Missing child only existed on Facebook

Like Catfish. Weird.

EMaree said:

In France, a search was launched for a child reported missing, possibly kidnapped.

After days passed (where things started looking grim, a police detective discovered the child and his family didn't exist outside of fake accounts on Facebook. The boy's "aunt" who reported him missing has been arrested.



This is such an odd story. It raises a lot of questions--particularly how the search could go so far before they realized something was amiss, and why anyone would launch a police search for a sockpuppet.

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Weirdly this isn't the first time I've seen these sort of stories of fake A while back in the UK there was a woman who had created a whole fake child to get back at an ex partner - she used pictures of a friends child and everything. It went on for something like 2 years before she was found out.

Don't forget "mothers" who fake children with terminal illnesses. Although the cases I'm thinking of, the child actually existed.

Is it about the attention, mayhap?

Yes, it is probably similar to Munchaussen Syndrome By Proxy.

Eminem's mother had that.

I'm not super surprised that the police didn't catch on immediately. Who's going to be likely to suspect that a missing child doesn't actually exist? And since the fictional boy was only 2, it wouldn't be unusual that he didn't have friends or teachers the police could talk to. I am a little surprised that they didn't figure out that the parents didn't exist sooner, but there likely are existing people with the names given to the fake parents, so it would take a little bit of time to look into all those people and try to connect them to child and "great-aunt."

You know what else it reminds me of?


(semi-spoiler)

The Wicker Man