Sheriff warns of social networking scam
by Sweetwater County Sheriff’s Office
March 8, 2013
ROCK SPRINGS, WYOMING - The Sweetwater County Sheriff’s Office has received local reports of a social networking scam cybercrooks often employed on Facebook.
The prospective victim is contacted on Facebook by someone they have already "friended" who says something happened to his/her old account and asks to be "friended" again.
What follows are emails or instant messages purportedly from the "friend" that talk about receiving a large sum of money from a non-existent federal program set up to aid the impoverished and/or the handicapped.
"The scammer is counting on the fact that the would-be victim knows and trusts the individual he is pretending to be," said Sheriff Rich Haskell. "The goal is to obtain personal and financial information."
Officials recommend, as always, that people never provide such information in response to an unsolicited communication.
"If this happens to you," Haskell said, "first contact the person you know you’ve already "friended" and confirm whether or not they sent the message. It’s nearly a certainty that they did not, and if they didn’t, it’s possible that their Facebook account has been compromised."
Facebook’s Press Room website at http://newsroom.fb.com/ contains a great deal of information about scams that utilize social networking.
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