Last Friday the City of Helotes warned the community that a public Facebook group is a scam calling it a “spam Helotes Facebook page” and a “fraud Helotes account.” According to the Helotes Facebook group’s creator and current admin, the city is incorrect in its assumptions. This morning the city issued an apology.
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“If you stumble across a Facebook group/page claiming to be Helotes, please REPORT it immediately! Do not join or interact with this group,” said the city in its original warning published on Friday through the My Helotes app and several social media outlets, including Facebook and Next Door.
Created 17 years ago by Paul Ramsaroop, the public group, now with over 17,000 members, was established to create a community forum for sharing information.
In the city’s apology statement, the city retracted its earlier claims by saying “The group is not spam.” The city says that although the group “may have displayed a few spam posts, it is not to be mistaken for a fraudulent City of Helotes Facebook account.”
Ramsaroop, a former Helotes resident residing in Missouri, continues to serve as the group’s admin. He, like many other FB admins tries to keep on top of spam posts on the page but concedes that guest posts in a public group are a challenge to moderate.
He said the FB group never claimed to be an official site for the city of Helotes and that the group’s cover photo, which is similar to the city’s cover photo, is from original artwork and predates the creation of the city’s FB page which was established in 2014.
Ramsaroop, a chief operating officer of Missouri-based Big Picture Media, a marketing company, pushed back. “It’s important to note that anyone can create groups on Facebook at will,” said Ramsaroop in online comments. “Also of note, this group does not claim to be the official page of Helotes.”
He went on to explain that “the group has evolved into a local buy-sell community due to Facebook’s features, not by my design.” To avoid further confusion, Ramsaroop said he would rename the group.
At press time, the City of Helotes had not responded to Helotes News’ request for comment.