| schema:text
| - Posts in local Facebook groups in the UK, US and Ireland have been sharing an appeal for a missing autistic teenager, claiming “Ivan Moore” has been reported missing by police “about two hours ago”. But there’s no evidence this is true—similar posts have been circulating for months, and they appear to be hoaxes.
The posts use wording that is identical except for the name of the location. For example, a post which appeared back in July in a group for residents of Derbyshire said: “MISSING TEEN It takes two seconds to share! #Derby Ivan Moore was reported missing by the Police Department about 2 hours ago.
“He is diagnosed with autism and needs daily medications. HE is considered to possibly be in EXTREME danger and in need of medical assistance . We are asking for the community’s HELP TO FIND HIM. ONLY TAKES 2 SECONDS to share.”
The posts are accompanied by two pictures of a curly-haired teenager wearing an orange, high-visibility bib which features the words: “Autistic. Be Kind”.
We’ve seen examples of the posts in local Facebook groups in Dorset, Lancashire, Derbyshire and Kent (though some have since been deleted), and police in each of those areas told Full Fact that no one with that name or matching that description was currently being sought in their area.
Similar photographs and wording were also described as “a scam” in a July Facebook announcement published by the Polk County Sheriff’s Office in Texas.
And neither we nor other fact checkers have been able to find any evidence suggesting the posts relate to a genuine missing person as described.
Although some of the posts are months old, other examples have been published in the last few days.
These posts appear to be the latest examples of hoax posts that we’ve seen falsely raising the alarm for missing children, elderly people, abandoned infants and injured dogs in Facebook community groups.
Although we have not been able to trace the original picture used in the ‘Ivan Moore’ posts, the format shares many characteristics with previous hoax posts we have written about, such as having the comments disabled to prevent people warning that the post isn’t genuine.
Our investigation into hoax posts in local Facebook groups last year found that they’re often edited later to promote something completely different, such as a property listing or cashback site. Our work featured in a recent episode of BBC One’s Rip Off Britain.
This behaviour poses a risk to user engagement with local community groups, which can become overwhelmed with false information. This could mean that genuine posts potentially get ignored or—perhaps worse—dismissed as false.
Our guide offers more tips on how to spot if a Facebook post is a hoax.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)