Two young small business owners who went door-knocking to find new customers were later shocked to discover they had been falsely accused of robbing 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 specialising in installing solar panels for homes.
They were captured on CCTV footage door-knocking in a bid to find new clients but afterwards found pictures of themselves on a Facebook page calling them thieves.
Young businessman Cade Conroy (left) and Blake Hammersley (right) who went door-knocking in Redcliffe last week in a bid to find new customers, were falsely accused of robbing a home
The footage showed Mr Hammersley wearing a dark coloured t-shirt, black shorts and a pair of Birkenstock sandals.
Mr Conroy was dressed in a long-sleeve shirt, black shorts and a pair of brown work boots as the pair were captured walking up a driveway to greet a homeowner.
But the men were horrified when pictures of them were wrongfully circulated on social media along with CCTV footage of a home invasion on Friday morning.
The video footage showed a group of hooded men entering a property in the early hours of the morning and inspecting several cars parked on the front driveway.
Mr Conroy said he was shocked when the pair found out from a friend that they had been falsely linked to the robbery.
‘[My] stomach dropped and we’re like, ‘jeez what are we going to do about this’, so we just took action straight away,’ he told 7 News.
Images of Mr Hammersley and Mr 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, that specializes in installing solar panels for homes
The colleagues were linked to the robbery by social media amateur ‘detectives’ because the Birkenstocks worn by Mr Hammersley were similar to a pair of slides worn by one of the alleged thieves.
Soon, the images of the businessman were reposted onto several other Facebook groups.
‘We know these guys did it,’ one person wrote.
‘We need to get and ID on them. I’d like my car back.’
Mr Conroy and Mr Hammersley quickly visited a police station to let the cops know they had nothing to do with the break and enter.
An investigation by police showed they were around two kilometres away door-knocking at a property while the alleged robbery was taking place.
Officers were able to verify their activities by tracing their exact location using a navigation mobile app called Waze.
‘It’s just an unfortunate circumstance that the wrong people got tied up in it,’ Mr Conroy said.
Social media users incorrectly connected a pair of Birkenstocks worn by Mr Hammersley to a pair of slides worn by one of the alleged thieves (pictured)
Mr Hammersley said as business owners, the false accusations could have an affect on their ability to attract customers.
‘That fact it got taken to two major Facebook pages, it got that many shares, it now kind of makes it a bit murky waters where we choose to go to take our business,’ Mr Hammersley said.
Peter Olsen, the victim of the robbery, expressed his remorse after Mr Conroy and Mr Hammersley were incorrectly identified as the alleged thieves.
‘Pretty unfortunate coincidence,’ he said.
