CLEVELAND — Have you heard of the bait and switch social media scam? It’s when someone creates a post and it gets a lot of engagement, and then they edit the post so it says something different.
It might get changed to say something that could trick people into sending them money, for example, and it looks all the more legitimate because of all the interactions on the post.
THE CLAIM
A post being shared on social media around Ohio has gotten lots of engagement. It’s claiming there’s a serial killer named Robert Thibodeau on the run in the state who attacked a single mom with a knife and stole a vehicle from an 83-year-old grandmother.
SOURCES
To VERIFY whether this is true:
- We reached out to multiple police departments in Northeast Ohio.
- We used Google Lens reverse image search.
- We called the sheriff’s office in Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana.
EXPLANATION
First, we sent the post to the Cleveland and Mentor police departments and asked if their homicide units were on the lookout for a suspect named Robert Thibodeau. Mentor Police Captain Andrew Lehner told me they’re not aware of any serial killer named Robert Thibodeau in Mentor, and they haven’t gotten any reports of what’s described in the post.
“As far as we know there is no serial killer named Robert Thibodeau in Mentor,” Lehner said in a statement. “We have not taken any reports of incidents as described in the attachment.”…