Watch Out For This Scam Washington Because It Almost Got Me

There are few things more frustrating than having your Facebook account hacked.  Facebook makes it harder for you to prove that you are you, than for someone to pretend to be you.  Bad actors have figured out a way to take advantage of that frustration to prey on even the savviest of those on the alert for scams.

If you've had to go through the process to recover your account, you know all the steps you have to take and then you have to wait for days to get an answer.  Those of us that remember what it's like to talk to people, tend to become impatient and look for a customer service number.  Yes...I tried to find a customer service number.  Turns out, they don't have one.  I didn't learn that until it was too late.

In my digging I came across a page that looked like a mobile Facebook help center page.  It had a toll free number (844 prefix) associated and specifically addressed accounts that were hacked.  I called the number and got someone on the other line who had a distinctive accent.  I really didn't think anything of the accent because tech companies (and many others) have gone to outsourcing their customer service operations.

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I was told by 'Roman' who was on the line that my account was used to sell multiple high end items on Marketplace, the buyers contacted Facebook complaining they didn't get their items after paying up front.  Roman needed me to to verify some information to help these people get their money refunded.  I should've figured it out at this point but I was concerned about my account being hacked AND being used to rip people off.  Brain was moving too fast in too many different directions.

Roman then asked me to download a program called Zoho Assist on my desktop computer.  It is a credible remote access program that gives them access to my desktop.  It is also the tool of choice for scammers because it is free to use.  I really should've figured it out here, but Roman was pretty convincing.  So he got access to my desktop, but we moved from there back to my phone.  That's when he asked me to download Cash App.

Cash App was recently ordered to pay their customers $120 million and a fine of $55 million by the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau.  The company did a poor job or protecting against and investigating complaint of fraud.  maybe that's why the scammers asked me to use it.  Cash App is another mobile banking app like Venmo.  I don't use them because I don't  trust them...as I'm continuing to trust Roman.

Roman told me, after downloading it, that I needed to send money to a friend on Cash App to make sure I could transfer money.  After that he said they would use Cash App to refund the money to the people that were scammed since that was the app the scammer used.  The first name I saw was a friend I've known for 25 years.  I breathed a sigh of relief because this was someone I knew I could trust.

I call my friend (with Roman still on the line), tell him what was going on, and asked him to help.  As Roman began to explain the situation, my friend got suspicious.  Then he said the words that made me realize I'd been had:

This sounds like the same thing that happened to my Dad.

I ended Roman's participation on the conference call and began to ask my friend a myriad of questions.  He told me his Dad lost tens of thousands of dollars to the scammers and it was almost exactly the same spiel he was given that I got from Roman.  Fortunately, they were able to recover nearly all of the money, but he told me to act fast to hopefully stop anything that may have begun.

I called my Credit Union and they immediately froze my account and debit card and told me to get to the closest branch as fast as possible.  I called the one credit card that I have, explained the situation, and they cancelled my card and started the process to send a new one.  Fortunately, all of my bills were tied to my account so with that frozen, nothing else could be accessed.

The end result of all of that was:

• New checking and savings accounts
• New credit and debit cards
• changing all of my bill payments to reflect the new account information
• new email address as that was compromised too

I was fortunate that I prevented them from getting any money.  Someone/thing above pointed me to that friend in particular because if I would've chosen someone else, they may not have picked up on it either and everything I had would be gone.  I hope my experience will help you avoid one of your own and by the way...it still took another week before my Facebook account was restored.