When a 23-year-old Virginia woman's family couldn't get in touch with her after she packed up her car to move to Maine, they recruited a volunteer search team and took to social media to try to locate her. But their Facebook posts were soon inundated with comments insisting that their calls for help were a scam.

Their pleas were shared in various Maine community Facebook groups, and then taken down by moderators. It's a common social media scam for fraudulent "missing person" posts to later be altered after hundreds of people have shared it to lead users back to a malicious link, law enforcement officials say. Those who run these groups keep a keen eye out for warning signs.

But the posts about Autumn Cleveland were legitimate, and her body was later found in her parked car in Dayton. The Maine State Police continue to investigate her death.

One of the moderators of a Biddeford and Saco community group, Randy Seaver, said he took down some posts about Cleveland because he couldn't verify that they were legitimate. He said he called several law enforcement agencies and "found nothing."

The group has about 16,000 members and is "ripe territory" for scam posts, which Seaver said he removes multiple times a day. He and a group of three other volunteer moderators only allow posts like these if they are verified by police or a mainstream media source, he said.

"If I made a mistake (by removing the post), I made a mistake on the side of caution," Seaver said.

Social media accounts for Cleveland's family are mostly locked down, which some commenters pointed to as evidence of fraud. But Cleveland's mother and sister said they're just private people.

Maj. Matthew Gagné of the Sanford police said the department's Facebook page often receives messages asking whether posts about missing people and pets are accurate, or just scams.

He said the department feels responsible for disputing misinformation, like in the summer of 2022 when social media users were regularly sharing accurate information about a highly publicised missing person case.

"They would comment even on our own Facebook page," Gagné said. "That's just kind of part of the game."

Although distrust of social media may affect whether the public believes missing person cases, Gagné said it doesn't impact how police conduct their investigations. He said people should be cautious of what they see online because "people get victimised" on a daily basis. And for those who may not believe a missing person poster, he suggests they contact a local law enforcement agency to verify it.

David Sarni, an adjunct professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a retired New York City detective, said families of missing people should give out the name and contact information for an investigator on the case.

"It's a way of kind of weeding out all of the bad things that come with it," Sarni said.

In some posts about Cleveland, they did just that. One post on Reddit included information about a Biddeford officer who had helped in the search, and the family's initial post noted that the York County Sheriff's Office was involved. When asked about the case last week, Biddeford police and the York County Sheriff declined to answer questions and both said the case is being handled by the Maine State Police.

Sarni said police agencies are more effective in recruiting the public to help in physical, coordinated searches when someone goes missing rather than asking for tips on social media.

Cleveland's family also took that route - recruiting a volunteer search team, Down East Emergency Medicine Institute, to search the last locations Cleveland visited in Dayton. The nonprofit organisation has over 100 volunteers who aid in search-and-rescue operations all over the state.

A 'disservice to the family'

The team's service director, Richard Bowie, said social media is a "useful tool" to alert the public about missing people, and to recruit volunteers. While many team members in southern Maine joined the search for Cleveland, he said one person stayed behind to monitor the group's Facebook page and remove comments that were inaccurate and calling it a scam.

He said those commenters were doing a "disservice to the family" and can interfere in emergency situations.

Brooke McDonald, Cleveland's sister, said she's thankful for those who offered to help search, but the allegations that her posts were a scam were hurtful, and that some sceptics blocked her when she tried to explain it was real.

"I want them to think about how their words online really affect families," she said. "We weren't asking for anything, just for people to keep an eye out. People calling us liars and all of that was, on top of everything, very hard."

 - TNS