The abduction and discovery of 9-year-old Charlotte Sena made national news last October. Now, Sena’s photo is being used in Facebook posts popping up in groups from Northampton to Melbourne, Australia, all using the same text describing a fictional missing person.
A post in the group Northampton sale created on July 4 garnered 28,000 shares. Another was posted in the group Accommodation in Melbourne on Monday. Yet another, in the group Van Buren County, MI Buy Sell and Trade, has been shared 13,000 times since it was posted on July 3.
Each of the posts uses the same language — “13-year-old Charlotte Sena has been missing for 48 hours after she left her friend’s home. Unfortunately, there is still no sign of her. We are asking for the community’s help.
Please, if you can spare some time & join us to help organise [sic] a community-wide search for Charlotte.
Additionally, we kindly ask everyone to check their sheds, garages, and any other outer buildings or share this post on any sites that helps also. Police have been notified!”
The post provides an accurate description of Sena — 4 feet 6 inches tall, roughly 90 pounds and wearing an orange tie-dye Pokemon shirt, dark blue pants, black Crocs and gray bike helmet. But the girl is not missing and was found last October after an intense search in Gansevoort, New York.
In a similar case, photos of a 2-year-old boy with cuts all over his face were used in what the Better Business Bureau called a “bait and switch” scam. In those scams, the “scammer changes the original post to a deceptive rental ad or sometimes to a link pointing to a survey that “guarantees” a cash prize,” the BBB reported.
