Are social media posts about a missing boy named Grayson Costain diagnosed with autism real? No, that's not true: Lead Stories has debunked many similar stories about a missing child in various locations 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. The child in this post was found safely with his mother in September 2024, months before the posts on social media were published in November and December 2024.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on Facebook on November 26, 2024. It said:
MISSING!!!Grayson Costain was reported missing by the Police Department about 2 hours ago here in #pinegrove
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.IT ONLY TAKES 2 SECONDS TO SHARE!
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Wed Dec 4 23:53:28 2024 UTC)
A search of Facebook using keywords from the November 26, 2024, version of the claim ("Grayson Costain was reported missing by the Police Department") yielded multiple posts with the same photos seen above but listing different locations.
The supposed locations of these posts has the same child missing in different states. One post listed Asheville, North Carolina; another in Pine Island, Florida; another in Merced, California; another in Clarksburg, West Virginia.
One match on Facebook was a post by WGME CBS 13 News in Portland, Oregon, with the child's image and an updated news story stating the missing little boy had been found with his mother. The news station published an article on their website (archived here) on September 26, 2024, about the child and his mother being found safe.
Lead Stories discovered a separate post (archived here) on Facebook advertising a rent-to-own house, purportedly located in Asheville, North Carolina. The edit history of this post shows that it first displayed the claim of the missing boy 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, as this screenshot shows:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Wed Dec 4 23:54:11 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.
