You hear about these Facebook scams. We talk about them on the air because we know they are happening but until last weekend, it had never happened to me. I was the intended victim.
My second cousin Lisa and I have been Facebook friends for years so I thought it was a little odd last week when she sent me a friend request. However, sometimes accounts get shut down and things happen so I quickly approved the friendship and went on with my day. On Saturday a window popped up and “Lisa” was trying to chat to me. We had a brief conversation which quickly turned into her asking whether I had heard about Facebook poker and the huge amount of money I could make. I immediately became suspicious because Lisa’s a level-headed gal, a wife and Mom of two who has her own business. So I went in for the kill.
How’s your Dad?
The response was odd. My Dad? Yeah, I wrote back, your Dad. He’s late, they wrote, I believe intending to relay that he was no longer living. Lisa’s dad is not late, he’s very much alive and one of my favourite people on the planet. So I let loose with a bunch of expletives and deleted and reported the “friendship”.
Only then did I poke around long enough to see that the real Lisa was aware of the duplicate profile and was warning everyone to steer clear of the second “her”. My crazy hours meant I missed her first warning. No harm done – I hope. But it sure was freaky to have some stranger, maybe a 12 year old in Malaysia or a 60 year old in California, attempt to wrestle money out of me with a series of lies. I was already planning my next moves. If they had responded that Dad was fine I was going to use the wrong name for him and see if they said anything. I figured that if it was the real Lisa we could have a big laugh over it. But I was pretty sure Lisa was too busy, and too smart, to get caught up in online gambling deeply enough to want to drag extended family members in there with her.