Are social media posts about a 3-year-old girl named Alliyah Evans who supposedly was kidnapped from a Target store in various locations real? No, that's not true: The posts that say that she is missing in several different places -- like Greenville, North Carolina; Georgetown, Kentucky; and Stuttgart, Arkansas -- are part of a bait-and-switch scheme. Typically, users post emotional messages and encourage sharing, then "flip" the post to an advertising pitch that seeks personal information. The image of a person carrying a little girl in a Target store and the little girl's name are real details from a child abduction in Minneapolis in September 2024, however.
At the time of writing on September 25, 2024, the post (archived here) from the Facebook group "Eastern Carolina furniture and yard sale," supposedly based in Greenville, North Carolina, had already "flipped" from the original version to a real estate ad:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Wed Sep 25 19:25:35 2024 UTC)
But the post's edit history (found by clicking on the three dots at the top right of the post) shows the creator changed the text on September 24, 2024. It initially was about Alliyah Evans, who was allegedly kidnapped from a Target store in "Greenville," as this screenshot shows:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Wed Sep 25 19:27:16 2024 UTC)
A keyword search by Lead Stories on Facebook on September 25, 2024, turned up duplicates of the scam post. One supposedly was in "Tunica County," which is in Mississippi (archived here). The wording of these posts was practically identical.
This is an example of a post (archived here) about Alliyah Evans in a group supposedly based in Georgetown, Kentucky. It looked like this at the time of the writing of this fact check:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Wed Sep 25 19:40:33 2024 UTC)
And this is another post (archived here) that had already "flipped," but its edit history showed it was first about Alliyah Evans in Stuttgart, a city in Arkansas. Here is a screenshot with the edit history:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Wed Sep 25 20:49:312 2024 UTC)
The link that appeared at the bottom of the "flipped" post led to a website (archived here) "hudforeclosures6.godaddysites.com" that claimed to offer housing opportunities -- even for people with bad credit -- and bore the logo of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The official HUD website is www.hud.gov (archived here).
This is a screenshot of the website to which users were directed:
(Source: Hudforeclosures6.godaddysites website screenshot taken on Wed Sep 25 20:05:33 2024 UTC)
Lead Stories asked HUD's public affairs department for comment and will update this fact check if they reply. Scammers have put out similar ads for HUD housing assistance and used them to harvest personal data, according to a warning from the Village of Canastota, New York, on July 15, 2024 (archived here).
Most of the details in the posts about Alliyah Evans are true. The 3-year-old was kidnapped (archived here) from a Target store in Minneapolis on September 22, 2024, but was found safe. The image in the linked September 23, 2024, article by KNSI Radio, a radio station in St. Cloud, Minnesota, about the kidnapping is the same as used in the post on Facebook:
(Source: KNSI Radio website screenshot taken on Wed Sep 25 19:49:54 2024 UTC)
"Bait and switch" posts on social media typically begin as calls for help -- the kind that well-meaning viewers are likely to share on other feeds or platforms. Once a post has shares and engagement, the scammer will flip the post -- that is, update the post to be about something completely different, usually a house or apartment for rent.
Many of these scam posts will have the comments turned off and will hashtag various cities or locations. For example, the post about Alliyah Evans in the "Georgetown/Scott County KY Baby & Kids ONLY Yardsale site" group on Facebook did not contain a call to action, contact information for area law enforcement or the family of the missing person or any other information that told users what to do next if that person is found.
Other Lead Stories fact checks about bait-and-switch scams can be found here.
