Rutland residents are being warned of a lost dog scam that is circulating social media.

The scam involves fraudsters posting about a lost dog and then, once the post has been share hundreds or thousands of times, they will change the content. This ensures that their intended content is spread as far as possible.

The posts usually follow a similar theme, saying like: "Hi all I'm desperately trying to find the owner of this sweet girl I picked up about half an hour ago along side the road in the (location) area. She has been taken to the vets but does not have a chip. Please help bump this post so she can be reunited with her owner asap."

See the example below:

Particularly if the "found dog" posts has comments disabled, social media users are being warned against sharing the post. Anyone wanting to reunite an animal would not disable comments.

Note the wording is almost identical on the below image:

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Worryingly, some of these posts are also circulating about lost children.

Please don't encourage fake posts by sharing without checking.