A social media post claims human traffickers have an unusual way to disorient potential victims: placing tainted ice cream on parts of a car to get a target to touch them.
One poster claims to have found tainted ice cream on her daughter’s car in the parking lot of a restaurant. The restaurant she names and the mall she says it is next to match a restaurant in suburban Baltimore County, Maryland.
“The idiot that placed those ice creams there wanted her to touch them which (sic) highly likely there was some type of substance that would make her dizzy and confused just enough to abduct her,” the Nov. 6 Facebook post reads in part.
The post, which has been shared more than 1,000 times, includes photos of a car with what appear to be a packaged ice cream sandwich on top of a tire and a door handle. The social media user also said she asked a police officer about the ice cream and learned it was "a setup for possible sex trafficking."
But there is no evidence tainted ice cream is being used to disorient human trafficking targets. Local police said there was no such incident reported at that location. A spokesperson for a national organization fighting human trafficking said such a claim is similar to many debunked rumors. And experts have previously told USA TODAY that human trafficking rarely involves abduction by strangers, instead occurring through people known to the victims.
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