Facebook Scam attempts in the Corona Virus Hard Times

[Lowell]

Many people are in need of money in these difficult times, right? What better time to attack with scams offering free money than now. Tonight I had my second such attack via Facebook and as you can see they are real persons, not bots. So beware and as the saying goes, "If it's too good to be true, it probably isn't."

The first one occurred a few days ago. The perpetrator had created a bogus account with the identical name as my brother. [yep you can create a FB account with any name]. So when I received the first greeting I was caught off guard. However this isn't my first rodeo so I decided to listen to his pitch.
============


Hello Lowell

Me -> Hi [Brother's name]


How’s life treating you Lowell?


Me -> We’re doing good. How bout you?


Me: I’m doing great thanks, glad to hear from you I was wondering if you got the good news yet about UNDEF in collaboration with Corona IRS Fund ?!


Me -> What is UNDEF? [Antennas go up]


The United Nations Democracy Fund is a grant program meant for people who need assistance in paying bills, medical bills, buying of new home, home repair, starting and financing of business, paying of debt or credit card debt, provide funds for disables and elderly people. Are you informed?


Me -> No. Why do you ask. [Now I’m certain it isn’t my brother]


I got a check of $50,000.00 from them after i applied, i thought you already knew about it. Should I help you with their information so that you can apply for it?


Me -> Wow. [Now I know it’s a scam]


Should I help you with their information Lowell ?


Me -> Sure


Click on this link right now htps://m.facebook. com/UNDEF.org00 like his page and message him you want to claim your grant prize, he will text you back once he gets your message


Me -> Thanks. That’s all I have to do?


Yes let me know how it goes do that now


Did you get in touch yet ?


Me -> The link doesn’t seem to work. It just spins and spins. Is it correct?


Me -> What should I do? I sure could use that money.


You can text him 203 646-6467 his name is Mr Donald tell him you want to claim your grant prize. He will reply your text once he get it


Yes it really helped during this lockdown I didn’t expect it


Me -> I hear you. I think my internet connection is acting up. It comes and goes. My phone is out of range right now. Dang.


Lol I can see you are not interested in this, why not say and stop bothering. Was just thinking it could be of use for you


Me -> I am. I just can’t get through. I need this.


So you can’t text too ?


Me -> No I’m out of range just now.


Me -> On my mom’s WiFi up north.


Me -> I’m going to try when I get back home. Thanks for letting me know!


I talked to the agent that helped he said you should have received message on your Facebook maybe your filtered box


So maybe they got one of their agent to message you, did you get any new message?


Me: They did. Thanks but I don’t know what I can do until I get in cell range or a better WiFi.


Me -> [At this point I had received a Facebook message from another person, but the message then disappeared. Unfortunately I didn’t time to check out the profile of that accomplice.]


Okay but least you can reply


Me -> Okay.


Enjoy the rest of the day.


Me: I saw her message now it’s gone. What happened?


Lol yes the message you sent now too is gone. What happened?


Me -> Must be mom’s ancient WiFi acting up again


Me -> [Here I stopped responding… had other things to do. I did report the profile.]


Chat Conversation End

[Lowell]

The second scam came from an account that changed the name on the account to a FB friend. The perpetrator had also copied the profile picture of the friend and embedded it on [what looks like] the home page of a hijacked Nigerian account. This time I spotted it Facebook text immediately.

Hello Lowell


How are you doing today?


Me -> Hi


Hope everything is going on well with you?


Me -> It is thanks


Good to hear back from you


I was just wondering if you have heard about the good news?


Me -> What’s that


I mean about the United States agency international development Grant fund?


Me -> No what’s that


Really..The purpose of the [[USAID) is to support projects that lessen poverty in communities, Funding the retired government workers, disability, and the address of the low income individual including the homeless and elderly, do you get money from them yet?


Me -> No


Let me send you the agent Link In charge so you can also apply for this??
http s://m.me/ AshleyDouglas11
Ashley Douglas


Just try to click on the link and message him now that you want to apply for the grant...


Wish you best of luck.


Just keep me posted when you get hold of him okay...


Me -> Tell me about it. I don’t click link links


Good It is specifically place for those who need assistance like paying old for bills,buying a home,starting their own business, or even helping raise their children with old, and retired people.This program is so amazing, i got $200.000 delivered to me when i applied for the program and i was told i'm eligible for the Program while you don't have to pay it back..


Me -> How did they deliver it to you


Yes at my door step.


Me -> Wow someone cAme to your door with $200 cash?


Yes you be asking to choose either cash or check and i choose to receive cash from them


Me -> He pulled $200 out of his pocket and gave it to you? It seems kind of suspicious don’t you think? Were you scared


Me -> Did he show any kind of ID?


Just click on the link i send to you she will explain more about the program to you


Me -> My grandson told me I should never click links, he is an Internet tech


This is from federal government she didn't picked the money out of her pocket


You should know I will never introduce what is not real to you kindly do as i said


Me -> You know that I know you and that you’ve only been on the Internet for about a year. My grandson has done this for 20 years.


Have you message her yet ?


Me -> How how do I message her


You are to click on the link i sent to you after that message her let her know you want to apply and claim your said Grant cash bonus


Me -> I told you I don’t click links. How do I messaged her like you’re messaging me?


Hold on should i forward you her number so you can get a hold of her ?


I Will send you her number you are to text her and let her know you applying for your usaid Grant cash bonus


Me -> Thumbs Up Sign


5015968196


Me -> Thanks I’ll call her tomorrow. Got to go, time to eat. Thanks for the information have a good day David bye-bye


Did you got the number?


Text the number i sent to you let her know you want to apply and claim your usaid Grant cash bonus her name is Ashley Douglas


Me -> Okay thanks


Are you doing that now ?


Me -> [I did not respond further]

[Honky Tonk]

I'm still waiting to receive my inheritance from a distance relative in Nigeria that passed away. I already paid the transfer fees, and it's been a few years. Probably taking longer because of the virus thing.

[Meddle]

Stay off Zuckerbook.

[Honky Tonk]

"Fakebook"...

[Zacha341]

Yep! A scam for sure. The usual bad grammar, fragmented sentences and typing. After a while you'll be able to cut and paste chunks of the verbiage into Google and see people reporting on it across the web.

Two artist friends each recently got the long-standing bad grammar... 'Thank for your response,i will proceed to instruct your Payment at the earliest,i hope to visit you studio...' scam with the usual request that shipping of art to be by way of a person picking it up, and check oddly purchase price doubled.

The scam is for you to send back part of the money yah-dah... [[before your bank discovers it's fake). They even went as far as to send the fake check by priority mail to one friend that gave a PO addy!

Funny how they don't even bother to change their spiel except to insert your name! Jerks!!

......Good It is specifically place for those who need assistance like paying old for bills,buying a home,starting their own business, or even helping raise their children with old, and retired people.This program is so amazing,i got $200.000 delivered to me when i applied for the program and i was told i'm eligible for the Program while you don't have to pay it back..

[jcole]

You can stay off FB, but they'll get on text, chat, email, cellphone, landline; they have covered all the bases. Just have to be vigilant

[Zacha341]

Yes. And they scan websites for artists for example, or if you have a design portfolio online then the so-called 'great opportunity' folks contact thru that.

Each scammer seems to customize their ploy for the suppose gullible audience.

[Ray1936]

Interesting reads, Lowell; thanks for the chuckle!

About a year ago, I got an email that appeared to be from PayPal, stating I had a refund coming of four bucks or so. Like a yahoo, I clicked on some links and got took for a thousand buck charge with PayPal. Took me a year to get straightened out, but PayPal finally sided with me and killed the charge.

[Jimaz]

A while ago I received a couple emails from someone trying to impersonate Wells Fargo. It was obviously fake because they went out of their way to replace the "F" in "Fargo" with a "Cyrillic capital letter Ghe with stroke." "Wells Ғargo" really stood out as fake.

The only reason I can imagine they'd go to that much trouble is to evade a keyword "Fargo" search trying to identify their emails. Maybe they were just hoping some human recipients wouldn't notice something that obvious. That's pretty lame.

You'd think over the years they'd have time to polish their craft but they never seem to improve. You'd think getting a real job would be more prosperous.

[EastsideAl]

I was told by the phone rep at one of my credit card companies that they are seeing a huge increase in scamming, especially those coming seemingly from Nigeria, during the pandemic.

Someone got ahold of my credit card # and sold it to someone who changed the address to Charlotte NC [[apparently a well-known address for scammers to work out of). Within a few minutes they made 2 $1,900 charges to a precious metals company, and charged $2,900 at Walmart.com [[what could you even buy $2,900 worth of at Walmart?). I didn't notice of course, because the card itself had never left my possession, until a couple of days later when the company called me up to confirm my Walmart haul and that I had recently moved to Charlotte.

The charges have been reversed, and an investigation is underway. I was even contacted by the Charlotte PD. But of course it is a hassle dealing with this stuff, going a week without the credit card at a point when I'm buying most things online, and changing my card numbers on all my accounts.

[Richard]

Haha,I like messing with them also.

Think that is bad try an Internet dating site,you have more fun messing with the scammers then actually dating anybody.

Its like 1 in 10 is actually a real person looking to date.

You have to figure if they scam somebody here for $200 that is a month if not more worth of pay in the scammers country.

Really big problem with pay at the pump at the gas stations and skimmers,now they have scanners that they can just walk by you and capture your CC information without you even knowing it.

You guys keep your plastic,I stick with cash.

[Zacha341]

The don't change 'cause their ploy must be fooling someone, some where!

Though I find most so absurdly obvious! Especially the bad grammar and 'familiarity' ploys. One fake-job crank kept using the word 'wheel house' over and over... 'I sure this opportunity is right in your wheel house!...'

What crappola! Someone just trying to draw you with so called 'cool' phrasing!

You'd think over the years they'd have time to polish their craft but they never seem to improve. You'd think getting a real job would be more prosperous.

[mtm49269]

had a very amusing one the other day:
scammer sent an email to an old email account that i rarely use claiming that she had hacked my facebook account and cell phone contacts - i don't have either. then she said that she activated my webcam when i visited a porn site and took videos of - shall we say "my reaction". don't have a webcam and never visited a porn site. she threatened that, if i didn't send her $2K in bitcoins, she would randomly send the alleged video to random people on my contact lists - "it could be your boss, your mother, your spouse... and how could you ever look them in the eye again???" hmm, i'm a retired orphan with NO contact lists on anything other than boring old email.

needless to say, i didn't respond though it did give me a pretty good laugh.

[msamslex]

I’m not on Facebook, but do get my share of spam/scam emails which are caught & sent to my junk folder. I never open them, just delete them all since they’re obviously scams, addressed to another name, poor grammar & spelling, a Nigerian businessman requires your assistance so he can send you the $100,000,000 you’re entitled to, etc.

One recent one I got was addressed to YahOO! [[that was the spelling) telling me I’d won $550,000,000!!! Part of the first lines of the email said, We would like to be sure... I would have to click on the email to read the rest of it which I’m not going to do. I don’t even use an yahoo email address. Other scam emails have come from Citizen’s or Wells Fargo banks about account activity. I use neither bank for my financial needs.

Just about everyday we get calls from spoofed numbers too, most of the time with a 313 area code. I guess the scammer figures it’s from your area code & you’ll answer it thinking it’s somebody you know. Caller ID usually says Unavailable.

One night a few years ago, I got a call from the City of Detroit according to Caller ID. The issue here was that the call came around 8:00 pm, well after city offices close @ 5:00. How stupid!! If I don’t know the name or number, I don’t answer the phone. Most of the time, scam callers automatically hang up when the machine comes on, but you do get the occasional robocall scam messages that slip through, [[Are you paying too much for gas service?, Issues with your laptop or your virus protection is about to expire, you need to call Microsoft.) I could go on & on. What’s sad is that folks still fall for these scams & next thing they know is that their life savings are gone, bank accounts cleaned out.

[248lurker]

had a very amusing one the other day:
scammer sent an email to an old email account that i rarely use claiming that she had hacked my facebook account and cell phone contacts - i don't have either. then she said that she activated my webcam when i visited a porn site and took videos of - shall we say "my reaction". don't have a webcam and never visited a porn site. she threatened that, if i didn't send her $2K in bitcoins, she would randomly send the alleged video to random people on my contact lists - "it could be your boss, your mother, your spouse... and how could you ever look them in the eye again???" hmm, i'm a retired orphan with NO contact lists on anything other than boring old email.

needless to say, i didn't respond though it did give me a pretty good laugh.

After a site hack where the hackers obtained users' email addresses, including a throwaway one of mine, I started receiving the exact same messages -- usually once a week. The bitcoin amount being demanded changed each time, but everything else remained the same.

What the scammers didn't know was:

• My home desktop that I use the majority of the time has no webcam.
• Although my laptop has a built-in cam, I've only activated it once for maybe 5-10 seconds solely to make sure it worked. It hasn't been used ever since.

I eventually deleted the throwaway address, created a new one, and changed the password to the account tied to it yet again just to be safe.

Sad thing is, there are probably people in the same situation that somehow believe these messages and give the scammers what they want.

Facebook scammers are relentless as those on other platforms, it seems. I had to delete one contact whose account got hijacked. A report to Facebook that the account had been hijacked resulted in no action, so I simply unfriended the contact and blocked the account for good measure. Similarly, I once had 2 or 3 suspicious requests from multiple accounts claiming to be the same person. I denied the requests and unfriended the person just to be safe.

As for phone scammers, the biggest issue is that legitimate calls often appear with a generic caller name [[e.g. MICHIGAN CALL) that makes it difficult to know whether those calls are scammers or a legitimate call from a known contact using an unfamiliar number.

All we can do is remain vigilant and help look out for those that aren't quite as savvy as best we can.

@Lowell - Good job for spotting the scam right away and wasting their time just enough to frustrate them without giving them what they wanted.

[mtm49269]

we get a number of phone calls mimicking our area code[[s) and nnx's which we ignore. most only ring 3-4 times and don't leave a message. we've missed a few real calls but it's easy to call them back.

completely dreading the cursed medicare enrollment time! because spouse is over 65, every year toward end of summer though end of year we'll get 5-10 calls per day trying to recruit him to change plans. again, we just don't pick up [[though we often laugh afterward at the BS messages they leave).

[WKL]

We get the spoofed numbers all time, had to laugh when the caller ID said I was calling.