Want more attention? A fake pregnancy should do it. Apparently.

"Need a bun in the oven?" says the website Fake a Baby.com. "We can help."

Billing itself as the "Home of the $9.95 fake Ultrasound", it purports to sell the "Best Gag Gifts on Earth".

But nobody in Wyandotte, Michigan, thinks it's funny that a teenage girl pretended for months that she was pregnant with triplets, using Fake a Baby products, station WJBK reported.

The Fake a Baby.com website. Photo: Fake a Baby.com

As word of her impending good fortune spread on Facebook - through a group she joined called "Moms of Triplets" - gifts started pouring in, the station said.

A church got involved, a nonprofit group in Dearborn chipped in and relatives threw her a baby shower.

"She got tonnes of help," Jessica Adams, an aunt, told the station. "The gifts, they couldn't even open at the shower there was so much."

The Fake a Baby.com website. Photo: Fake a Baby.com

She looked pregnant, too. Her abdomen expanded appropriately. She had ultrasound pictures confirming the triplets. And her 16-year-old boyfriend, when told that he was about to become a father of three, said he was excited, but also a little scared.

"I started looking for jobs the best I could," he told the station.

However, his mother started to get suspicious when she could not locate the doctor who was supposedly tending to her son's girlfriend.

And things got really strange when, even after 10 months, not a single baby - let alone three of them - arrived.

"Ten months?" the station's reporter asked the young man. "I mean, she would have had the baby by then."

"That's what I thought too," he replied.

Asked why he hadn't grown suspicious at that point, the young man said "she gave me the story of micro preemies and how her doctor thought time would be better in there than time in the incubator".

It happened that the young woman had posted pictures of her ultrasound on the "Moms of Triplets" Facebook page, where someone discovered the photos were identical to ultrasound images of triplets sold on Fake a Baby.com and got in touch with the family.

The story quickly unravelled.

Now, the station said, the police are involved.

Meanwhile, attention has focused on Fake a Baby.com.

Its wares include the "Silicon [sic] Fake Pregnancy Belly-Twins", reduced in price from $299.95 to $149.99; the "Silicon Fake Pregnancy Belly" for the "20 to 25 week stage to the 38 weeks stage" and "Silicone Breast Pushups" in a variety of colours.

And, of course, "Fake Ultrasound Sonograms, Personalized" and "personalized fake prescription" bottles.

Fake a Baby.com, has been in the news at least once before - in a felony spousal abuse case reported by The Bakersfield Californian in 2013.

A local correctional officer was charged with abuse after he discovered his girlfriend lied about being pregnant using an ultrasound from Fake a Baby.com.

The judge dismissed the case, noting that the woman "wasn't the most credible of witnesses".

The company was mentioned on NPR's Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me!, in a story about some Chinese women who, in an effort to get seats on crowded Beijing subways, pretended to be pregnant using fake bellies apparently purchased from the company.

The ruse came to an end when one of the fake stomachs "fell to the ground" in front of some subway passengers.

Neither the company nor the Wyandotte police returned calls requesting comment late on Tuesday night.

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