Social media post warning about missing child is really a scam, police say

It's a warning that strikes fear into many people: A child with autism is missing in the city.

But, police say, a post circulating on social media right now showing a young boy with curly hair named Brandan Cooper is fake and a scam. CBC has been unable to confirm who the child is in the photos being widely shared and, in order to protect the child's privacy, are not sharing the entire photo.

Police in Guelph shared a screengrab of a Facebook post dated July 15 and warned the public "don't share or interact with any similar posts."

Variations of the post warn the child is missing, in need of daily medications and may be in "extreme danger."

Each post shows the same photo of a young boy with curly, red hair smiling up at the camera. He is wearing an orange vest that says "Autistic, Be Kind."

"We are not aware of any such missing person and this same post has appeared on social media sites across Canada and the U.S.," police said.

It's similar to other posts about missing people or pets that are shared on social media, says Jeff Horncastle, a spokesperson for the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre.

Horncastle explained how a scam like this might work.

"After a certain period of time, the fraudster changes the ad to a fraudulent merchandise or investments/crypto investments advertisement which gives them the ability to target anyone that comes across the ad once it has been altered by the fraudster," Horncastle said in an email statement.

"In most cases, the person sharing the original post does not realize that the post has been altered as it is further down their page."

Scott Tracey, the media relations coordinator with Guelph Police Service, says people think it's a legitimate post about a local child or pet and also see that it's been shared many times.

"I saw one even this morning from someone claiming to be renting an apartment in Guelph for $600 a month, which is ludicrous as anyone in the market knows. And it included a link — click on this link and you can get more information," he said.

Clicking the link, however, takes people to an unrelated website.

Scam duplicated in other Canadian and U.S. cities

Tracey said he searched on Facebook for a missing child named "Brandan Cooper" and he managed to find identical scams in other Canadian and U.S. cities.

"The only thing different was the name of the place where this person was supposedly missing from," Tracey said, adding it's one way that they knew it was a scam.

Tracey said the police service does not have any reports of a person with the name Brandan Cooper missing in Guelph.

CBC News found that there are active posts with the same image in cities like Halifax and Windsor, along with other U.S. cities.

CBC News reached out to Meta for comment, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram where the post was shared, but didn't hear back by the time of publication.

Tracey recommends that before engaging with posts like these in the future, the public does some basic research, explaining that if a person goes missing locally, the police will post about it through their social media.

"The key is don't blindly trust something that you see online," he said.