In February 2026, numerous posts claimed the sister of convicted sex-trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell founded and ran Amber Alerts, an alerts system in the United States used to inform the general public about missing children who are thought to have been abducted.
The claims spread on Facebook, TikTok, and X, with some claiming that Isabel Maxwell created the system. In a Facebook video, a person claimed:
So Ghislaine Maxwell has a boatload of siblings and one of her sisters, Isabel Maxwell, owns a parent company of Alert GPS Holdings Corporation, which is the company that broadcasts Amber Alerts. Not even a DuckDuckGo search will tell you this though. It gives you the dots but you have to connect them. Isabel Maxwell and one of the other Maxwell sisters, Christine, are heavily invested in the tech industry. The WEA or Wireless Emergency Alerts system utilizes Alert GPS Holdings corporation in the event of a child abduction and is operated by FEMA. The WEA is owned by Comtech, and guess who is in charge of Comtech? Isabel [Maxwell].
Isabel Maxwell did not create, nor does she own or run Amber Alerts. The alert system has no connection to her businesses and was formed by broadcasters and local police in 1996 in Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, before being adopted by other states. As such, we rate this claim as false.
We have reached out to Amber Alerts, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), a child protection organization that works with Amber Alerts to disseminate alerts to specific agencies and companies.
An NCMEC spokesperson told us the above claim was false, noting that Amber Alerts "is a public safety program used by law enforcement to help recover abducted children" rather than a "privately owned 'system' that any individual or family owns."
"NCMEC is involved in AMBER Alerts only in its defined program role, including supporting law enforcement and helping extend the reach of alerts through secondary distribution partners," the spokesperson added.
Origins of Amber Alerts
AMBER (also referred to as Amber) stands for America's Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response. According to the DOJ's website, it was first developed in 1996 when broadcasters in Dallas-Fort Worth joined with local police to issue warning announcements to help find local abducted children.
According to the NCMEC, 9-year-old Amber Hagerman was abducted in January 1996 in Texas. Her body was found four days later and the killer was never caught. Another Texas resident, Diana Simone, heard about Hagerman's story on the evening news and came up with the idea of having her local Dallas-Fort Worth radio station alert the public when such an abduction occurred so people could send tips to law enforcement. By October 1996, the first Amber Alert program (named after Hagerman) began in Dallas-Fort Worth. Originally intended for radio broadcasts, it is now broadcast over telephones, hotel chains, road signs, phone apps, internet service providers and more. The alerts are now broadcast in all U.S. states and around 27 countries.
The Maxwell family thus has no connection to the creation of Amber Alerts.
Isabel Maxwell's alleged ties to Amber Alerts
The above claim states a company called Comtech owns the Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) system. According to the NCMEC spokesperson, the WEA is itself a federal public alerting infrastructure that delivers emergency notifications directly to mobile devices. It is maintained through a collaboration between the government's emergency management agency FEMA, the Federal Communications Commission, and the National Weather Service.
When law enforcement agencies issue Amber Alerts, the NMEC is notified and uses technology from emergency communications company Intrado to redistribute the alerts to secondary distribution partners, according to the Justice Department. There are no Maxwells on Intrado's leadership team.
A New York-based telecommunications corporation called Comtech also has no Maxwells on its leadership team.
The claim most likely confuses Comtech with CommTouch, an Israeli Internet company Isabel Maxwell joined as president in 1997. According to a 1999 Wired profile of Isabel, under her leadership the company — which developed email software and email storage services — grew considerably. In 2009 CommTouch was rebranded to Cyren and focused on cybersecurity. By 2023, the company ceased operations. Isabel was only marginally involved with CommTouch by 2002, according to a report in Israeli publication Haaretz. According to a 2000 profile of Isabel in The Guardian, she and her twin sister Christine built Magellan, an internet search engine, which was later bought by Excite, another web portal service.
None of the above businesses have any verifiable ties to Amber Alerts. The NCMEC told us: "We are not aware of any role for CommTouch or Cyren in the issuance or operation of AMBER Alerts, and NCMEC has no partnership history with those companies. AMBER Alert distribution relies on public alerting infrastructure and voluntary partner channels, not a privately owned platform."
How Amber Alerts are issued
Law enforcement agencies must follow specific criteria before issuing Amber Alerts and are always responsible for activating one. The NCMEC manages further distribution, redistributing the alerts to various groups, including technology platforms. An NCMEC spokesperson told us that corporate entities are not responsible for issuing such alerts:
The initial decision to activate an AMBER Alert is made by law enforcement, following state or regional AMBER Alert plans and criteria. Corporate entities do not issue AMBER Alerts. NCMEC's role begins after law enforcement activation, when we are notified and then assist with redistribution to secondary distribution partners. [...]
Once law enforcement activates an AMBER Alert, it is distributed through primary channels (for example, broadcast and roadway messaging) and then extended through "secondary distributors," which can include technology platforms and digital signage networks. NCMEC's AMBER Alert Secondary Distribution Program helps route active alerts to those secondary partners so the public sees the information quickly.
A full list of "Secondary Distribution Program" participants can be found here. They include the FBI, ICE, Customs and Border Protection, as well as internet companies such as Google, Facebook's Amber Alert page, Bing and more. The NCMEC website has a chart describing how such alerts are disseminated:
(NCMEC)
In sum, there is no connection between anyone in the Maxwell family and the Amber Alerts system utilized to find missing children in the United States and elsewhere, contrary to online claims.
Snopes has covered numerous rumors about convicted sex offenders Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein.