"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. "Well, once you show an interest, you know, they're going to go in for the kill," Fletcher replied.Īnd 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. "Is that typical of what you see happening?" Werner asked. Werner showed Fletcher the conversation that progressed.
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