There’s a scam that shows up in my Facebook feed EVERY DANG DAY. I see it shared by friends and relatives time and time again. No matter how many times myself and others warn people about it, they still don’t seem to catch on and they continue to help scammers out.
Generally, these scammers post in neighborhood groups or yard sale groups. The posts tend to fall into a few categories.
- Search for a criminal caught in the act
- Missing elderly person
- Missing child
- Found pet
- Some scary hazard like a snake or a wild animal
Here’s an example.
The poster asks people to flood their feeds to help locate a catalytic converter thief. Now this woman apparently gets around. Because check out these posts.
This woman is apparently stealing car parts all the way from Vermont to New Zealand.
Now, if you take a closer look at who posted these things, you’ll find the poster is almost always a page and not a person.
So why make these posts? The goal is to get people to share these fake posts as much as possible. If their posts get a lot of reaction within groups, their next posts will get boosted. That’s when scammers can then start posting about whatever scammy activity they want to carry out. A popular one is booking fake duct cleaning appointments.
They also use this to identify people they feel are more likely to fall for their scams to help them better select targets.
Here’s another one that was recently making the rounds. This gentleman has managed to go missing on three continents at the same time.
The more you share them, the more of these scams will happen. Please think before you share and stop helping these crooks defraud others.