Are social media posts asking for help identifying a disoriented, lost "old lady" who may have dementia real? No, that's not true: This post is part of an online bait-and-switch scam that deceives social media users into viewing posts that are later edited to show fake advertisements. Lead Stories previously debunked similar scam posts about a lost "old lady" with dementia that needed to be identified.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on Facebook on November 6, 2024. Above side-by-side images of an elderly woman wearing a blue shirt, the caption read:
URGENT : DOES ANYONE RECOGNIZE THIS OLD LADY?
She showed up 2 hours ago here in #PhenixCity
I tried talking to her she doesn't know where she is going, I think she has got dementia. I'm trying to find her family but it seems she is disoriented and lost!!!
Let's flood our feeds so that this post reaches her family
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Fri Nov. 8 15:53:29 2024 UTC)
However, a search on Facebook using the keywords from this post, "DOES ANYONE RECOGNIZE THIS OLD LADY?" yielded multiple posts listing different locations using the same photos of the elderly woman.
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Fri Nov. 8 16:05:29 2024 UTC)
Below is an example of how some of those posts appeared at the time of this publication:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken Sat Nov 9 01:21:21 2024 UTC)
While the location in the post stated that the woman appeared in "Phenix City," other similar posts listed in at least two different cities.
For example, one post includes a "Warrensville" location, while another listed the city as "Saskatoon," presumably a city in Saskatchewan, Canada, on November 7, 2024.
Another post (archived here) of the women described on Facebook had been flipped to an advertisement for what was said to be free dental care under a buy-and-sell column on a Facebook public group page titled "Statesboro's It's brand new to YOU! Buy/Sell/Trade Deals & Advertisements."
The edit history of this post shows that it first displayed the claim of the elderly woman before flipping to a dental care advertisement. When a social media user clicks on the three dots in the upper right corner of a Facebook post, a menu opens for the user to view its "edit history."
Although the original photos of the elderly woman are not visible, the edit history shows that a day after the post was made, two attachments were removed, and two were added.
The image below displays the edit history of the dental care advertisement, showing that it was edited on November 7, 2024:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Fri Nov. 8 16:05:29 2024 UTC)
Bait-and-switch scheme
In a bait-and-switch scheme, social media users post eye-grabbing content to get other users to share a post with their followers. After the post is shared, the scammer changes the original post to a deceptive ad, often for home rentals, the Better Business Bureau (BBB) (archived here), a nonprofit business watchdog, warns. The BBB adds:
This scheme has many variations, but the commonality is the emotionality or urgency of the message that encourages concerned people to share the news with their friends ...
These posts are shared in local buy-and-sell groups because there is already a sense of community and trust within these crowds, and people may not realize that scammers are targeting members. Scammers sometimes also turn comments off on the posts so other group members can't oust them.
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. Hence, the name "bait and switch."
Many of these scam posts will have the comments turned off and will hashtag various cities or locations. The post about the "missing" dad does not contain a call to action, contact information for area law enforcement or the family of the missing, or any other information that tells users what to do next if that person is found.
As Lead Stories previously reported, bait-and-switch posts commonly use links that lead to landing pages with disclaimers or false promises and request contact information that can be used to gather personal data, including financial information.
At the time of this writing, Full Fact had also debunked this claim.
Additional Lead Stories fact checks about bait-and-switch scams can be read here.
