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Over the last few days a text message has been spreading around the Jewish communities in Crown Heights, Boro Park, and Flatbush about “a 3-year-old boy being abducted by a man driving a Mitsubishi Eclipse”, is confirmed to be a hoax and has appeared via text messages along with Twitter and other social networking sites as much as 4 months ago.

Fake ‘Child Abduction’ Text Message Circulating

Over the last few days a text message has been spreading around the Jewish communities in Crown Heights, Boro Park, and Flatbush about “a 3-year-old boy being abducted by a man driving a Mitsubishi Eclipse”, is confirmed to be a hoax and has appeared via text messages along with Twitter and other social networking sites as much as 4 months ago.

This message has appeared across the country.

According to IT Security Company Sophos, the message is nothing more than a hoax, but the said license plate number is already ranking high among the most commonly searched terms on the internet, which means the hoax is working.

A quick search reveals there are currently no active AMBER Alerts. Interestingly, this hoax has been making the rounds for several weeks, but – as hoaxes often do – it seems to now be resurfacing stronger than ever. Another fact to note is that lack of information, such as the plate number with the absence of any issuing state.

An AMBER Alert is a child abduction alert issued upon the suspected abduction of a child; the best way to check if it’s real is to go straight to National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s website.

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13 Comments

  • wow.

    thats sick. i got out of bed at 2am to say Tehillim when i got the text..whoever made this up should be ashamed of themself.

  • hoax.

    first thing I did when I got this text was to google it, and yes, it said it was a hoax. Most of these emails unfortunately are.

  • Birds of a feather

    Probably done by the same type of person that writes grafiti on public toilet walls.

  • annoyed cher

    not cool at all…
    ppl were sending it to me all night…. even as late as 1:40 am.

    Some of us actually sleep at that time!

  • BoyWhoCryedWolf

    So now, next time we all CVS receive this type of message, it’ll go to the trash, true or not… you can’t take advantage of the sytem

  • y wud s1 do tht

    wow that is so inconsiderate…i got that txt like a mill times. AND actually said tehillim! “boy-who-cried-wolf” you’re right; whoever started this also started a doubt that tehillim forwards shouldn’t be taken so seriously!

  • crazy!!

    omg i cant believe it! I was feeling so bad for the family and all,,
    omg is all i have to say

  • OY!

    If im hearing correctly, it seems you are all complaining that you said tehillim when there was really no kidnapping at all. yes i do agree that whoever started this fake txt/email was very inconsiderate and “sick” as you call it. im not denying the fact that it was wrong to do. what im saying is that even though B“H there was no kidnapping, that doesnt mean you shouldnt have said tehilim. is that the only reason you ever say tehillim? cuz u get a txt telling u that so and so needs your help? well thats just sad. you should say tehilim regardless of whether someone specifically needs it or not. also, instead of focusing on the bad, lets focus on the good. there WAS NO kidnapping! it seems as if everyone is saying ”after all that nothing even happened.” well we should be glad nothing happened! our tehillim was used where it was needed and now weve all learned to be more cautious over things like this. and if u get a tehillim txt, even if you dont believe its true. theres nothing wrong with taking a minute of your day and saying a kapital tehillim. and look what this has taught us. look how caring we all are. we all said tehillim. we all forwarded the txt. and yea maybe you got the txt a million times. that just shows how much people actually care. all those forwards were sent by concerned people who too said tehillim. this just shows the love and care we have for one another. so stop looking at the bad and focus on the good

  • so??

    Either way say tehillim good u never know what u accomplished on high…if we know what tehillim accomplishes wed be saying it all day”. !esides close your phones at night..