TheJerCraw

Starting a business was the furthest thing from her mind when Jacqueline Cameron took a pair of scissors to her husband’s clothes eight years ago. All she cared about was figuring out some way to make it easier for her to care for him so she could keep him at home with her and keep her vow to him.

Jacqueline’s husband, Jack, was a successful chiropractor in his mid-50s when, in the early 1990’s, he was diagnosed with a rare degenerative auto immune disease similar to ALS. Suddenly life as they knew it came to a screeching halt. “It floored us,” Jacqueline says. “It was scary and ugly — no cause and no cure.”

“We thought, ‘What do we do now,’” adds Jacqueline. “I said, ‘One thing is for sure, you are not going into a care home. I will look after you until the end — whatever that means.’”

The doctor told the couple that Jack had only two to five years to live. But thanks to Jacqueline’s loving care and Jack’s determination and will to survive, he managed to slow the progression of the disease and far exceed his doctor’s expectations. But by 2012, he was so crippled by the disease that he was no longer able to dress himself.

That’s when Jacqueline went to work.

“I already knew what I was going to do, but I waited as long as I could to give him his dignity,” she explains. “I took some of his clothes, cut them where needed and then inserted zippers. The clothes looked just as good as before, but now I could dress him in under five minutes. When his occupational therapist saw what I was doing, she was blown away. She said, ‘You can’t keep this to yourself. People need this.’”

Super-Fly Adaptive Apparel was born and incorporated in 2013, with a small board of directors to guide Jacqueline along. Though her beloved husband, Jack, passed away in 2016 after nearly fifty years of marriage, Jacqueline took comfort that something good had come out of his illness and that she and her small business were making a difference in the lives of people with severe disabilities. It never occurred to her that someone could be cruel enough to steal her branded idea and money from unsuspecting customers. That someone was Jeremy Crawford working in cahoots with his wife, Amy.

Jacqueline first encountered Jeremy in the fall of 2018, when she was showcasing her garments at an event for small businesses in Calgary. She said he was so excited by what she was offering he came running over to meet her, talking about all the things his online marketing company could do for her. Jacqueline was intrigued enough to meet him at Starbucks to learn more about his online marketing business and invited him to present his idea to her board. They, in turn, did an online search on Jeremy and came across articles detailing a lawsuit by Randall Rush that claimed Crawford had bilked him out of nearly $5 million.

“Jeremy was a little nervous,” remembers Jacqueline. “I don’t think he realized that I had a great board. Glen (one of the board members) said, ‘I checked you out and you have quite a record.’ Jeremy responded by saying that despite the media coverage claiming otherwise, he had actually won the lawsuit. But Glen pushed back, asking why he had to pay the money back.”

In the end, the board told Jeremy they would think about his proposal. But because of Jeremy’s ongoing pressure, Jacqueline agreed to come to his office to meet with him and his wife, Amy, and learn more about their sales projections for Super Fly. That’s when, according to Jacqueline, she was ushered into an upscale office in a prestigious Calgary building that they passed off as their own — even though she knew immediately it was cubicle space for rent.

Despite the skyrocketing revenue projections Jeremy and Amy shared, Jacqueline had experienced enough warning flags to steer clear. She sent them an email passing on the opportunity and held firm even when Jeremy, once more, tried to pressure her.

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That was the last she had heard of the Crawfords until early March 2020, when she received a phone call from a private investigator.

“She asked me if I knew Jeremy Crawford. I hadn’t interacted with him since December 2018 and I had put him out of my mind. But then it hit me, and I said, ‘Wait a minute, I think I do.’ The investigator replied, ‘Well, he’s got your website.’”

When Jacqueline hung up the phone and went to the Ulivvo website owned and operated by Jeremy and Amy Crawford, she felt physically ill. There, under the Crawfords’ online store, was her Super-Fly brand showcasing Super-Fly clothes that featured her trademark zippers. There was also an attached shopping cart so unsuspecting customers could order the items.

That’s when it all began making sense for Jacqueline. In recent weeks, she had had issues logging into the back-end of her Super Fly website and noticed that sales had dramatically fallen. And after a recent delivery to a customer, the woman remarked that she was sorry Super Fly would no longer be in business. Within days of the shocking discovery, the online store on Ulivvo disappeared.

This coincided with the private investigator’s calls to notify other unsuspecting businesses that their brands were being fraudulently used by Jeremy, including Billy Footwear, another brand that services people with disabilities. Jacqueline can’t prove whether her drop in sales, the back-end issues with her website, or her customer’s strange comment is related to the scam. But the idea that Jeremy would steal her brand, and take money from severely disabled people already struggling to survive is more than she can bare.

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“When you are dealing with disabled people I feel there is no forgiveness,” says Jacqueline. “As Patrick on my board says, ‘This is awful…. It’s hard to believe that someone would stoop to such predatorial, unethical behavior.’”

Jacqueline may be eighty-two, but she’s not going to back down from this fight. The Top 7 Over 70 business owner is determined to share her story as far and wide as possible and is exploring other avenues for recourse.

“I’m not going to move fast,” notes Jacqueline. “I’m going to take my time and do this right.”