A few weeks ago, an Austin mom named Katie saw someone in a local buy/sell group offering to give away a new Macbook. The poster said they bought the computer as a gift for their husband but caught him cheating. To get back at him they were giving the brand-new computer away for free. The post was recent– only up for seconds when Katie reached out.
“It was on one of our local buy sell groups. I said I would love this for my daughter and she responded right away and said, ‘That’s awesome. Where are you?’ Katie explained.
The poster replied that they’d actually just moved out of Austin but would still give Katie the Macbook if she could cover shipping. “Quickly I responded back, ‘Of course. If someone is giving me a free laptop, yes, I will pay for postage,'” she recalled.
Katie was told it would cost $55 to ship. She sent the money through Venmo but when she asked for a tracking number the quick-responding stranger went quiet.
“I got a little bit of a nervous feeling… that, ‘Oh. This may have been something that was just too good to be true,’ so I messaged her again and asked for the tracking number. Instead, she messaged me back and said, ‘Oh, it’s actually going to be $80 more to send it overnight with some extra insurance and they won’t let me send it without it,’ and at that point all of my red flags went up,” Katie said.
Feeling confident this was a scam, Katie told the poster she was no longer interested in the computer, but the scammer became pushy. They urged Katie to send more money and even tried to call her multiple times on Facebook Messenger. Curious, Katie typed the words, “Macbook cheating husband,” into Facebook and instantly found hundreds of posts from various accounts selling the exact same story.
“If even half of them get $55 or $100 total… that’s thousands and thousands of dollars every single day,” she added.
Katie reported the scam to the administrator of the local group where she first saw it posted, alerted Venmo about the account the scammer was using to collect funds and reported dozens of the posts to Facebook.
“Just by itself it doesn’t look like a scam, but when you’re looking at 30, 60, 90, hundreds of them… then it’s very obvious,” she said. Many of the posts use the same photos, almost all of them use identical language and they also turn off comments and tell people to message them directly if they want the computer. With comments on the post closed, victims can’t warn others not to fall for the scheme.
A few days later Facebook told Katie the posts didn’t violate community standards and they’d remain up.
“After reporting all of those posts and still not getting their attention I’m not really sure what to do,” Katie said. That’s when she contacted CBS Austin.
CBS Austin reached out to Meta and Facebook directly. They told us they’d look into it. A week later they said teams were now busy monitoring content on the Israeli conflict, but they’d get back to this issue when they could. Adding, in part:
Whether it’s mail, phones, e-mail or social networks, counterfeits and fraud is a problem that’s always persisted with new technology. But that’s exactly why Meta always has – and always will – take a hard line against scams, fraud and abuse in all of its forms to help keep it off of our platforms.
Scams, fraud, and abuse aren’t new challenges. They happen online and offline and across the entire technology industry. But given the reach and impact of Meta’s technologies, we know we have a big role to play in combating it.
As a result of the teams we’ve built and the technology we’ve developed, we’re able to keep a lot of fake accounts from ever going live. We keep a lot of counterfeit and stolen goods from ever getting onto marketplace to begin with. And, we’re able to stop a lot of financially-motivated scams before anyone on our platforms encounter them.
According to Meta, from April through June of 2023, they removed 676 million fake accounts on Facebook and 1.1 billion pieces of spam content from the site.
“I don’t want somebody else to have to go through this… feeling ridiculous and kind of dumb for falling for something that you shouldn’t have,” Katie said.
“Nobody should be embarrassed or anything like that… it happens to everybody,” said Austin Police Detective Marie Bynum who works in the department’s financial crimes unit. Bynum said scams on social media are all too common.
“You can’t see them, and you don’t know who you’re dealing with so it’s easy for somebody to portray somebody they’re not,” Bynum said.
Her top tips when making transactions with someone online are:
- Review the seller or gifter’s profile looking to see if they have a friends list and are active on the site
- Be skeptical if they initially offer something for free and then ask for money later
- Think twice if the deal seems too good to be true
They’re steps that can save consumers some frustration and disappointment.
“I do want to just redirect those feelings and help other people, so they don’t fall for this scam. I do consider myself a pretty smart and pretty savvy consumer., and this was just one what got past me,” Katie said.
