What was claimed
A 74-year-old father with dementia has gone missing after driving off with a dog called Sammie.
Our verdict
This is false. The man in the picture has a different name and died shortly before the post appeared.
Post about missing Prescot man is a hoax
22 December 2023
An appeal on Facebook for help finding a man who has gone missing with his dog is a hoax.
The post, which appears on a community group for the Prescot and Whiston areas of Merseyside, says: “PLEASE HELP!!! FLOOD YOUR FEEDS ~ Our Dad, Donald S Million is Missing in Prescot. He's aged 74 drove & out [sic] last night with his dog Sammie and he still hasn't returned. He doesn't know where he's going he has dementia.There is a silver alert activated on him. Please bump this post so we can get him home safely”.
An image attached to the post shows a smiling elderly man in a pale shirt. However, a reverse image search shows the photograph is actually of a man with a different name from a different part of the country who was sadly found dead before the post appeared on Facebook.
Full Fact has previously written about many other hoax posts concerning missing elderly people which all follow a similar pattern—they claim the person has dementia or other conditions, left their home, often with a dog, and now cannot be found.
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Spotting hoaxes
The people who upload hoax posts very often turn off the comments, as in this case, so that when it appears on someone's newsfeed, they are unable to warn others that it is not genuine. If a missing person appeal were genuine, you might expect comments to be left open so that anyone who has spotted the missing person could easily contact the people looking for them.
Hoax posts of this kind often use similar phrases, including requests to “flood your feeds” or “bump” the post. Many also refer to a “silver alert” being activated. The silver alert system is designed to notify the public about missing vulnerable people, for example those who are elderly, but it only operates in the US. Real appeals for a missing person in the UK are unlikely to use the term.
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.
Image courtesy of Irina
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because the man pictured had a different name and died before the post was uploaded.