Facebook posts about lost man showing up on doorsteps are a hoax

Multiple Facebook posts are sharing a photo of an elderly man with claims he’s shown up lost on doorsteps in different parts of the UK.

But this is a hoax. 

Almost identical posts were shared in local community groups within days of each other, all claiming the man had appeared in their area. These posts shared the same photo of an elderly man in a grey T-shirt that comes from a genuine missing person appeal issued by a police force in the US in December 2024. Some of these posts have since been edited to property listings.

One post, which was shared on 12 January 2025, says: “URGENT EVERYONE: Does anyone recognize this man? He is about 75 years old. He showed up at our door step about an hour ago here in #derby I tried talking to him he doesn't know where he is going he keeps aking [sic] for someone named Stella, I think he has got dementia. Let's flood our feeds to help reunite him with Stella and his family.” 

But we could not see any reports in local media, or by Derbyshire Constabulary, about this. 

The photo actually shows a man who went missing in Washington state in the US in December 2024. A "silver alert”—a way of alerting the public about missing vulnerable people that operates in the US—was issued by Wahkiakum County Sheriff's Office on 14 December, but was later cancelled after he was found safe. 

Almost identical hoax posts were shared in community groups for Bristol and Brighton, as well as places in the US, including Franklin in Vermont, Pueblo in New Mexico and Paris, Illinois. Moreover, some of these posts have their comments section disabled, which Derbyshire Police Online Safety team has previously said is a sign it’s a hoax. 

We also found examples of these posts shared on 10 January to community groups in Preston and Taunton that have since been edited to advertise rental houses in the US. This is typical of these types of hoaxes—a Full Fact investigation found that they’re often edited later to promote something completely different, such as a property listing or cashback site. 

We’ve written before about posts that falsely raise the alarm for missing children, elderly people, abandoned infants and injured dogs in Facebook community groups. Our guide offers some tips on how to identify such hoaxes, and you can find out more by watching an episode of BBC’s Rip Off Britain in which our investigation is featured. 

This behaviour poses a risk to user engagement with local community groups, which can become overwhelmed with false information. We’ve written to Facebook’s parent company Meta expressing concerns about how these hoax posts can flood community groups, and asking the company to take stronger action in response to this problem.