VERA FILES FAACT CHECK: Fraudulent FB pages spread more ‘airline sales’ SCAMS | Rare Techy

Several Facebook (FB) pages are circulating the photos, which are said to have been taken when a crowd was crammed into the mall due to the sale of air conditioners. The pictures came from somewhere else.

These FB posts ran from November 3rd to 11th and will continue this week, with over 500,000 recent views according to FB as of November 15th.

Misleading posts talk about crowd trouble at the “biggest mall in Manila,” with pictures of exhausted women and crowds of people allegedly queuing to buy gas.

One of the notes says: “Even though the incident that happened on Halloween in Korea was a big lesson, the people of the Philippines have NOT learned from that incident. Too many people passed out from the struggle, in the heart of the biggest mall in Manila.

The photos used in the ads were not taken locally, but in neighboring South Asian countries.

The photo of the clothed man holding the exhausted woman was taken from a November 2011 image published by the Indonesian media organization Antara. The incident occurred when a crowd entered a shopping mall during the sale of Blackberry phones in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Meanwhile, a reverse photo search revealed a second photo of another fainting woman taken in Hanoi, Vietnam. In 2015, local media reported that carbon dioxide seeped into the supermarket’s basement parking lot, causing people to faint and be taken to hospitals.

The crowd captured on camera outside the stadium was not a sell-out event. A photo search revealed that this is people queuing outside the Bukit Jalil stadium in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to buy tickets for the 2018 soccer cup final.

VERA Files Fact Check has identified other posts that misused the two images in the shared posts. (Read: Advertisement for ‘MoA Aircon Sale’ crowd used a photo of shops in Vietnam, Advertisements claiming ‘Itaewon-like’ drove crowd to MOA FAKE)

All posts are links to scam websites that ask for personal information to order the product. Confirming personal details will only lead to a “thank you” page without asking for any kind of payment.

Fake FB pages Marian Rivera (created on September 18), John Dell Saladaga (October 30), David Roel (8 June) and Victoria Reyes (August. 6) published ads and fraudulent links, collected 9,000 reactions, 4,300 comments, and 400 shares.

Have you seen any misleading claims, photos, memes or online posts that you want us to verify? Fill this out reader application form or send it to ‘VERA, the real bot’ on Viber.

(Editor’s Note: VERA Files has partnered with Facebook to fight the spread of misinformation. Find out more about this work together and ours method.)