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FACEBOOK POSTS FEATURING the photo of an American child have been spread more than 18,000 times since being posted into Irish Buy and Sell groups.
“Please Help!! Everyone,” a 14 January post in the group For Sale in Limerick reads.
“I’m a desperate mother asking every member of the community to help me find my daughter Sarah Mayfield (12) who has not returned home for 3 days now. It only takes a few seconds of your time to share!”
The post features a photo of a smiling blonde girl that it says went missing in Limerick.
“Age:13. Height: 5’1. Weight: 105. Brown Hair & Hazel Eyes,” the post, which was shared more than 17,000 times, reads.
“Last seen wearing that grey Minnie Mouse sweater, black trousers, grey sneakers.
Please bump this post and help bring my Sarah home.”
However, the description of the girl’s weight as 105 is about the same as a stocky adult man if it is in kilogrammes — which may have been an indication that the post originated from somewhere that does not use the metric system.
An almost identical post was also made on the same date in the Facebook group Roscommon County Garage Sale; that post was shared more than a thousand times.
The only difference between the posts was that the girl was said to have gone missing in “Roscommon County”.
However, reverse image search platforms, which look for similar pictures on other websites, show that the photo in the posts is not of an Irish girl.
Rather, the photos were published by American media and police after a girl went missing on 7 January.
“The Pulaski County Sheriff’s Office is asking for the public’s assistance in locating a missing teen,” reads a Facebook post featuring the same photo published on the page belonging to a Kentucky police force.
The post goes on to list different details that the Irish posts, including a different name and age (16). An update says that the teenager had since been located and was found to be safe.
The Journal has previously debunked similar scams that used real photos of injured children and people who had been found dead to spread their posts.
The Garda National Cyber Crime Bureau (GNCCB) has described such campaigns as “phishing scams”.
These often work by luring people in with posts that tug at their heartstrings.
After these posts are shared widely, they are edited. The updated posts often include links to sites where users’ information is stolen, such as their passwords or bank details.
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