Facebook scammers impersonate missing persons org to harvest “likes”

Creating a Facebook page, making it popular and followed by many by using a number of approaches, then finally selling it to the highest bidder that’s interested in spamming the willing followers is the usual operating mode and the final goal of Facebook scammers.

The latest of these bogus pages is taking advantage of the fact that many people ask help online and on Facebook for finding persons who have gone missing.

The page is named “Missing Persons in Australia”, and the latest notice on it is apparently asking users if they have seen a girl by the name of Amber Dang. In order to entice users to “like” the page and, therefore, to follow it, the scammers lie and say that everyone who “likes” the photo will get a $400 reward ($1,000 if she is found).

“Rewards are not tax deductible and is paid by the National Center for Missing Persons in Australia. Anyone having information should contact National Center for Missing Persons in Australia,” the scammers add, potentially creating a lot of problems for the organization when gullible users call to collect the money.

That is, they could create problems for it if it actually existed, but it does not.

“The missing person posters on the site are fake. The people pictured in the posters are not missing. Their images have been stolen from other websites for use in the fake posters,” Hoax-Slayer points out. “And, user certainly will not receive money just for liking the Page or sharing a poster. The promised rewards do not exist. [-¦] the phone number previously listed on the page is for a private residence.”

“The goal of the immoral likewhore who created the fake Page is to gather as many likes as possible in the shortest possible time. Pages with large numbers of likes can be later repurposed to launch survey scams and other types of fraudulent activity,” he explains, adding that page owners that try to trick participants into giving them money and personal information by convincing them that they have earned a “reward” are not to be trusted.