What was claimed
A picture shows a newborn baby recently found abandoned in a dumpster in the UK.
Our verdict
This is a hoax. These images were not taken in the UK and are not recent.
Images of a newborn found ‘abandoned in a dumpster’ were not taken in the UK
Posts circulating in local Facebook community groups claiming a newborn baby was found “abandoned in a dumpster” are hoaxes.
One such post shared to a group for residents in Cardiff says: “Police found a newborn baby abandoned in a dumpster in #cardiff Fortunately, he was still alive!
“‘The child appeared to be fresh out of the womb, with his hair wet, his skin pruned and his umbilical cord still attached.’ Please Bump this post and help find the family.”
Other posts shared in groups for residents of Porth in Wales, Widnes in Cheshire and Oldham in Greater Manchester have nearly identical text, but with the location changed.
All of the posts feature pictures of a baby wrapped in a coat, while one also features a picture of two police officers with a baby in a car seat.
But these images weren’t taken in the UK, and aren’t recent. The images of the baby wrapped in a coat were posted on a website called Missing Person South Africa in February this year, and reportedly show a newborn baby found in Verulam, South Africa.
The image of the police officers, meanwhile, is from a separate incident involving an abandoned baby in San Bernardino, California in 2023. San Bernardino Police Department has previously warned that the images have been shared online to “bait people into scams”.
We’ve also written before about similar posts falsely raising the alarm for missing children, elderly people and injured dogs in Facebook community groups.
Hoaxes can damage people’s trust in local community news, because groups can become overwhelmed with false information. As a result, genuine posts may be ignored or dismissed as false.
You can find out more by watching an episode of BBC One’s Rip Off Britain, which features our investigation into the problem of hoax posts on Facebook. Our guide also offers some tips on how to identify such hoaxes.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because these images were not taken in the UK and are not recent.