AN online post about a family looking for a 2-year-old boy and offering a 5.8-million-yuan (US$840,580) reward has gone viral on WeChat, but Nanshan police confirmed that the post was fake news, the Southern Metropolis Daily reported Thursday.

The post noted that Liu Kaijun, 2, went missing in Window of the World on Monday. The person who posted the notice online claimed to be the boy’s father.

The post said the 37-year-old father had been doing business with his wife in Shenzhen for many years. After the boy went missing, the family became desperate as both the boy’s grandma and mother fell sick.

The father said that he owned companies and factories in Bao’an, Guanlan and Shekou, and was willing to offer 5.8 million yuan to anyone who found his son. Anyone who could provide effective information that helped find the child would be given 2 million yuan, and even a useful clue was supposedly worth 200,000 yuan. At the end of the post, a QR code is attached, along with a note saying that anyone who reposts the information will get 100 yuan.

After scanning the code, an official account called “Military Secret Report” appears. The system automatically sends a message saying “Thank you for your help! This account has been added by too many people. Please wait for system recovery!” But then no more information about the search notice appears.

When the reporter posed questions about the missing boy, the account replied with a QR code of a personal WeChat account, but the account owner didn’t accept the reporter’s friend request.

According to the report, this official account was registered by a female in Jilin Province on May 12, 2016, and has had few visitors.

Nanshan police posted an official announcement Wednesday, saying that the rumormonger would be punished once seized.

In recent years, many lost children were found with the help of netizens. However, fake news about lost children is often spread by people on the Internet.

(Zhang Yang, Su Tangwuyou)