Police debunk claim that women are being knocked out, robbed with fake perfume
30-year-old hoax shared by multiple people on Facebook
A viral post on social media warning women about people who offer them fake perfume to knock them out and rob them is a hoax, police have confirmed.
Written in Maltese, the post tells the story of a 'friend' who fainted in the bathroom of a cinema before waking up to find she had been robbed.
"The only thing she could remember was a woman offering her a perfume to smell," the post states.
The post being shared on Facebook.The author of the post goes on to state that she was also approached in the car park of a "business centre" by two men who asked what perfume she was wearing, and whether she wanted to try a new, cheap perfume they were selling.
"It is not in fact perfume, but ether. When you smell it you lose consciousness and they take the opportunity to rob all your belongings," the posts states, describing the alleged assault as 'Perfume Shock'.
Contacted for comment, the police said the post was fake and should be ignored.
According to fact-checking website Snopes, it first debunked the hoax in 2000, followed by the debunking of a related claim in June 2001 about women supposedly dying from smelling drugged perfume samples sent by post, which the U.S. Centres for Disease Control also disproved at the time.
"Despite this, the claim continues to be popular - particularly on Facebook - and readers continue to reach out to learn if there's any validity to these claims," Snopes wrote.
The details of one example of the hoax cited by Snopes are almost identical to the one doing the rounds on Maltese social media, right down to the time and place at which the woman at the business centre was allegedly approached by the men. Variants of the post also mention hydroxyzine as the perpetrators' drug of choice.
"Whether or not drugging-via-hydroxyzine is technically possible, this claim is still false, simply an evolution of the same urban legend that's been circulating nearly as long as the internet has been mainstream," Snopes said.