Naples woman says fake text message landed her in jail

Melissa Sims’ hot-and-cold relationship reached a boiling point in November 2024. The registered nurse called the Collier County Sheriff’s Office to report that her ex-boyfriend was stealing from the place where she was living in Naples. But when deputies got to the scene, they noticed he had scratch marks on him, and she was the one who was arrested and hauled off to jail for battery. She said he caused the injuries himself. "I'm thinking — my whole life, everything's gone now,” Sims recalled thinking at the time. "Just tears. My breath was taken away. It was horrible." But that was just the beginning. Sims was released from jail, but it came with a no-contact order. Then, about two months after her initial arrest, she was arrested again and charged with violating the terms of her release. "When I was being led back up into the cell block (I was thinking) ‘I can't do this. I cannot last a year. I'm going to kill myself,’" she said. A report from the sheriff’s office lists a text message as the evidence against her. Her ex-boyfriend said Sims sent it to him, violating her no-contact order. Sims insists that she never sent the text, and believes her ex created a fake message. "Why the heck would I risk everything – my life, my liberty – and have to await trial to go back in jail, just to send him a text message? It made no sense,” she said. Sims was released on bond while her defense attorney, Donald Day, started working on her case. “We knew that my client hadn't made the text. We knew the text was false,” he said. To try to prove her innocence, Day pulled Sims’ phone records and subpoenaed her ex’s. “One, from her phone, there was never any digital text sent,” Day said. “And two, he never received any text into his system. So, we were able to show the providers that none of this happened." Fast forward to September 2025, and the state attorney’s office dropped the violation charge. Then, in December, Sims was found not guilty in the original battery case. Day said he sees fake digital evidence in cases a couple of times every month now. "We've got a lot of fraud in the system right now. We're really seeing this in family law cases,” he said. "We see it in child custody disputes. We see it in business litigation cases." Day said that artificial intelligence has made it easier to create fake evidence – and helps make it more convincing. He believes police and the courts need to catch up. "We need to make sure that it's an authentic record,” Day said. “We can't just rely like we have for the last 50 years that a contract or a check or an email is valid and authentic. Because AI and technology has changed the game on that." Still today, Sims is trying to get her mugshot taken offline. She’s filed a complaint against the investigator in her case and is pushing for a new state law to prevent something similar from happening to anyone else. "If it happened to me, who else is it going to happen to? That's what scares me,” she said. "If I have to speak out about what happened to me and try to enact positive change, I will. I'm not going to go away." Gulf Coast News reached out to the Collier County Sheriff’s Office to ask several questions, including if they plan to investigate where the text came from. “Because there is an active Professional Responsibility Bureau investigation into this matter, we are limited in our ability to respond to your questions,” a spokesperson wrote in an email. “We can tell you that the PRB investigation will carefully and thoroughly investigate Ms. Sims’ complaint.” Gulf Coast News is not showing or naming Sims' ex-boyfriend because he hasn’t been criminally charged in connection with the case. We reached out to him multiple times for comment. At one point, he indicated that he would get back with a response, but that still hasn’t happened. DOWNLOAD the free Gulf Coast News app for your latest news and alerts on breaking news, weather, sports, entertainment, and more on your phone or tablet. And check out the Very Local Gulf Coast app to stream news, entertainment, and original programming on your TV.