CHARLOTTE — Two Facebook pages.
One is the original page set up by Charlotte-Mecklenburg Animal Care and Control. But someone hijacked it more than a year ago and the agency couldn’t get Facebook to give it back, so it made a new one instead.
How can you tell the difference? The hacked page still has CMPD in the title and logo. The official page does not.
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Now, the imposter page is going even further, accusing Animal Care and Control, which is a police agency, of being the shady one. It says, “We’ve uncovered an imposter trying to manipulate our followers by posing as us.” It urges people to report the page and it even uses these consumer-friendly hashtags: #ProtectOurCommunity and #ReportImposters.
“I don’t even know the emotion. It’s all the emotions. It’s mad, it’s frustrated,” Animal Care and Control’s Melissa Knicely told Action 9′s Jason Stoogenke. “We rely heavily on social media to help us to move animals into homes and into foster care.”
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The agency also accepts donations, so this is important to note: You can only donate through Animal Care and Control’s website. If you’re donating on Facebook, you’re donating to the criminals.
Knicely says her team has repeatedly asked Facebook to step in but has had no luck. “From driver’s licenses to business licenses to, you name it, we sent every piece of documentation that they asked. and the answer just kept being no,” she said.
Animal Care and Control is hoping that a lawyer may be willing to help it for free. Stoogenke is also working with his contacts at Facebook to see if they can help.
He messaged the imposter page but did not get a response in time for this report.
VIDEO: Bring a dog home for the day with CMPD’s Animal Care “Daycation” program
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