No, this KC man did not deface the Roman Colosseum. Yet he’s under social media attack

The video went viral over the weekend and touched off an international scandal. It showed an unidentified man appearing to etch the names “Ivan” and Hayley” onto a wall of the Colosseum in Rome.

More than 5,000 miles away in Kansas City, lawyer Ivan M. Camejo had no idea until Monday morning that internet “sleuths” had pegged him and his wife, Haley — note the spelling — as the culprits.

It wasn’t them.

But over the last few days they have felt the wrath of the social media mob. People have called for Camejo to be disbarred. Someone posted their address and encouraged people to deface their home.

“It’s been quite frustrating as my wife and I have never been to Rome,” Camejo told The Star on Thursday. “Neither of us have ever or would ever do something like that. The individual that defaced the (Colosseum) just happens to share my name.”

Also, both men have dark hair and beards — like millions of men on the planet.

Camejo hadn’t even heard about the incident when someone with a British-sounding accent called him on his work phone Monday morning, asking him questions about it. The caller might have been a reporter, but Camejo was too shocked denying he had been in Italy to find out, he said.

Soon, someone on Facebook called him out by name in a public post and said he should be ashamed of himself. That was the first wave of the tsunami.

The controversy began Sunday when tourist Ryan Lutz of Orange, California, shot a video of an unidentified man who appeared to be using a key to carve “Ivan + Hayley 23” into the Colisseum’s stone facade, according to The Associated Press.

Lutz told The AP he had just finished a guided tour of the landmark when he saw the man “blatantly carving his name” into the wall. He was so shocked, he whipped out his phone and started making the video.

“And as you see in the video, I kind of approach him and ask him, dumbfounded at this point, ‘Are you serious? Are you really serious?’” Lutz recalled. “And all he could do is like smile at me.”

He posted the video on YouTube and Reddit, where viewers there and also on Twitter began searching for the scofflaw. All they had to go on: The guy’s smiling mug that people called “punchable” and the two names he etched.

The quick consensus among Europeans: He must be American. On Thursday Italian police said they had identified a British couple as the possible culprits.

“It is definitely not us,” said Camejo.

Is this them?

People have been trolling for every morsel of information they can find about the couple. They found photos of Camejo and compared his face, nose, the shape of his ears — even his wristwatch — to the man in the video.

Someone even posted the couple’s wedding video from last October.

At 3:32 p.m Tuesday, Twitter user @bigdaddybry4 posted a link to the Camejos’ wedding page on The Knot website with just one question: “This him?”

Someone called CNN’s attention to it.

By Wednesday morning, Haley Camejo had taken the page down as the couple scrambled to make their personal social media accounts private. Anyone who tries to view their wedding page now sees this message instead: “We can’t find this page.”

The derision picked up on Tuesday. Before Camejo set his Facebook page to private, angry people messaged him there, warning him the Italian government was looking for him and telling him he should be disbarred. People found his mother-in-law and sent her messages via Facebook, too.

The Twitter account Hollywood LA News with 9,100 followers played judge and jury in a couple of posts, calling Camejo “a diversity hire at a law firm in Missouri. His family is Dominican, from the Dominican Republic. Should be disbarred.”

“They’ve been going nuts about it,” Camejo said of that outlet, pointing out how it posted a work photo from a previous employer.

People tracked down one of his mentors and sent him hate messages, too, Camejo said.

‘Ruining a few lives’

The race to identify the vandal has been furious on Reddit, too, where on Tuesday one user wrote: “Oh, Reddit will do it (find the person). There may be a few innocent people that get caught in the crossfire, but Redditors love a witch hunt. And for the record, that’ll get you banned so I’m not condoning it.

“But after ruining a few lives they’ll get the right person.”

“Well, you’re not wrong,” someone replied. “Someone just commented with the wrong people.”

Italian authorities vowed to find and punish the vandal. The Colosseum has apparently been damaged with similar graffiti at least three other times just this year. Italian news outlets speculated the man in the video could face $15,000 in fines and up to five years in prison.

The last few days have “been mostly frustrating and I don’t want to have my family deal with repercussions,” said Camejo.

He said it has “crossed my mind” to sue his accusers. But he hasn’t considered it “strongly” at this point and reserved further comment on that possibility.

If anything, the last few days have taught him that “people have too much time on their hands and despite that, they don’t have enough time to do a little bit more research,” before wrongly accusing someone, he said.

He cautioned people to avoid jumping to conclusions before they start attacking people online.

“And even if you get the facts straight, it’s much easier to be kind than to be rude or negative,” he said. “I don’t think these people are horrible people. I just think they have a lot of time on their hands.

He said Rome “is a place I’ve wanted to visit forever. I’ve always wanted to go to the Colosseum. As a kid gladiators interested me.”

About those travel plans. He’s just a little more hesitant now.