“This information is false and is a scam," the police department said. “Fake Facebook profiles will post information like this in an attempt to gain presence and followers on social media. The accounts will be then used to push out other scams and links involved in fraudulent activity.”
The scam posts typically involve reports of missing children, suspects taking catalytic converters and other topics or items people will share on social media.
People who see similar posts can run the image through Google Lens or Google Image to do a reverse image search, which can help confirm the validity of the post.
“If VPD was aware of any high profile incident such as a missing person, we would make an official post on our page,” Vandalia police said.
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