Facebook 'London' Scam Picking Up In Intensity

A phishing scam that seems to have hooked and hacked many Facebook members' accounts since early this year appears to have picked up in intensity over the last month. Hackers are logging into users' accounts, but it's actually not the hacked member who falls victim to the lucrative scam. It's their friends.

It was a bit of a surprise when my friend Blaire sent me a chat message on Facebook earlier this week to tell me she was in London when she had just come up to Manhattan two days earlier and mentioned nothing of the upcoming trip. It was even more surprising when she told me she was mugged and robbed at gunpoint a night earlier, and needed me to send her nearly a thousand bucks so she could get back to the U.S.

Turns out Blaire wasn't even in London, she was at work in Baltimore, clueless to what was going on, and it didn't take me long to realize someone had hacked into her account and was fishing for sympathetic friends who would open their wallets to help a friend in trouble.

"I need your help," the fake Blaire asked me. "I want you to loan me."

Consider that the line that gave it away.

"I want you to loan me." Who says that?

I played along to get some more info so I could report the incident. They told me to wire them $975 and have it sent to 147, Cromwell Road, Kensington, London.

"The money will be sent to me via western union. I hope you have your credit card with you? Did you have it with you at the moment?" the hacker asked.

Yeah. I'm right on top of that. While I was quick to the punch line, a Google search turned up plenty of similar incidents, including ones about a few folks who weren't so Web savvy and lost a wad of cash in an effort to reach out to a desperate friend.

via Facebook 'London' Scam Picking Up In Intensity - wcbstv.com.