Can someone explain this to me?  How could anyone get their jollies by sending out a hoax “Amber Alert”?

Today, I received an e-mail entitled “Amber Alert”, informing me that a 13-year-old girl named Ashley Flores had been missing for two weeks.  You may have received it, as well.

"Ashley Flores"

The e-mail suggested that if I saw Amber, or had any helpful information, I was to contact:

Staff Sergeant Rick Williams
    Rolla Police Department
    1007 N. Elm St .
    Rolla ,   Mo.  65401
    (573) 364-1213
    Fax (573) 364-6346

The e-mail then had a heart-wrenching plea from “Ashley’s” mother:

“. . . Please pass this to everyone in your address book. With GOD on her side she will be found. I am asking you all, begging you to please forward this email on to anyone and everyone you know, PLEASE. It is still not too late. . .”.

The “mother” invited readers to contact her at HelpFindAshleyFlores@yahoo.com.

I thereupon spent a considerable amount of time writing the “Amber Alert” into a blog that could be desseminated to my thousands of readers, as well as my followers on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Friendster, etc., etc.

I even composed an e-mail to the unfortunate “mother”, passing on my sympathy and asking her to keep me informed as to the status of the search for her daughter.

However, before I published the post or sent the e-mail, I decided that I’d better “practice what I preach”.  I always tell people to go to sites like Snopes.com or Hoaxbusters.org and check out the legitimacy of suspect e-mails before wasting other peoples time by passing them on.

Sure, enough, Snopes.com reports that the purported “Amber Alert” concerning “Ashley Flores” is a hoax.  Apparently, there are different variations of the hoax – sometimes “Ashley” is missing from Rolla, Missouri; sometimes from Philadelphia; sometimes from Montreal.  The common element appears to be the “mother’s” yahoo.com e-mail address.  (Of course, e-mail sent to that address is returned, as there is “no such user”).

This is what Snopes.com says about the “Ashley Flores” case:

 Most missing child alerts circulated via e-mail fall into one of two categories: genuine reports of missing children that continue to be forwarded long after the child has been found, or hoaxes imploring readers to look for children who aren’t missing or don’t exist.  The above-quoted message bore all the hallmarks of the latter category.

 The text of the e-mail (reproduced as we first received it in May 2006) did not include some of the most basic information one would expect to find in a genuine missing child plea: where the young girl (Ashley Flores) went missing, when she went missing, when and where she was last seen, a physical description of her, contact information for her parents, contact information for the local police authorities handling the case, etc.  All that was provided was the ambiguous statement that a “Deli manager from Philadelphia, Pa” had a 13-year-old daughter who had been missing “for two weeks,” and even that information seemed to have been tacked on to the message by someone other than its originator. It even included phrases taken word-for-word from previous missing child hoax e-mails,such as Christopher John and Kelsey Brooke.

 Meanwhile, the one piece of identifying information provided in the message, a yahoo.com e-mail address, produced a “no such user” error when mail was sent to it, and a variety of searches through news accounts and law enforcement and missing child web sites, including the site of the Center for Missing & Exploited Children, failed to turn up any mention of a missing girl named “Ashley Flores.”  

In the event, it turned out that although the pictured Ashley Flores might have been a real girl, her “missing” status was one concocted as a kids’ prank.  In this case it was a particularly bad and widespread prank, one that left thousands and thousands of concerned citizens attempting to verify the status of a missing girl who wasn’t really missing, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer:

“Everyone is concerned about this girl,” said Athena Ware, spokesperson for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. “We’ve gotten quite a few of those e-mails here. But it’s not an active case in our system.”

It’s not an active case because it isn’t true.

It’s a hoax; pure balderdash, sheer hornswoggle, a regular mountain of malarkey.

There may indeed be an Ashley Flores living in Philadelphia, but nobody has reported her missing to the Philadelphia Police, said Yolanda Dawkins, a department spokesperson.

The FBI hasn’t received any notice about young Ashley, either. Neither has the Pennsylvania and New Jersey State Police for that matter.

An Acme spokesperson said that the market had received numerous inquiries and offers of help, but knew of no employee named Flores who had a missing daughter.

In one day alone (19 May 2006), our site registered over 25,000 searches from readers looking for information about Ashley Flores.

In April 2007, a version appearing over the signature of Staff Sergeant Rick Williams of the Rolla (Missouri) Police Department began hitting inboxes. While there is indeed a staff sergeant named Rick Williams working for that particular law enforcement agency, the hoax is just as much a hoax as ever. Says the Rolla Police Department: 

Ashley Flores Missing Child Hoax

Initial reports in the media and on the Internet of the missing 13-year-old Philadelphia girl named Ashley Flores have proven to be nothing more than a very bad hoax, according to numerous law enforcement agencies and credible news outlets.

 Despite conclusive evidence that the original missing person report and Amber Alert regarding Ashely Flores was a hoax concocted by a kid’s prank, the Rolla Police Department still receives hundreds of calls every day regarding her status.

 A variety of searches through law enforcement agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigations, New Jersey State Police and Philadelphia Police, and numerous missing child websites such as The Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), confirms there has never been an official report of a missing girl named Ashley Flores.

 The Rolla Police Department is trying to spread the word that although Ashley Flores may exist, reports of her disappearance were an unfortunate internet hoax. Pranks such as these are not only illegal, but also hamper and interfere with communications and law enforcement operations.

 For more information, please go here or call Lt. Doug James at 573-364-1213.

 In October 2008, we encountered a version of the e-mail that had been translated into French and which positioned the “missing” girl as having been taken from the Montreal area.

Again, I ask . . . What twisted mind gets pleasure out of circulating phony missing children alerts?

Amber Alerts are a great idea . . . and blogs and social media are a great way to quickly spread the world; however, if we get many phony Amber Alerts, they may suffer from the “boy who cried wolf” syndrome and just be ignored.

The bottom line is that I encourage you to pass on Amber Alerts . . . but please check them out for authenticity before doing so.