Posted on 09/03/2009 10:16:29 AM PDT by Ben Mugged
A Missouri woman was tricked into wiring about $4,000 to someone in England after receiving faked messages from a friend on Facebook asking for help, police said Wednesday.
Jayne Scherrman of Cape Girardeau wired the money through Western Union after receiving what she believed were several requests for help from her friend, Sgt. Jason Selzer said.
Police were notified about the scam on Aug. 26, Selzer said. They believe someone took over the Facebook account of a Cape Girardeau County resident, Grace Parry, changed the password so she couldn't access it and sent out messages saying she and her husband had been detained in London and needed money.
Scherrman said received a message last Tuesday from Parry saying she needed help. Scherrman, a pediatric dentist, said Parry and her minister husband go on mission trips, so she didn't think it unusual that they might be in England.
She figured they really needed assistance if they could only reach her electronically, and expected they'd quickly pay her back. She originally was told electronically they needed $600 for a hotel and taxis. Then she was told it wasn't enough with the exchange rate. Finally, she was told by a caller that the couple had been detained and more money was needed to help them fly home.
Scherrman asked to speak with her friend, but was told she wasn't available. She also got a name from the caller and tried to get an address when she realized she might have been scammed. By then, she had wired nearly $4,000 through three Western Union transfers, she said.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
To bad so sad.
Yeah, I’ve had them try that on me. Problem is that they picked a friend that I knew couldn’t afford a trip to England to begin with.
Some people shouldn’t own a computer......
I wonder how long it’s going to take the Nigerians to get on board with this.
This was on the local missouri news. I don’t understand how they get the passwords to the facebook accts. Hacking facebook?
That’s why I don’t do facebook.
Simple script running on a PC that takes a list of email addresses (probably gets them from the White House) and guesses at the password. Many users simply use the word "password" as their password. Sounds stupid and it is. The script tries hundreds of thousands of logins and will report success. Their success rate only has to be less than 1%.
Best advice is to use a "hard" password on your on-line accounts. Use a combination of letters and numbers and at least one special character.
Had the same thing happened to me, a member of our clergy purporting to be stranded in an airport without funds. I forwarded it to our verstryman and it was determined to be a fraud. I wondered how they did it. Fun, no?
Never in a million years would I go wiring money out of the country without personally speaking to the person who said they needed my help.
It's as if some stranger were walking around my neighborhood, knocking on doors, saying Dianna needs $20. How many people would just say, "Oh!Ok."?
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