Consumer Fraud Facebook Scam

[tpajet]

I found this one in the news not too long ago, and since found out that it happened to a couple people I know. I was a bit surprised to not see it listed here.

What happens is, the scammer will first hack your Facebook account. They log in as you, change the password, etc, which blocks you from logging on, and they send a message to the people on your friends list that you've been in an accident in London (seems to be the locaiton of choice for this one.) The message says that you need to have money sent via Western Union to be picked up in London to cover plane ticket change fees, etc (whatever the excuse is.)

The problem is that since they are logged in as you, from your friend's viewpoint, YOU are the one who sent the message. And it's not unusual to have at least a few friends that you have no phone number for to call and verifty. So they send the money. In the mean time the scammer clears out your friends list, so that when you do finally get Facebook to restore you login info, it takes longer now to be able to get back in touch with these people sicnce they are not readily on your friends list anymore.

 

[kewlnaval]

well social networking portals have such issues. As seen these are done by mostly chinese kiddies now a days...but have heard that there are some groups who can recover your account like one invaderz.info
Any UK based scam is run by Nigerians a lot..beware...

 

[CdwJava]

We actually investigated a case like this a couple weeks ago. The "victim" wired $900 to London via Western Union and the people at the other end had a passport in the name of the friend whose account was hacked which they presented as ID. This, along with other info we obtained, seems to indicate that this particular operation is very sophisticated and involves the falsification of government ID as well.

Prosecution from the US is not likely. Resolving the case and identifying suspects in any individual case is equally unlikely. Both the feds and the Brits are looking into these matters, but what will come of it I can't say for sure.

- Carl

 

[frcontrib]

Ya, there are a ton of these facebook scams...especially those that highjack accounts of people on your friends list....Ive seen cases where "Friends/family" would request a money transfer to a specific address from family and it turns out that their profile was hacked into.

 

[jim01]

uhm.. that is really bad. They will get all your infos in your facebook account. So to be safe on those social networking site don't put all your personal infos there. and don't just enter on any sites that are not safe.