Local Facebook group inundated with scams and fake posts, spreading fear and giving McHenry police headaches

Part of officer Ashley O’Herron’s job as the McHenry Police Department’s public information officer is posting to the department’s social media accounts while monitoring Facebook group pages related to the city.

“One of the main things I monitor for is scams and whatnot ... to get ahead of things,” O’Herron said.

Recently, the department’s leadership pointed her to a post claiming a serial killer was on the loose in McHenry, that the person “attacked a 37-year-old single mom” and later stole a vehicle from an elderly woman.

That never happened in McHenry or McHenry County.

A similar post has been “shared numerous times throughout the state and country,” O’Herron wrote on the McHenry Police Department’s Facebook page. “We are kindly asking the public to stop & think before sharing information that is false.”

Signs that a post is false include the use of hashtags, like #McHenry or #Illinois, and comments for the post are turned off, O’Herron said. Scams also often are published many times, across many pages, with only a few details changed.

I would rather that they call and ask if it is real, rather than resharing it.”

—  Ashley O'Herron, McHenry Police Department public information officer

An almost identical post with a different man’s name and mug shot was posted to a McHenry group page twice on a recent Monday. At least one account that posted the scam has been a member on the page since April 2023.

The Facebook group that the problem posts came from is titled “McHenry, Illinois: Its not just a place, its a state of mind.” Created in 2008, the page is open to anyone across the platform.

Posts to the page, as well as responses to posts on the personal Facebook page of the person listed as the sole administrator, entreat them to clean up the page’s spam, add additional administrators, or close it down.

According to the page’s “About/Activity” information, there are more than 27,000 members of the group. Of those, 206 members arrived on the Facebook page in the week prior to Dec. 24. There were 73 posts to the page by early afternoon Dec. 24, and more than 3,400 posts for the month of December. O’Herron called the page “the worst of them” for allowing scam posts.

“I report them as I can,” she said of the scams there and elsewhere on social media apps.

Administering a Facebook group can be a job in itself, said Scott Logan of Harvard. He administers five groups on the platform, including one titled “Harvard 411.″ There are several groups with that name with various administrators.

Facebook offers tools to help prevent spam and scams in group pages, Logan said. It is harder to post scams if the group page is set to “private” and users have to ask to join and answer questions to join, Logan said.

He also checks how long those requesting to join have been on the platform.

“One of the big red flags is that they joined Facebook yesterday, an hour ago or last week,” Logan said.

Logan goes through all the pages he administers to search for spam and scams; he removes them and in some cases block the poster from the page. The most common ones he sees are for duct cleaning and car detailing, he said, but noted it takes him maybe an hour here and there to clean up the spam.

Members can report problem posts to Facebook in hopes of getting them removed or can report them to the page administrators, Logan said. But reporting problems to a page administrator is only helpful if the administrator is active.

The McHenry Police Department gets phone calls about scam social media posts, either because residents are concerned their neighbors may be taken in or because – like in the alleged serial killer post – they believe them.

“People will see a post and call dispatch, like, ‘Is there really a missing kid?’” O’Herron said. “I would rather that they call and ask if it is real, rather than resharing it.”

If there was a police incident such as a missing child, murder or carjacking, the first place residents would hear about it is from a department media release and on its Facebook page, not via a Facebook post from an unknown person, O’Herron said.

She reported the McHenry page to Facebook, via the app, twice in the past week. O’Herron has not reached out via Facebook’s law enforcement portal to see if the page can be shut down.

“We don’t have a victim who has fallen for it yet. There is nothing criminal there until someone falls for it” and is scammed to the point of losing property, she said.

O’Herron reminds residents that there are not apartments or rental homes going for as little as the scam posts claim, that they should check with their local food pantry before showing up for a huge giveaway, and that they should look closely at photos to see what department badge is, or isn’t, in the photo.

“Stop falling for these scams,” O’Herron said.