An Oregon couple lost a life-changing amount of money after attempting to call a customer service line for help logging back into Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The victims, who requested anonymity, were trying to sell items on Facebook Marketplace but ended up losing $44,000 in an irreversible wire transfer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The husband forgot his Facebook password and searched for Facebook\u2019s customer service on Google. Unbeknownst to him, he landed on a fake site mimicking the real Facebook and called the listed 1-800 helpline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the time, he didn’t notice an additional letter in the website URL, a red flag indicating the site was illegitimate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThey convinced me that his credit card had been hacked,\u201d the wife explained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Panicking about their money, the couple, both in their early 70s, followed the scammer’s instructions. The wife clicked on a link provided by the scammer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI clicked on it so they could have control over my laptop and talk to me on my cell phone,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The scammer, impersonating a Facebook employee, then showed her what appeared to be fraudulent activity on their bank account.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThey had me wire transfer a total of $44,000 to clean everything up,\u201d she recounted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Unfortunately, even the bank account page shown to her was fake. Now, the reality of the loss is sinking in as they realize they cannot recover the money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe last two weeks have been very stressful. I generally run 110\/72 blood pressure. My blood pressure last week was close to 200\/75,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m not going to trust a lot anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Recovering wire transfer funds lost in scams is extremely difficult due to their untraceable nature. If you fall victim to a scam, contact local law enforcement and your bank or financial institution immediately.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An Oregon couple lost a life-changing amount of money after attempting to call a customer service line for help logging back into Facebook. The victims, who requested anonymity, were trying to sell items on Facebook Marketplace but ended up losing $44,000 in an irreversible wire transfer. How It Happened: The husband forgot his Facebook password […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4141,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[177],"tags":[33],"class_list":["post-4140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-customer-service-scam","tag-scam-awareness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ripandscam.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ripandscam.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ripandscam.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ripandscam.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ripandscam.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4140"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ripandscam.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4142,"href":"https:\/\/www.ripandscam.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4140\/revisions\/4142"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ripandscam.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ripandscam.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ripandscam.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ripandscam.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}