Photo of pensioner used in ‘missing man’ hoax

Hoax posts that claim to be searching for a missing man with dementia are circulating online. 

One post, which has almost 200 shares and appears in a Facebook buy-and-sell group for Bedford, says: “PLEASE HELP!!! FLOOD YOUR FEEDS ~ Our Dad , Donald Williams is Missing in Bedford He's aged 76 he drove out last night with his dog Sammie and he still hasn't returned. He doesn't know where he's going he has dementia and right now we don't even know where he might be. There is a silver alert activated on him. Please help bump this post so we can get him home safely [sic]”.

Almost identical posts have appeared in community Facebook groups across the UK within a week of each other, including Ayrshire in Scotland, Bodmin in Cornwall, and Ormskirk, Chorley and Morecambe in Lancashire. They also appear in groups for communities further afield such as Carlow in Dublin and Orangeville in Canada.  

The posts all share the same photo of a man sitting on a sofa with a dog. A reverse image search shows that the photo actually comes from a Daily Echo article published in February. The article is about a pensioner named Rob Jones, not Donald Williams, whose dog was attacked by another dog in Southampton and required 15 stitches.There’s no mention of dementia in the article. 

Warnings about these hoax posts have been issued on X (formerly Twitter), the Daily Express and Belfast Live. 

Full Fact has written about many other hoax posts concerning missing elderly people before, which all follow the same pattern claiming the person has dementia or other conditions, was walking a dog and now cannot be found. 

Moreover, it’s also common to see posts referring to a “silver alert” being activated. This is a system designed to notify the public about missing vulnerable people, for example those who are elderly, that only operates in the US. So it’s unlikely to be mentioned in a genuine appeal for someone missing in the UK. 

Hoax posts can also come in a variety of other forms including abandoned babies, missing children and injured pets. We often find they use similar phrasing such as “flood your feeds” and “bump this post”. 

You can read more about how to spot Facebook hoax posts using our guide here. We’ve also published an investigation into how and why these posts are shared so widely. 

These types of posts can cause local community groups to become overwhelmed with false information and could potentially mean genuine appeals are ignored or—perhaps worse—dismissed as fake. We’ve written to Meta expressing these concerns and asking the company to take stronger action in response to this problem.