Fall River Police Warn of Abused Child Social Media Hoax

FALL RIVER (WBSM) — Fall River Police are warning the public that a post circulating on Facebook about an abused child is actually a hoax.

“It has come to our attention that a post has been circulating via Facebook groups. This post alleges that (a) two-year-old child was brought to our police station with significant physical injuries and his identity was unknown to police,” police wrote on the department's official Facebook page.

“This is a spam or clickbait post. No such incident occurred,” the post concluded.

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The post reads “This little boy, approximately 2 years old, was found in #Fall River 1 hour ago. Officers have the child safe at the Police Station but we have no idea where he lives. No one has called looking for him. Please Bump this post.”

While it looks like a typical Facebook post, it is cropped so as not to show the account it would have been posted from, so a person seeing it would make the assumption based on the text that it was from the Fall River Police – or whatever department the scammers decided to paste into the image.

Indeed, this has been a post that has been circulating around other areas of New England as well mentioning local police departments to those areas.

The scam is reminiscent of an incident in March 2022 in which Wareham Police had to write a Facebook post dispelling a rumor circulating on social media that children were being kidnapped from the Target store in town and that “it happens all the time.”

READ MORE: Wareham Police: No Truth to Attempted Kidnapping Post

It also brings to mind a scam that circulated on social media in August 2022 which claimed horrible acts of violence were being committed in Fall River, Plymouth, Mattapoisett and other Massachusetts communities.

That too turned out to be a hoax designed to go viral, in order to then have the post edited once it’s been shared to push a scam.