A man was left flustered after finding a missing child poster with a picture of himself as a kid on it. Viewers are weighing in on what they think it means. And some of the theories are dark.
It all started when TikTok personality Adrian Peru (@adrian_peru), who has over 428,000 followers, said his mother recently let him have all of his paperwork now that he’s “old enough.”
He begins going through a folder filled with papers in his video.
“I’m going through it, looking for my birth certificate. ‘Cause I wanna buy a passport. See all these photos?” he asks.
Conspicuously, there’s one showing a photo of a child’s face with the word “MISSING” on it. He says the child on the flier is him.
It reads, “Please help. Jorge Gimenez went missing October 12, 2005. Age: 5, weight: 45lbs, eyes: brown, hair: black. If you have information Please contact [redacted]. Come home soon Jorge. We all love you and want you home safe.”
“When the [expletive] did I go missing? And why was I never told? I saw this photo. I need to call my mom right now ’cause why … is there a photo of me with a missing sign?” Peru asks.
Not his name
A big discrepancy makes this more peculiar, however. The name on the sheet is Jorge Gimenez. “Dawg, that is not my name. I don’t know if they, like, made this as a joke when I was a kid. But who … is Jorge Gimenez? Nah, bro. I need to call my mom. ‘Cause, why is this in the middle of all my paperwork? I never went missing,” Peru says.
@adrian_peru Who the hell is Jorge Gimenez 🤔🤣🤣 #Missing #Poster #Paperwork #Old #Found #Mystery ♬ original sound – Adrian
A dark theory
Numerous TikTokers who responded to Peru’s video have a theory that he was kidnapped as a child.
“Don’t think you should call your mom…call the cops,” one quipped.
“Let me hold your hand when I say this…to family isn’t your family,” another wrote with crying laughing emoji.
“Naw. You don’t need to call her. You need to take that to a police station without telling a soul,” a third suggested.
Mom’s explanation
In a follow-up video, Peru says he called his mother looking for an explanation regarding the poster. During their 30-minute phone conversation, he says she explained that the photo on the paper is indeed him. However, he says she told him that he never went missing as a kid. He says she told him that a child named Jorge Gimenez disappeared. Authorities, for some reason, accidentally ended up using the wrong picture for the poster. The Daily Dot could not find any reports of a missing Jorge Gimenez in the early 2000s.
Peru says that prompted his mom to pull down these missing posters and inform authorities that this wasn’t the photo of Jorge. “I’ve never been kidnapped. I’ve never gone through that, like. Y’all can chill, like. I feel bad for the kid, but that’s my photo. My mom said that they posted my photo, and she like took them down,” he says.
So why was his photo used?
He does clarify that part of his full name does contain the “Gimen” portion of “Gimenez.” That could explain why there was a mix-up in the first place. He also offers up another possibility as to why his face is on a missing poster.
Peru also says the missing poster could’ve been a scam pulled by child traffickers. He says, according to his mother, kidnappers would place a picture of a kid on a missing children’s poster. Then, they would hope that someone would see the kid out and about and then deliver them to the traffickers.
According to the Amber Alert Advocate, fake missing child posters are a thing. But it’s a clickbait scam, not a child trafficking scam. To spot a fake missing child poster, look for the red flags, per the Amber Alert Advocate: “The poster doesn’t come from NCMEC, an official law enforcement agency, or credible news source; it may contain misspellings, syntax errors, or improperly used words; and it doesn’t note how you can take appropriate action.”
@adrian_peru Part 2 on the missing kid 😭😭🙏🏾 (I am not Jorge Gimenez) #Missing #Poster #kidnapped #Mystery #Found #Update#Part2 ♬ original sound – Adrian
The Daily Dot has reached out to Peru via Instagram direct message for further comment.
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