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On Sunday, June 14, police investigators in New York received a complaint from a local resident who claimed she was scammed through Facebook.
According to police, the victim alleged that she received a private message from a contact on her “friends list” that stated she was stranded out of the country due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
The scammer then asked for money to get back to the country.
Police said that the victim delivered $1,600 through Western Union and Money Gram, but when she contacted her friend, she was told that she had never requested any money and her Facebook account had been hacked.
Last month, Facebook announced a new feature for Messenger designed to cut down on fraudsters looking to scam users.
The company said it scans accounts for suspicious activity, looking for anomalies like accounts sending a large number of requests in a short time span or numerous message requests to users under 18.
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