'Alert: Law enforcement and the Red Cross have advised that there are people going door to door indicating that they are authorized to do testing for Coronavirus.
Rumors that con artists and robbers have been going door to door pretending to offer COVID-19 tests have been stoking fear on social media since the beginning of the pandemic. 'Law enforcement and the Red Cross have advised that there are people going door to door indicating that they are authorized to do testing for Coronavirus,' a trending Facebook post from April 2020 reads. 'Do not let them in. Call the police! Please pass this on and alert families!' The post was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) The American Red Cross as well as law enforcement officials across the country and in the United Kingdom have responded to such social media posts by explaining that no authorized coronavirus testing was being conducted door to door. The American Red Cross noticed widespread reports of this scam across the U.S. and in other countries on social media platforms at the start of the pandemic. In response, it posted advisories on social media throughout the spring to combat misinformation. 'Please know that the Red Cross is not going to people's homes to offer coronavirus tests,' the American Red Cross of the Texas Gulf Coast region tweeted on March 19, 2020. 'If someone comes to your home claiming they work for the Red Cross and that they are authorized to administer coronavirus testing, do not allow them in your home.' Similar posts were made by several regional chapters of the American Red Cross. However, these warnings are unwittingly fanning an unverified Internet rumor: there's no evidence that this door-to-door scam was happening in the first place. This is similar to other false claims that robbers were going door to door in Colorado Springs, Stockton, Calif., and Las Vegas pretending to be COVID-19 testers. Police in those cities said they received no reports of robbers pretending to offer coronavirus testing. We did not find evidence of law enforcement warning against such COVID-19 tester scams. We reached out to six other police departments in Tacoma, Wash., Tucson, Ariz.,San Diego, Calif., Santa Monica, Calif., Minneapolis, Minn., and Arlington Country, Va. Not one said they were aware of police reports about fraudulent door-to-door COVID-19 testers.
Our ruling The Facebook post claimed that police and the Red Cross have advised that there are scammers going 'door to door indicating that they are authorized to do testing for Coronavirus.' While the American Red Cross and some police departments in the U.S. have shared warnings against possible con artists pretending to be giving home COVID-19 tests, the post incorrectly portrays the advisory warnings as evidence of these scams. We found no news coverage of robbers or scammers posing as COVID-19 testers, as the post describes, and nine departments have independently confirmed that no such incidents have also been reported to the police. Because the claim contains an element of truth but leaves a misleading impression, we rate it Mostly False.