Are social media posts posting authentic information that police officers in various states have "no idea" where an "approximately 2 years old" boy who was found and taken to a police station lives? No, that's not true: Lead Stories has debunked a variation of this particular story about an "approximately two years old" boy before. These bait-and-switch posts use an emotional tale about a child supposedly lost in various locations across the U.S. to draw an audience, then flip to display sham real estate ads.
This version of the claim appeared in a post (archived here) on Facebook on October 10, 2024. The post had side-by-side images of a white-complexioned person carrying a brown-complexioned male toddler with a loss of pigment on one side of his face. The caption said:
This little boy, approximately 2 years old, was found 1 hour ago here in #Newark
Officers have the child safe at the Police Station but we have no idea where he lives. No one has called looking for him. Please Bump this post.
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing. Lead Stories has edited the screenshot to conceal the child's face:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Fri Oct. 11 15:10:29 2024 UTC)
On October 8, 2024, Lead Stories debunked a claim on Facebook that used the same wording, apart from the geographical location, but displayed an image of a different little boy.
A search of Facebook using keywords from the October 10, 2024, version of the claim ("This little boy, approximately 2 years old") yielded multiple posts with the same photos seen above but listing different locations. Lead Stories has concealed the boy's face in the screenshots below:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Fri Oct. 11 15:13:29 2024 UTC)
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Fri Oct. 11 15:16:29 2024 UTC)
The supposed locations of these posts indicate that the child was found in at several different states. One post listed the area as Newark, New Jersey; another in Zephyrhills, Florida; another in Carlsbad, New Mexico.
In a separate search for "This little boy, approximately 2 years old" posts on Facebook, Lead Stories discovered a post (since removed) advertising a rent-to-own house, purportedly located in Pennsylvania. The edit history of this post shows that it first displayed the claim of the missing toddler before flipping to a real estate advertisement.
The three dots in the upper right corner of a post on Facebook open a menu that lets a social media user view the post's edit history. The edit history, which opens as a pop-up window, shows if the post has changed and when.
Although the original photos of the child are not visible in the edit history for this rent-to-own post, the edit history does show that the same copy-paste claim did appear here earlier. A day after the post about a "little boy" was made, two attachments were removed, and four were added.
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Fri Oct. 11 16:40:29 2024 UTC)
Real estate scam postings
In a previously published August 14, 2024, fact check, which debunked a similar bait-and-switch claim, Lead Stories defined what real-estate scam posts are:
Real estate scam posts are a tactic used on Facebook by spammers that employ 'bait-and-switch' content to lure people into a scam. A post's creator will pair an alarming or heart-wrenching claim with a compelling image to catch people's attention -- missing children or aging adults, injured animals, injured people in hospital beds, and sex trafficking tactics -- and drive engagement.
Once a post has garnered sufficient attention, the content switches to push a deceptive real estate advertisement. The wording and images of these eye-catching posts, typically seen on local Facebook 'yard sale' pages," are frequently identical, even when the offered property is located in different cities, regions of the U.S., or countries.
The content switch is documented by a post's edit history, which also notes additions or deletions of content. Sometimes, time stamps on the posts indicate when the switches were made, but timestamps don't change on some posts even though the content does.
Commonly, such posts use links that lead to landing pages with disclaimers or false promises and contact information requests that can be used to gather personal data, including financial information, from people who follow the trails.
Some links purport to connect people to a U.S. Housing and Urban Development site to help them search for deals on foreclosed homes. Lead Stories found that the links lead to new sites with disclosures at the bottom of the page that note they are 'not affiliated with, endorsed, authorized, or approved by the Federal Government or the US Department of Housing and Urban Development.'
Additional Lead Stories fact checks about bait-and-switch scams can be read here.
