This morning I was messaged by a friend of mine from college who told me that we was stranded in North Wales. He continued to tell me that last night he was mugged and beaten with all of his cash, cards and cell phone were stolen.
I responded that I was sorry to hear that. I immediately became suspicious because the English grammar wasn't so good. I continued talking with him, waiting to see if he would ask me for money. I asked him how his wife was doing and he responded that she too was beaten pretty badly.
Eventually, after about 10 minutes, the chatter asked me to wire some money via Western Union to him so that he could pay his hotel bill. At that point, I called a few of our mutual friends to see if they knew if our friend and his wife were going to Wales. I also got my friend's cell number and tried calling - voicemail. A few questions I immediately thought of is, "You don't have cash, cards or a cell phone, but you're chatting on Facebook?" and, "I know the hotel would allow you to call your parents collect to get money, why are you asking your friends?"
Finally, I asked the person I was chatting with for his wife's college roommate's name - some information that couldn't be retrieved from a Facebook profile. The person immediately logged off and deleted my friend's Facebook account.
A similar convesation to mine is posted at TechCrunch. Apparently, this scam is very new. These phishers hack into a Facebook user's profile and gather as much public information about them as possible, including spouse, kids, education, etc.
As always, never send private information or money to anyone (including your good friends) without verifying information. Just because it's your friend's account, doesn't mean it's them.
And, as TechCrunch stated, there's really nothing Facebook can do to prevent these scams. It is technically impossible for a social environment to monitor and regulate illegitimate messaging. I assume, the violator deleted the account in hopes of removing any IP route tracing that Facebook could determine to initiate. I, however, doubt Facebook would expend HR to track down needles in haystacks. They're busy doing other things, like redesigning the user interface (again). :)
