She didn't want to get in any trouble for creating the sticker and wanted the matter cleared up as soon as possible."

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