Do posts alerting different communities in the U.S. that "Xavier, Alvaro" is on the run after "stabbing both my neighbors to death" describe a real manhunt and real crimes? No, that's not true: The posts mislead, using a mugshot of a man with a different name who had already been jailed on another continent two months before the "alert" started circulating on Facebook. It's an example of a bait-and-switch scam aimed at luring Facebook users into sharing their personal information when the contents of the posts are changed, as the posts gain traction on social media.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) published on Facebook on March 16, 2025. It opened:
Warning‼️ Everyone We're being warned to stay alert, vigilant and to properly lock your doors. A Dangerous youngman is on the run after stabbing both my neighbors to death on Friday here in #suffolkcounty Known as XAVIER, ALVARO (26), he is going around knocking on peoples' doors pretending to be homeless ,seeking for help but then he attacks you after gaining your trust 😭, he has robbed 10 homes in the last 2 days💔 He hasn't gotten far, the police need your help finding him. If you see him do not approach please call the police. SHARE POST HELP WARN OTHERS🙏
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Tue Mar 18 13:39:17 2025 UTC)
The list of locations mentioned in identically worded posts simultaneously distributed across local groups on Facebook included New York (archived here), Jefferson County in Georgia (archived here) and Kansas City in Missouri (archived here).
The man in the image was not "Xavier, Alvaro". The man in the mugshot is Ryan Sutton, sentenced to six years in jail in the U.K. for a different crime, according to a police press release published on January 8, 2025.
Sutton, being jailed at the time, could not have been "going around knocking on peoples' doors" in the United States in March 2025.
In some instances, the posts about "Xavier, Alvaro" included an image of a different person:
(Source: Facebook screenshots taken on Tue Mar 18 between 14:23:10 and 14:28:14 2025 UTC)
Using image search tools, Lead Stories found the image of the man in the blue t-shirt was previously uploaded to Mugshots Lake County, a website that sells ads around Lake County, Florida booking photos released to the public by police agencies (archived here). That man's photo was published under a caption describing him as "Monico Orona", booked March 11, 2025 for battery (domestic).
Alert posts such as the Facebook item warning about a killer on the loose are part of a common scam that tricks Facebook users into liking or sharing a Facebook post with an urgent warning. Once it starts to spread, the fake urgent warning is replaced with an ad designed to harvest personal and financial information.
Previously, posts about "Monico Orona" with a picture displaying an unrelated person were used in another series of scam posts, as reported by Lead Stories.
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Other Lead Stories fact checks related to such bait-and-switch scams are found here.
