Social media has enabled people to connect and reunite with each other. Unfortunately, it also has provided another outlet for scam artists.
According to the Federal Trade Commission, “More than one in four people who reported losing money to fraud in 2021 said it started on social media with an ad, a post or a message.”
An event organizer in the TBR News Media coverage area recently discovered that someone had set up fraudulent social media accounts pretending to be a representative from their organization. When they took to their Facebook and Instagram accounts to warn the public, they found their name wasn’t the only one being used to scam local residents.
There are countless scammers out there impersonating not only other people but companies and nonprofit organizations. In the incidents occurring in the TBR coverage area, people set up social media accounts promising vendors that they could secure their spots at future events of the organizers through the account by using PayPal.
The incidents are just another reminder that navigating social media is the same as the web: You can’t take anyone at their word.
The best thing to do when anyone approaches you over social media asking for money — just as you would over the web and phone — is to ask if you can get back to them. If they keep insisting that you pay now, odds are they’re not who they say they are.
Anyone who is legitimately representing a business would have no problem with you…
