Be wary of Facebook scams like this.
A woman from Melbourne Australia got conned out of a truckload of money after receiving a friend request on Facebook from a doctor.
A year after accepting the request, she was messaged by her ‘friend’ and ended up losing nearly $600,000 because of it.
The team of scammers told the woman that they were ‘Dr Frank Harrison’, a wealthy and successful surgeon from the US.
The woman and Harrison began talking when he told her that he was planning a move to Australia to start a business and wanted to meet her in person.
Jennifer Chen told news.com.au that she then received a phone call from Harrison who claimed he was at the airport and in trouble.
He stated that he had carried too much cash through customs and convinced Chen to pay the $3,000 penalty fee that he was charged with so the rest of his money ($1.5 million) would get released.
Chen believed that she was talking to a customs office worker who kept ringing her back looking for larger amounts of money over a six month period.
In over half a year, she had made 33 payments to the pair and told the news site that she didn’t realise both the girl and the doctor were scammers.
She had given away her entire life savings by the time she admitted to her husband about what had been going on.
Her husband said that the scammers scroll through Facebook and look for naive and vulnerable targets who they can then manipulate.
Sometimes a friend in need isn’t actually your friend indeed.
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