A TikToker was literally beside himself when he was rifling through old paperwork he received from his mom and came across a flier of himself as a kid with giant letters spelling out, "MISSING."
Adrian Peru, who has over 428,000 followers on TikTok, sought advice on what to do after the unsettling discovery.
The clip started with him showing the vintage documents and explaining that he received them after becoming of legal age.
Peru said he was looking for his birth certificate because he wanted to buy a passport.
He then showed viewers the black and white poster of him reported as having gone "missing October 12, 2005, " prompting him to wonder, "When the f**k did I go missing? And why was I never told?"
Here's the clip.
He continued:
"I saw this photo. I need to call my mom right now ’cause why...is there a photo of me with a missing sign?"
The TikToker showed another document, this time in color, of him as a kid. It made him wonder, "How many times did I go missing?" and he pointed to a portion of the SmileSafe card that had been cut out with pertinent details.
Upon closer inspection of the first black and white flier, Peru noticed the name under the photo identified him as "Jorge Gimenez," to which he commented:
“Dawg, that is not my name. I don’t know if they, like, made this as a joke when I was a kid."
"But who the hell is Jorge Gimenez? Nah, bro. I need to call my mom. ‘Cause, why is this in the middle of all my paperwork? I never went missing."
The message at the bottom of the flier which Peru read aloud said:
"Come home soon Jorge. We all love you and want you home safe."
Followers were alarmed and jumped to conclusions before knowing the full story, which would follow.
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In a follow-up clip, Peru revealed he got an explanation from his mom after he reached out to her and spoke to her for "30 minutes."
"She explained everything and it was a huge misunderstanding," he said and confirmed he never went missing.
However, Peru was told by his mom that the child named Jorge Gimenez, as indicated on the flier, did go missing, but authorities accidentally added the wrong photo for the flier.
Because of the identity discrepancy, Peru's mom immediately removed the posters and alerted authorities that the photo was of her son, who was not missing.
“I’ve never been kidnapped. I’ve never gone through that, like. Y’all can chill. Like, I feel bad for the kid, but that’s my photo. My mom said that they posted my photo, and she like took them down,” said Peru.
He also confirmed his full name does contain the “Gimen” part of “Gimenez.”
Peru noted that another reason why his face was on the poster might have been due to a popular child trafficking ruse to round up kids.
The scam would involve a kidnapper placing a random child's photo posters, prompting a good samaritan to recognize the child out in public and deliver them to the scammers under the guise that they were the family with the missing child.
Here is the follow-up video.
People couldn't hold back on their sarcasm and advised him not to breathe a sigh of relief yet.
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The Amber Advocate, a resource for information about the AMBER Alert and missing, endangered, or abducted children, confirmed the tactic as a clickbait scam instead of a child trafficking scam.
On its website, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) warned of the "new clickbait scam" of " bogus missing child posters."
They encouraged people to look for the following red flags:
"The poster doesn’t come from NCMEC, an official law enforcement agency, or credible news source; it may contain misspellings, syntax errors, or improperly used words; and it doesn’t note how you can take appropriate action."
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