Did Facebook Give Away Money In February 2018
How Fake Mark Zuckerbergs Scam Facebook Users Out of Their Cash
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SAN FRANCISCO — A Facebook notification on Gary Bernhardt's telephone woke him upward i nighttime concluding November with incredible news: a message from Marker Zuckerberg himself, saying that he had won $750,000 in the Facebook lottery.
"I got all excited. Wouldn't yous?" said Mr. Bernhardt, 67, a retired forklift driver and Army veteran in Ham Lake, Minn. He stayed up until dawn trading messages with the person on the other finish. To obtain his winnings, he was told, he first needed to transport $200 in iTunes gift cards.
Hours afterwards, Mr. Bernhardt bought the gift cards at a gas station and sent the redemption codes to the account that said it was Mr. Zuckerberg. But the requests for money didn't stop. By January, Mr. Bernhardt had wired an additional $1,310 in cash, or almost a third of his Social Security checks over 3 months.
Mr. Bernhardt eventually realized that he had been the unwitting victim of a scam that has thrived on Facebook and Instagram past using the sites' ain brands — and its top executives — to lure people in. At a time when the real Mr. Zuckerberg has vowed to clean upward Facebook, the Silicon Valley company has failed to eliminate impostor accounts masquerading as him and his chief operating officeholder, Sheryl Sandberg, to swindle Facebook users out of thousands of dollars.
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An examination by The New York Times found 205 accounts impersonating Mr. Zuckerberg and Ms. Sandberg on Facebook and its photograph-sharing site Instagram, not including fan pages or satire accounts, which are permitted nether the company's rules. At least 51 of the impostor accounts, including 43 on Instagram, were lottery scams like the ane that fooled Mr. Bernhardt.
The fake Zuckerbergs and imitation Sandbergs have proliferated on Facebook and Instagram, despite the presence of Facebook groups that track the scams and complaints about the flim-flam dating to at to the lowest degree 2022.
A twenty-four hour period after The Times informed Facebook of its findings, the company removed all 96 impostor Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg accounts on its Facebook site. Information technology had left up all only i of the 109 fakes on Instagram, just removed them after this article was published.
"Thank you and then much for reporting this," said Pete Voss, a Facebook spokesman. He could non say why Facebook had not spotted the accounts posing as its top executives, including several that appeared to take existed for more than than eight years. "It'south not easy," he said. "We want to get ameliorate."
Facebook requires people to use their authentic name and identity. Yet the company has estimated that perhaps 3 pct of its users — every bit many as 60 million accounts — are fake. Some of those accounts are disguised as ordinary people, some pretend to be celebrities such equally Justin Bieber.
In congressional testimony this month, Mr. Zuckerberg said Facebook was improving its software to automatically detect and remove such accounts. Facebook officials have said the company blocks millions of fake accounts trying to register each day and analysts said the social network has improved its efforts to remove the accounts.
"Faux accounts, over all, are a big issue, because that's how a lot of the other issues that we encounter around fake news and strange election interference are happening as well," Mr. Zuckerberg told lawmakers, adding that Facebook is hiring more people to piece of work on reviewing content.
But major holes remain. Interviews with a one-half-dozen contempo victims — and online conversations with nine impostor accounts — showed that the Facebook lottery deception is alive and well, preying particularly on older, less educated and low-income people.
The Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg impostor accounts typically apply the executives' pictures as profile photos and list their Facebook titles. Some mail service manipulated images of people holding oversize checks. The names of Mr. Zuckerberg and Ms. Sandberg are sometimes misspelled, or utilise parentheses and eye names (Elliot for Mr. Zuckerberg and Kara for Ms. Sandberg) to evade Facebook'due south software.
Many of the impersonators had dozens to hundreds of followers; several had thousands. They are aided past a network of other sham accounts with generic names, such equally Jim Towey and Mary Gilbert, which purported to be "Facebook claim agents."
The scammers seek victims who, based on their Facebook and Instagram profiles, seem vulnerable, said Robin Alexander van der Kieft, who manages several Facebook groups that track the scams. The various simulated accounts share information about successful shakedowns and continue pouncing on those victims, he said. He has traced many of the internet protocol addresses of these fake accounts to Nigeria and Ghana.
The pitch oftentimes begins with an unsolicited "Hello. How are yous doing?" on Facebook or Instagram. The fake accounts so proceed, sometimes in broken English, to inform people of their enormous Facebook lottery prize.
After several messages between The Times and a fake Sheryl Sandberg account on Instagram last week, the impostor offered $950,000 and a new automobile via the "Facebook splash promotion 2022."
When asked for proof the account was Ms. Sandberg, the scammer sent a Photoshopped identification. "I want you to know that this Promo is 100% Real and Legitimate and the Government are aware of this Promo you lot don't take to be skeptical all you just accept to do is to follow all instruction giving to you okay," the account added.
Iii days later, the account said it needed a $100 iTunes gift carte to process and activate the winning A.T.1000. card. (iTunes souvenir cards tin chop-chop be redeemed and traded on the black market for cash.)
After initially resisting, the sham Ms. Sandberg agreed to a phone phone call, adding "I'm not the one that volition be speaking to you lot O.Grand." Seconds later, a telephone call arrived from a number with a 650 area lawmaking — Silicon Valley.
"Yous have to exist careful, there are lots of scam artists," a man said in absolute English after he was informed that he was speaking with The Times. He added, "All I'g trying to practise is get your winning packet."
The Times reached out to more than than l impostor accounts. Near messages went unreturned. None that replied bankrupt grapheme.
The charade has ensnared people like Donna Keithley, 50, a stay-at-home mom with four children in Martinsburg, Pa. In March 2022, an account with the name Linda Ritchey messaged Ms. Keithley "on behalf of the Facebook C.East.O Marking Zuckerberg" to laissez passer on word of her good fortune: $650,000 in lottery winnings. Ms. Keithley wired $350 — a commitment fee — the side by side day.
That began a monthlong saga. According to a 28,000-give-and-take transcript of a Facebook Messenger conversation betwixt Ms. Keithley and the account, the scammer repeatedly played on Ms. Keithley's Christian faith to get her to send more money.
"Are you good Christian with god fears?" the Linda Ritchey account asked. "Can you trust me and also accept believe in me?"
Over the adjacent month, Ms. Keithley received non just Facebook letters simply a call from a Mr. Zuckerberg impostor who assured her the lottery was real. She even heard from a Facebook account masquerading as Eileen K. Decker, the former United states of america attorney in Los Angeles, asking for $205 to process her winnings.
The Times found at least 5 Facebook accounts posing as Ms. Decker and advertizement government grants, another known scam. Ms. Decker told The Times that she has tried to get Facebook to remove the accounts, just the site wanted a picture of her government-issued identification to do and then. She refused. "To me, they're not a trusted source," she said. She added that she had contacted the F.B.I. and hired a lawyer.
Ms. Keithley's scammer ordered her to open new credit cards and bank accounts, and even to become a loan using her hubby'southward 2001 Ford Taurus as collateral. Midway through the month, she said she had a minor stroke from the stress.
By April 2022, she had used her family's tax refund and loans from relatives to pay the scammer $5,306.43 — much of it in coin transfers to the proper noun Ben Amos in Lagos, Nigeria.
"It simply devastated the whole household," said her married man, Tim Keithley, a security guard who was making $10 an hour at the time.
The ordeal was so plush, Ms. Keithley said, the family'due south telephone service was close off. They too had to go to a food bank.
While Ms. Keithley still gets letters from accounts challenge to work for Facebook, she said she is at present wiser. "Lord as my witness, no one's getting any more money from me," she said.
Subsequently they are duped, victims may struggle with what to practise side by side. Mr. Bernhardt, the retired forklift commuter, said he didn't know how to report the scammers to Facebook. Ms. Keithley said she had called a number for Facebook she had found online, though she was non sure the number was authentic. She also reported the scam to local police, who said they couldn't help, and the Pennsylvania attorney general. A spokesman for the Pennsylvania attorney general said the role did not have a record of Ms. Keithley's report, just that information technology planned to contact her.
Others said they regularly report scammers to Facebook, but the visitor can be slow to act.
Kathryn Schwartz, 55, from Lodi, Northward.J., said she has been in credit-card debt since she lost $1,742 trying to claim bogus Facebook lottery winnings in 2022. She said she has since been barraged past scammers and regularly reports them, including in messages to the existent Mr. Zuckerberg.
One Facebook business relationship named Mary Williams recently messaged Ms. Schwartz, saying it would help her merits her winnings. A review of the account showed that in March information technology had renamed itself, purporting to be a Boise, Idaho, native who works at Facebook. Years of posts before that depicted a human in Nigeria.
When Ms. Schwartz posted on Facebook concluding calendar week that Mary Williams was a con artist, the account left a annotate: "You think you are smart but y'all are not. If you were smart why were you scammed." The emojis tacked at the end of the message were crying with laughter.
Mr. Bernhardt said that since he wired his last payment to the Mr. Zuckerberg masquerader in January, he has heard from ii other Marker Zuckerbergs, ane Sheryl Sandberg and other accounts promising him winnings in return for more cash.
No conversations have gone as deep equally with his original scammer. "I thought we were getting existent close," Mr. Bernhardt said. "He started calling me Mr. Gary and I started calling him Mr. Mark."
He said he had told his scammer about growing upward in a foster home and his dream of owning a house on a lake.
"They sucked me in considering they knew my dreams," he said.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/25/technology/fake-mark-zuckerberg-facebook.html
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