Hoax posts about missing grandfather circulating on local Facebook groups

A series of copycat Facebook posts claiming to be from someone searching for their missing grandfather are hoaxes.

The posts, which are being shared to local Facebook buy and sell groups, claim to be searching for a man named “Christopher M. Adair”.

One post reads: “FLOOD YOUR FEEDS! SILVER ALERT Has been issued for Christopher M. Adair. This is the most recent picture of my grandfather who went missing from Winsford [in Cheshire]. He left yesterday morning for walk and he never came back. He has dementia [sic]”.

Other versions of the posts share the same image of a man in a car with a black dog, with only the location mentioned in the text changed. Other examples of the same post claimed the man had gone missing in Chichester (West Sussex), Ditchingham (Norfolk) and Effingham (Surrey), as well as in Alabama in the US.

We’ve previously written about a similar hoax which used the same picture and claimed the man was the poster’s uncle who had gone missing along with his dog.

Full Fact used a reverse image search to identify the man as Vern English, who lived in Sonoma, California and sadly appears to have passed away earlier this year. The image appears on a fundraising page created in January 2021. 

We’ve written about a number of fake posts circulating on Facebook claiming to search for missing relatives or injured individuals, as part of our work fact checking online misinformation.

Image courtesy of Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona