Are homicide detectives searching for Joselyn Valdo Santos for the killing of three-month-old Charlotte Jones on April 1, 2025? No, that's not true: Social media posts making the claim are part of a bait-and-switch scam designed to lure you into sharing personal information that can then be sold or used to scam you further. These posts use unrelated mugshots and names and a made-up killing of an infant to trick you to click.
The Facebook scam includes this post (archived here) shared on a Henderson, Kentucky, group page on April 10, 2025. It opened:
🚨HOMICIDE SUSPECT ON THE RUN in henderson📍
A 38-year-old Hispanic maid, JOSELYN VALDO SANTOS, has been identified by the Homicide Bureau as the main suspect responsible for the death of 7-month-old Charlotte Jones. The baby's death accured on 1 April, 2025, baby Charlotte was a victim of blunt force trauma. Joselyn has been charged with murder and is still at large. Anyone who knows her whereabouts is asked to call the Police.
LETS BUMP THIS POST TO HELP LOCATE HER.
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Fri Apr 11 10:12:55 2025 UTC)
First of all, Lead Stories could find no record that an infant named Charlotte Jones had died a suspicious death in the United States in 2025. This obituary search yielded no evidence. A Google News search (archived here) did reveal that a three-year-old Charlotte Jones suffered a "hot car" death in 2019, but nothing has been reported about a 3-month-old Charlotte Jones in 2025.
We did find many versions of the scam post on Facebook, each listing a different locality and shared on local group sites.
(Image source: collage of screenshots made by Lead Stories on Fri Apr 11 13:44:15 2025 UTC)
Lead Stories was unable to locate the origins of the mugshot in the post, but we did find a mugshot connected to another woman of the same name arrested on a lesser offense in Chicago. The scammers also used a different mugshot some posts.
This post is a variation found on a Tell City, Indiana, group page that uses the name Joselyn Valdo Santos, but with another woman's mugshot and in association with a man:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Fri Apr 11 11:22:23 2025 UTC)
An example of a post that "flipped" to a scam ad can be seen in the edit history of this post:
(Image source: screenshot of post edit history made by Lead Stories on Fri Apr 11 11:13:35 2025 UTC)
Bait & Switch scam posts
Bait and switch 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.
