Imagine receiving a text from a friend, only to discover… it’s not actually your friend?
This is just one of the many latest methods scam artists are using to trick people into forking over their money, their information, and their time.
Billings resident James Abeyta, 38, described just how much havoc con artists can cause.
“I’ve lost so much money in the past few months,” Abeyta said. He explained how a scammer reached out to him by posing as an old friend on Facebook. This “friend” quickly told Abeyta about an exciting new CashApp program that supposedly had the potential to earn a large amount of money. “They told me I had to pay a $100 ‘deposit fee’ before any funds could be transferred to me. So, I went and put $100 on my CashApp card,” Abeyta said. What happened next, unfortunately, is not uncommon. “They took the money off my card, and ran.”
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) stated this type of online theft spiked last year, with 95,000 people reporting financial loss due to social media fraud – that’s twice as many as 2020.
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