Posting About Missing Kids On Facebook can Provoke Scams, Deputies Warn

After her teenage daughter Jasmine went missing last month, Christina Potwin posted a message on Facebook to try and get help finding her.

One of the responses was a user asking for money to be wired to Nigeria in return for information about Jasmine.

The message was a scam, deputies say, and it was so troubling that the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office wanted to highlight it as a cautionary tale about the dangers of posting information on missing children publically on social media sites.

Potwin, who lives in Zephyrhills, reported Jasmine missing to the sheriff’s office on Aug. 11. The next day, she made public a Facebook post saying her daughter was missing and had left a note saying she was leaving for Bradenton.

A user going by the name “Christian Mills” sent her a Facebook message Aug. 13 asking if Jasmine had been found. The user then asked Pot win to send her cell phone number and the user would give her information that would help her find her daughter.

“When he contacted me, I was just distraught,” she said.

Pot win gave “Christian Mills” her number, but rather than call Pot win the user just teased her with promises of information. He said he did not have Jasmine but that she was in “bad health.”

At one point, the man said “Do not worry because she is still in FLORIDA but before you will get the rest of the information” she would have to send “some cash to my agent right now through Western Union. Are you willing? "Trust me.”

He asked her for $300 and told her to send it to Nigeria.

Pot win didn’t send the money. She said she was prepared to though. However, her daughter was found safe that day, hanging around somewhere in Zephyrhills.

“I hate him,” she said of Mills in a press conference Sept. 5. “He made it horrible for me. …I hope he never does this to another parent.”  

Pot win said she doesn’t regret putting the post on Facebook, but she would advise parents trying to find missing kids not to make their postings about the situation public or include their personal phone number.

Pasco Sheriff’s Det. David Boyer, the lead investigator on the case, said he’s never seen a case like this happen before. He said that what Pot win did was “innovative,” but that there was “somebody out there in the shadows waiting to exploit her.” He said Facebook and other social media sites were useful tools for police, but that criminals use them, too.    

“It can be a big benefit, but it can also be your worst nightmare,” he said.

Sheriff Chris Nocco said that his agency always has to weigh the benefits and costs of posting about a missing child on Facebook, despite often getting requests to do so.

“We’re very cynical as to what criminals will use that info for, and we just say ‘be extremely careful.'”