Is there an active search in July 2024 for a missing teen named Charlotte Sena? No, that's not true: The false social media posts using the girl's name and photos are part of a ruse to entice people to share a post that spreads a scam. Charlotte Sena is the name of a girl abducted from a New York state park on September 30, 2023. She was 9 at the time. She was found after a two-day search and the abductor, Craig N. Ross Jr., was arrested.
The post was published in the Hobbs NM Buy Homes Facebook group by a Facebook page named Jonathan Greens on July 3, 2024. The post was captioned:
MISSING TEEN| It takes two seconds to share!
13-year-old Charlotte Sena has been missing for 48 hours after she left her friend's home. Unfortunately, there is still no sign of her. We are asking for the community's help.CHARLOTTE SENA4'6 around 90 IbsGREEN EYESBROWN HAIR WITH HIGHLIGHTSCharlotte was last seen wearing an orange tie-dye Pokémon shirt, dark blue pants, black Crocs and a grey bike helmet.
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Tue Jul 9 16:08:57 2024 UTC)
People were sharing an Amber Alert and there was an active search for Charlotte in late 2023. But she was found after two days, and the posts circulating currently on social media are part of a scam. An October 2, 2023, apnews.com article titled, "9-year-old who vanished from New York state park found safe and man linked to ransom note arrested" contains details of how she was found. An April 17, 2024, article on nbcnews.com covers the resolution of the crime.
The complicated structure of this type of bait-and-switch scam has been seen circulating on Facebook with a variety of narratives since 2022. The original post will encourage people to share and is eventually edited to feature new text containing a scam. A Facebook user can find a post's edit history by clicking on the three-dot menu in the upper right corner.
Pictured below is a post in a Kearsarge, Sunapee, Newport, Claremont, Lebanon Area Online yard sale group from New Hampshire. It was posted by a page named Olive M. Witt, which, like the page Jonathan Greens, is designed to look like a personal Facebook profile. The caption on the post reads:
Rent to Own Home
$650/Month
3-bedrooms, 2-Bath rooms, Recently painted house with new appliances and upgrades! ready for a new owner.
-Located near shopping center
-Parking Space Available!
- All Pets allowed
For more information kindly visit >>> https://cutt.ly/fefWL8Jz
and fill in the application to set an appointment's
Viewing the edit history (pictured below) it's possible to see that the July 4, 2024, post originally had a different caption before it was edited on July 5, 2024. The original caption is the false Charlotte Sena narrative with a #sunapee New Hampshire hashtag:
MISSING TEEN 🚨 | It takes two seconds to share!
#sunapee
13-year-old Charlotte Sena has been missing for 48 hours after she left her friend's home. Unfortunately, there is still no sign of her. We are asking for the community's help.
CHARLOTTE SENA
4'6 around 90 Ibs
GREEN EYES
BROWN HAIR WITH HIGHLIGHTS
Charlotte was last seen wearing an orange tie-dye Pokémon shirt, dark blue pants, black Crocs and a grey bike helmet.
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Tue Jul 09 17:06:31 2024 UTC)
The Lead Stories composite image below shows examples of other bait-and-switch posts placed in the group Hobbs NM Buy Homes by the page Jonathan Greens. The posts have a variety of themes, but all are false and are part of the same scam. They show a lost dog, a warning about a catalytic converter thief, a missing teen who is the daughter of a police officer, a found woman with dementia and a listing for a rent-to-own home. All these posts have had their commenting turned off by the Jonathan Greens page. When the edit history of the rent-to-own post is checked, it reveals that the post (featured in an AFP fact check) originally had different photos and was captioned:
#NEW: These two young girls are missing in Hobbs NM after their mother was found dead Thursday morning. Please bump this post so we can find these girls safely
(Source: Lead Stories composite image made with Facebook screenshots taken on Tue Jul 09 17:06:31 2024 UTC)
The bait-and-switch ruse can be employed to point to a variety of scams. Frequently it is a real estate ad that shows a house that is not really for sale or not in the town where it is purported to be. The rent-to-own ad may direct to a website that offers to show available listings after the user turns over personal information or subscribes to a club. One realtor in California, Steve Heard, wrote a blog post explaining this type of scam titled, "I Fell For An Online Rent-To-Own Scam (So You Don't Have To)."
Additional Lead Stories fact checks on a variety of false narratives used in this scam can be found here.
