Two young small business owners who went knocking on doors to find new customers were later shocked to discover they had been falsely accused of burglarizing a home.
Blake Hammersley and Cade Conroy were visiting locals in Redcliffe, north of Brisbane, on Thursday afternoon.
The aspiring entrepreneurs, aged in their 20s, run SolarShield Australia, a small business specializing in installing solar panels for homes.
They were captured on CCTV footage knocking on doors in a bid to find new customers, but then found pictures of themselves on a Facebook page calling them thieves.
Young businessmen Cade Conroy (left) and Blake Hammersley (right), who went knocking on doors in Redcliffe last week in a bid to find new clients, have been falsely accused of burglarizing a house.
The images showed Mr Hammersley wearing a dark colored t-shirt, black shorts and a pair of Birkenstock sandals.
Conroy was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, black shorts and a pair of brown work boots when they were captured walking down a driveway to greet a homeowner.
But the men were horrified when photographs of them were wrongly circulated on social media alongside CCTV footage of a home invasion on Friday morning.
The video showed a group of hooded men entering a property in the early hours of the morning and inspecting several cars parked in the driveway.
Conroy said he was shocked when the couple learned from a friend that they had been falsely linked to the robbery.
‘[My] “Our stomach dropped and we thought, ‘God, what are we going to do about this?’, so we took action right away,” he said. 7 news.
Images of Hammersley and Conroy (pictured) quickly circulated on Facebook, with social media users falsely accusing the pair of allegedly committing a home invasion.
The young entrepreneurs (pictured) run a small business called SolarShield Australia, which specializes in installing solar panels for homes.
The colleagues were linked to the robbery by amateur social media “sleuths” because the Birkenstocks worn by Mr Hammersley were similar to a pair of sandals worn by one of the alleged thieves.
Soon, images of the businessman were reposted in several other Facebook groups.
“We know these guys did it,” one person wrote.
‘We need to identify them. I would like my car back.
Mr Conroy and Mr Hammersley quickly visited a police station to inform police officers that they had nothing to do with the break-in.
A police investigation showed they were about two kilometers away knocking on the door of a property while the alleged robbery was taking place.
Officers were able to verify his activities by tracking his exact location using a mobile navigation app called Waze.
“It’s just an unfortunate circumstance that the wrong people have been involved in this,” Mr Conroy said.
Social media users incorrectly connected a pair of Birkenstocks worn by Mr Hammersley to a pair of sandals worn by one of the alleged thieves (pictured).
Hammersley said that as business owners, false accusations could affect their ability to attract customers.
“The fact that it’s been brought to two major Facebook pages, it’s gotten so much stock, it now makes the waters a little murky for where we choose to go to take our business,” Hammersley said.
Peter Olsen, the robbery victim, expressed remorse after Conroy and Hammersley were incorrectly identified as the alleged robbers.
“Quite an unfortunate coincidence,” he said.