Facebook Missing Persons in Australia page exposed as scam

WANT to help find missing people and earn cash or footy memorabilia in the process? This Facebook page can help ... or can it?

A SCAM missing persons Facebook page has roped in 9000 people with the promise of cash rewards to those who share their appeals.

But the people featured aren't missing, and the phone number belongs to a NSW family who have been inundated with calls.

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The Missing Persons in Australia page (not to be confused with a Facebook "group" of the same name) uses American spelling and terminology and offers a lottery-style prize of $500 for people who share missing person information or "like" the page.

They also offer a $1000 reward for information leading to the location of the missing person. The page is also linked to fake pages purporting to belong to sporting stars such as Sonny Bill Williams and Daniel Geale, and the Sydney Roosters - which are then used to endorse Missing Persons in Australia.

The fake athletes write comments like "great work guys" and post links on their own fraudulent profiles.

The Official Sydney Roosters Page has warned fans not to fall for the fake page, which offers free merchandise to people sharing information.

One missing person is claimed to be Cronulla woman Alisha Hope, 26, apparently missing for nine days. The Courier-Mail identified the woman in the picture as a freelance journalist in West Africa.

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Another claims to be of a Wetherill Park man named Damien Haye, 20. The photograph actually belongs to a graduate student in California.

The posters ask anyone with information to call the National Center (sic) for Missing Persons in Australia - an organisation that does not exist .

Australian Missing Persons Register founder and Queensland woman Nicole Morris, who won a Pride of Australia award for her work, warned her tens of thousands of followers that the page was a fake.

"I have just looked at this bizarre page which is claiming to be listing missing persons … NONE OF THEM ARE REAL," she wrote.

Facebook users have reported the page as a scam.

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