We recently posted an ad from a person looking for a caregiver for his “mother in law suffering dementia.”
It seemed legitimate, like ads we’ve posted before.
A day later we realized something was ‘off’ about the ad, once we saw it receive an unlikely number of Facebook ‘likes’. We deleted the ad then.
We’ve since heard from a reader who replied to the ad and learned that it was an attempt to solicit personal data to qualify for a fake job, supposedly from a family moving to this area soon.
This personal data, had it been provided, could have led to financial loss.
We’re sorry this slipped through the cracks. We’ll be extra-vigilant in future.
UPDATE: We’ve since heard from the editors of two other Ontario community newspapers who received essentially the same ad. One has notified the police.