***For All Things Wyoming, Sign-Up For Our Daily Newsletter***
By Jen Kocher, Cowboy State Daily
The executive director of a Wyoming missing person nonprofit is sounding the alarm about an uptick of phishing scams involving missing people posts on social media.
Desirée Tinoco, founder of Missing People of Wyoming, said what began as one scam involving a missing teenage boy has spiraled out of control as scams infiltrated her group’s Facebook page and several other public group pages throughout Natrona County and the state.
As someone who is well-versed in parsing out scammers, this particular one caught Tinoco off-guard.
“I’ve never seen this before,” she said. “The fact they are changing the picture of the missing person and reusing (it) is really sick and scary.”
Photos, Descriptions Don’t Match
Tinoco became aware of it after sharing a post for a missing teen named “Tyler Buckland” by a Facebook user named “Kelly.” A user pointed out to Tinoco the same post later morphed to a banking scam.
A post with “Tyler’s” photo and story showed up again on another local Casper social media site as “Tyler Tommy.” It had been shared by “Leah Tommy,” who claimed to be his mom, Tinoco said.
The story was the same about his leaving for school and not coming home. The description did not match the photo nor did it give specific details with a geographical location. Like the other post,…
