Bradenton police warn of social media scam involving 'missing' Texas police officer

Bradenton issues new social media scam warnings

Jennifer Kveglis reports.

BRADENTON, Fla. - The Bradenton Police Department is warning about a new social media scam involving a "missing" police officer. The scam uses a picture of a 46-year-old Texas police officer who went missing and took his own life in 2018.

The scam uses a bait-and-switch tactic that encourages people to share a post that usually garners sympathy.

"You start to see a lot of these missing person reports or lost dog, found dog, injured child," said Meredith Censullo, BPD's public information officer. "What's really gross about these posts is often they're using photos of real people who were really missing at some point in time."

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Once the post garners a number of shares, the scammer then turns comments off and changes the photo and language of the post to include a link to a fake donation or rental listing to scam even more people.

Censullo said scams like this take away from legitimate missing person cases.

"When some of these fake missing person posts were going around several months ago, I noticed that, because a lot of people noticed that they were fake, they were hesitant to share our legitimate missing person post," she said, "In sharing fake missing persons posts, it now decreases our ability to actually get out actual missing people out there."

She said social media sites sometimes begin to flag the agency's legitimate posts, but there are many red flags to look out for.

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"A lot of the times, the location will be a hashtag. ‘#Bradenton.’ That same scam post was used the same day in Colorado," she said.

Additional red flags can include no contact information or the post aims to create a sense of urgency through lines like, 'It only takes two seconds to share this post.' If you're ever unsure about the legitimacy of a missing person post, contact the respective law enforcement agency.

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