Austin mom uncovers scam in local buy/sell groups offering a free Macbook to avenge a cheating spouse, which upon further investigation, was reported to Meta.
An Austin mom uncovered a scam on a local buy/sell group where a poster offered a free new Macbook, claiming retaliation against a cheating spouse.
The poster replied that they'd actually just moved out of Austin but would still give Katie the Macbook if she could cover shipping. "Quickly I responded back, 'Of course. If someone is giving me a free laptop, yes, I will pay for postage,'" she recalled. Feeling confident this was a scam, Katie told the poster she was no longer interested in the computer, but the scammer became pushy. They urged Katie to send more money and even tried to call her multiple times on Facebook Messenger. Curious, Katie typed the words, "Macbook cheating husband," into Facebook and instantly found hundreds of posts from various accounts selling the exact same story.
"Just by itself it doesn't look like a scam, but when you're looking at 30, 60, 90, hundreds of them... then it's very obvious," she said. Many of the posts use the same photos, almost all of them use identical language and they also turn off comments and tell people to message them directly if they want the computer. With comments on the post closed, victims can't warn others not to fall for the scheme.
CBS Austin reached out to Meta and Facebook directly. They told us they'd look into it. A week later they said teams were now busy monitoring content on the Israeli conflict, but they'd get back to this issue when they could. Adding, in part: As a result of the teams we’ve built and the technology we’ve developed, we’re able to keep a lot of fake accounts from ever going live. We keep a lot of counterfeit and stolen goods from ever getting onto marketplace to begin with. And, we’re able to stop a lot of financially-motivated scams before anyone on our platforms encounter them.
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