Pflugerville Tale Of Nefarious Perfumers Debunked By Police

PFLUGERVILLE, TEXAS — A viral post making the rounds via Pflugerville neighborhood social media pages — raising alarms about people being forced to smell perfume samples on towels or rags — is a hoax, police said Wednesday.

A version of the post was posted Wednesday by a resident to a neighborhood Facebook page, written with palpably breathless urgency in describing the scene: "Just wanted to give a heads up," the post begins benignly enough. "My daughter works at Subway next to Walmart on 685. A lady and a man came into the store trying to sell perfume out of plastic bottles. They were very persistent even after my daughter said no. They kept trying to force her to smell the 'perfume' on a rag. The lady was doing most of the talking while the man was sitting back. The lady kept saying she would take any form of payment including a credit card or her kids (my daughter does not have kids btw but very spooky). When the lady began to get a bit more forceful, the other guy that was working with my daughter came out of the back. Once the two individuals realized that she wasn’t alone, they left."

But the story doesn't end there: "They came back yesterday but went to another store in the strip where the young lady was working alone. This time they kept telling her that they knew she was alone and all they wanted her to do was smell their 'perfume.' They actually grabbed the girl leaving marks on her arm and telling her that she needed to actually get closer to the rag so she could actually 'smell' it. They also said that they would take her child as payment. When a customer walked into the store and interrupted them, they ran off. The police were called and all footage was looked at. The police believe that this is related to trafficking."

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It's a riveting story, to be sure. There's just one problem: It's not true, Pflugerville police said. In their post, police debunked the entire premise of the story after investigating, saying there are no rogue perfume testers, no towel or rags, no suspicious man or footage of the incident.

"The Police have been contacted by several residents concerned about a viral Facebook post concerning two women selling perfume in a shopping center," police wrote on their Facebook page. "A report was issued to the Police Department, but the details of the case as posted on social media include many inaccuracies. The report does not reference anyone being forced to smell perfume on a towel or rag, a suspicious man, nor is there footage of the incident."

Also: "The Police do not believe this incident is related to trafficking, local law enforcement officials noted.

Administrators at the Pflugerville Neighbors page on Facebook had the presence of mind to delete a post purporting to warn of nefarious perfumers, as one women asking why it was no longer on the page was informed. That page alone has 9,858 members, all of whom could've been potentially alarmed by the fake news.

While it's frantically made the rounds around Pflugerville lately, the hoax is hardly new. Snopes.com rated the report as "false," noting iterations of the tall tale have been around for some 20 years. In its most sensational version, the fake story has perfumers knocking out people with ether in those fictitious rags, rather than perfume.

"The scenario described above isn’t a real danger," Snopes debunkers concluded. "This legend doesn’t even describe a plausible scenario because, despite what books and television shows may depict, rendering a person unconscious from a mere sniff or two of some substance is not easy to do. Ether is nasty, volatile stuff that requires a great deal more than a few brief inhalations to knock a person out. In fact, it’s hard to think of any substance that could produce the instant unconsciousness described here."

So breathe easy, Pflugerville residents. There are no ether-bearing, rag-clutching traffickers posing as perfumers in your midst. Still, police urge residents to report actual crimes occurring in the community. If in doubt, call the police department at (512) 990-6700.

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