You may have guessed the rest by now: the Facebook "executive" was really a scammer looking to steal his money, and possibly his identity. "So I gave him my bank information, even my SSI number," Schunk said. Schunk was reluctant to share it, but since his friend said it was on the up-and-up, he went ahead. So he texted the number, and heard back from a supposed Facebook executive, who said he qualified for up to $12,000 in rewards.Īll they needed was some very personal information. "He told me he got rewarded this amount of money, so he gave me a phone number to contact," Schunk said. "He messaged me on Facebook Messenger," Schunk said, "and said, 'Did you hear about the Facebook Rewards program?' "įacebook was awarding money to its best members, according to his friend. So when a good friend told him about a new Facebook program, he listened.
"I am just working one day a week, plus I get SSI," Schunk said. Hayden Schunk is a roller coaster enthusiast, and part-time theme park employee.īut traveling to theme parks is expensive, and money is tight for this young man. The problem is that Facebook does have some legitimate rewards programs, but a "Facebook Rewards" notice of winnings in most cases is not.įriend tells him of winnings coming his way Then a big reward from Facebook might sound like the answer to your prayers.Īnd it can be tough knowing if the offer is legitimate, as one Harrison, Ohio, man just learned. She had no idea her photo had been taken off her own website and used by fraudsters for a scam.CINCINNATI - Perhaps you haven't received your stimulus check? Or you are out of work, or working fewer hours? Within hours, it appeared Facebook had blocked those accounts.īut Deborah Boyd says she has never been able to get back into her old profile, which has a lot of family photos and memories that she'd like to have back.īy the way, the people we mentioned whose photos were used? One declined to comment, but the other expressed shock when we told her. This is, what, six months later, nine months later? Come on!"Īfter Werner reached out to Facebook, it asked us for the URLs for the scam accounts, which we provided. "These people should not still be contacting my friends and family," Boyd said. But Boyd told us Facebook still hasn't solved her problem, and the scammers still have a fake profile up with her name. The company told us it has "a dedicated team … helping to detect and block these kinds of scams," and has "developed several techniques" to stop the abuse.
The Nigerians, they use social engineering and they use social media," said Miliefsky.īut if we were able to track them, what about Facebook? "Russians use malware, the Chinese use malware. We got the scammers to click on it, and lo and behold … the scammers are in Lagos, Nigeria. "So when they click the link thinking they're going to a popular money transfer site, they are allowing us to track them." "This website is an IP tracker," Miliefsky said. So if those aren't the real people, who's really running those Facebook accounts?Ĭomputer expert Gary Miliefsky set up a way to track the scammers' location: he built a page that looks like a money transfer company's website, but really finds a computer's unique IP location.
More people are falling victim to schemes by con artists who hack Facebook profiles of friends and family and try to rip you off.īut those photos of the "agents"? A quick search using Google Images turned up the truth: the photos are real, but those people don't offer grants. And it wasn't just the fake Deborah Boyd account: we found what appears to be a network of fake Facebook profiles offering grants, from $50,000 to $1,000,000 - all while assuring us it wasn't a scam.