MILWAUKEE (WITI) – You only have to spend a few minutes with Casey to see he’s something special.

He’s 3-year-old and is full of life.

It’s hard to imagine what parent wouldn’t want to give him the world but his own father barely gives him a dime.

“He’s paid a total of $189 in three and a half years,” said Jennifer Cvikel, Casey’s mother.

She says he only paid that much to keep himself out of jail.

If you do the math, John Rau has paid less than 14 cents a day since his son was born.

It would be laughable if it wasn’t so tragic.

Casey has leukemia.

“It’s a nightmare. I mean, your world just crashes right in front of you and you don’t even have a chance to react to it,” Cvikel said. “They just started taking him and this and that and more testing and then we were stuck in the hospital for weeks.”

For a year and a half, Casey suffered through chemotherapy, spinal taps and dozens of hospital stays.

He even had to learn to walk again, and through it all, his father has not been by his side.

According to WITI, he’s been on Facebook, bragging about how much money he makes at his job.

When WITI confronted Rau, he said he didn’t know his son was sick until last Christmas and he intends to start paying.

His bragging on social media is exactly why he’s now facing felony charges for failing to pay child support.

And he’s not the only one.

Melissa Jones got a nose job instead of paying her child support.

Theoris Stewart purchased a new music studio instead of paying for his children.

Robert Ellis has 17 kids, Kelvin Jones has 13 and Antonio Burks has 11, and they haven’t always paid their child support.

“They don’t think they’re going to get caught,” said Maureen Atwell, an assistant district attorney at the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office.

John McCroy is supposed to pay $100 a month to support his 5-year-old daughter but her mother says he only paid that once.

Since then, he’s been posting selfies on Facebook and making music videos in his custom car.

“I feel like if he could be out here being flashy that he can take care of our child,” said Canience Haynes.

“I think the most important thing I do in my job is to weed out people who are simply too poor to pay their child support from people who can pay their child support and choosing not to,” said Atwell.

Atwell says it is not a crime if you can’t pay child support.

It is a crime when you can afford to pay and choose not to for at least four months.

“Social media has made a pretty big difference in our cases because it is a pretty good tool in determining who has resources and who doesn’t,” said Atwell.

McCroy admitted to not paying child support in five years but insists he was ineligible because of a paperwork error.

“I really think that it is not that they are too stupid to realize that this is evidence. I think they think nobody cares,” said Atwell.

Investigators are making sure if one parent is left to raise a child on their own, the other doesn’t get to just walk away.

“I don’t have a choice to just turn around and close my eyes and walk away. That’s not an option for me,” said Cvikel.

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