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  • 2015-12-11 (xsd:date)
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  • Large Cell Phone Purchase Rumor (en)
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  • On or around 5 December 2015, rumors began circulating on social media regarding a large purchase of pre-paid cell phones at a Walmart in Lebanon, Missouri, which later included similar suspicious purchases at other Walmarts in the area. On 9 December 2015, mid-Missouri station KMIZ published an article reporting that law enforcement authorities in at least four Missouri cities had received reports of suspicious phone purchases at area WalMart stores: [S]omeone tried to buy a suspicious number of phones at Wal-Mart East in Jefferson City. The latest report is in addition to three other reports of similar incidents in Columbia, Macon and Lebanon. Authorities in all four cities said they had contacted FBI agents. However, the FBI only confirmed it is investigating three of those reports. The reports described by KMIZ were attributed to Walmart employees and an eyewitness who wished to remain anonymous, and they described two men who had purchased 60 phones at the Lebanon WalMart: We contacted the Lebanon Police Department to gather additional information, but the individual with whom we spoke directed us to the FBI's local field office for more information. A police report [PDF] available on the jurisdiction's web site indicated that police were summoned to the Lebanon Walmart in the early hours of 5 December 2015. The report didn't indicate who made the report (whether it was a bystander or employee), what the suspicious activity in question was (aside from the purchase of unspecified electronics), nor that the incident was viewed as suspicious by the officer: Social media users excoriated local law enforcement agents for not detaining the men, but the police report explicitly stated that there was no lawful reason to do so. Altogether, five similar incidents were reported at WalMart stores in Columbia, Jefferson City, Macon, Jackson, and Lebanon. Missouri law enforcement officials alerted the FBI after a small number of men bought more than 100 pre-paid cellphones from WalMart stores in three different cities over a 24-hour period. Macon County sheriff's Detective Curt Glover said that although law enforcement were called to investigate the purchases, no arrests were made in connection with them because no laws had been broken: An iteration of the rumor held that reported thefts of propane tanks might (unspecifically) be related to the cell phone purchases. On 11 December 2015 the web site BuzzPo reported that: However, that claim came one day after a 10 December 2015 report from Kansas City station WDAF that both addressed and countered speculation that the missing propane tanks were a likely sign of imminent terror attacks: On 11 December 2015, the Macon County Sheriff's Office published a Facebook post confirming that the cell phone purchases were unrelated to terrorism. According to that post, the cell phones [were] not believed to be purchased for use in criminal activity, but rather purchased in a region for a low price and shipped to another region and sold to the general population for a large profit: [article-meta] (en)
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