Is a warning about a woman "going around neighborhoods" and "stealing packages" legitimate and does sharing a viral message on Facebook help expose and hold her accountable? No, that's not true: The recent viral warnings use images that appear to be several years old. The posts are part of a common social media scam that tricks people into liking or sharing a Facebook post with an urgent warning that later gets its content replaced with an ad or scam designed to harvest personal and financial information.
A recent example of the warning appeared in a Facebook post (archived here) published on March 13, 2025. It read:
Let's expose this woman and hold her accountable! She's been going around neighborhoods in #vassar stealing packages. We work hard for our belongings, and it's not right for someone to just take them. This needs to stop!
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Thu Mar 13 10:02:25 2025 UTC)
The exact same warning but mentioning different places appeared in several other Facebook posts seen by Lead Stories, for example Vassar, Kokomo, Kamloops, San Benito and Linton:
(Image source: collage of screenshots made by Lead Stories on March 13; 2025 at 10:15:11 UTC)
The posts all contained the same four images:
(Image source: images downloaded by Lead Stories on March 13; 2025 at 10:12:42 UTC)
As can be seen in the lower right corner of at least two of the images, they dated back to November 2022 meaning this definitely isn't a recent event.
An example of a post that "flipped" to a real estate ad can be seen in the edit history of this post (archived here):
(Image source: screenshot of post edit history made by Lead Stories on [DATE] at [TIME] UTC)
Real estate scam posts
Real estate scam posts are a tactic used on Facebook by spammers that employ "bait and switch" content to lure people into a scam. Scammers 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 gathered sufficient attention, the scammer replaces the bait, switching to a deceptive real estate ad to harvest personal information from users interested in the too-good-to-be-true rental. 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 clearly documented by a post's edit history, which also notes additions or deletions of content. To access the edit history of a Facebook post, click the three dots in the top right corner and select "View edit history" from the menu.
Commonly, such posts use links that lead to landing pages with disclaimers or false promises and contact information requests used to gather personal data, including financial information.
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 these links lead to sites that carry 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."
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Other Lead Stories fact checks related to such bait-and-switch scams are found here.
