In a Facebook status shared by more than 139,000 people, Texas mom Amanda Cropsey Florczykowski tells of a harrowing run-in with child sex traffickers at an unnamed store in Longview. Florczykowski is "convinced" that her two-year-old daughter was the target of a brazen ring of traffickers who literally pluck children out of their mothers' arms in checkout lines. Luckily, with her wits and the Lord at her side, Florcyzkowski was able to thwart the nefarious gang, retrieve her child, and use the experience as a warning to others.

The entire paranoid fantasy really has to be read to be believed, so I'll paste the whole thing below. But first, let's jump ahead to the truth of this encounter: Snopes contacted Longview, Texas, police about the claim yesterday. "They told us that the department reviewed surveillance video and that the interaction in question lasted approximately 'two seconds,'" Kim LaCapria writes.

Police were sympathetic to the mother's fears, but said that the incident was inconsistent with genuine reports of labor or sex trafficking. The clip was passed on to state law enforcement for further review, but police in Longview did not indicate parents need worry about "stranger danger" in the area…

This isn't the first time a "strange encounter" in a chain-store checkout line has spurred rumors of roving, calculating criminals intent on abducting women and children in public. Last spring, for instance, an Oklahoma woman was convinced that she'd been the target of intended abduction at her local Hobby Lobby craft store. And like with previous stranger-danger panics, people have projected onto the evildoers a specific intent relevant to the time: sex trafficking. LaCapria points out a few more examples:

in June [2015], Twitter users warned others of sex slavery rings targeting college kids during summer job interviews … then a harrowing tale of heroin-armed purported teenaged assailants working out of the bathroom of a Denton, Texas, Dillards department store circulated across the same channels; a Hickory, North Carolina woman claimed human trafficking rings were meancing the parking lots of Walmarts to locate new victims; and a Long Island Target was briefly cited as the locale of similar kidnappers in August 2015.

After a relatively active period over last spring and summer, LaCapria notes, sex-trafficking panics "went dormant" until now.

Interestingly, this corresponds to the time period during and directly after the passage of the federal Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act, which had lurid stories about human trafficking frequently making mainstream news, and an onslaught of January 2016 coverage and public-awareness efforts across the country for "Human Trafficking Awareness Month."

But back to Florczykowski's story. The Longview Police Department responded in a Facebook post that both dismissed her claims that "sex traffickers" like this were common and encouraged citizens to "report any suspicious activity immediately."

"When our citizens are observant and they report suspicious activity they may be a key to deter or prevent future criminal offenses from occurring," police continued. Of course, they may also waste everyone's time with baseless suspicion rooted in the moral panic of the moment. Which brings us to Florczykowski's original post: