Complaint Review: Marcie Roth

I am writing to inform you of a Facebook scam. I have seem them before but this one was 
different. Two people had their Facebook page copied or “cloned” (my friends term). My only goal in this is to keep others from having this happen to them. This surprised me, I didn’t know it could be done.

I was on my Facebook page on December 8, 2013, when a friend of mine (a person I see every day) asked me if I had been contacted by the Facebook lottery. I said no. She said they had delivered a check to her for she winnings and she noticed my name was on the delivery agent’s list. She thought I should know and maybe I could ask the agent about it. I said ok (only because I know this woman, she’s very nice and would go without to help someone else). 

My friend gave me her name, profile said she works as a Lottery Claim Agent, Studied at University of Maryland and lives in Montogamery Village, Maryland. I contacted this woman.                                                                                                                                                                                                      

While I did that, I still had a chat going with my friend. I was questioning her the whole time. This woman (I’m sure it wasn’t really the correct person) said she would check, asked my some not too personal questions and told me I had indeed won $70,000.00. She asked how I could like that, cash or cheque. She said because the lottery was a Facebook promotion there was a fee.

I asked my friend in the other chat about the fee, she said she had paid it, got her check the next day, went to the bank and had it checked, the bank said it was good so she deposited it and paid bills.

I agreed to pay the fee. I was asked to pay Western Union. I said no, would she take paypal? The woman agreed and told me to send the money to the email address. I have a transaction number for that from paypal. I was told my check would be delivered by UPS agent the next day and I had to be home to except it. 

The next day I got a text message from this number :925-523-6481.  It was the woman, she wanted to know if I was home. I said I was. She told me that on the way to my home to deliver my winnings an IRS agent stop them. They wanted 10% for the check amount before they would allow delivery.

 
By now, my friend on Facebook had announced that her page had been copied and she hoped no one had excepted a false friend request, it wasn’t really her.

 I told them I would give them no more money and if they couldn’t deliver my “winnings” that I would like my $600 fee returned. After arguing a bit, the woman agreed but said it would take a couple of days.

 
I still haven’t had my money returned and I know it won’t happen. I had to try though. I would never have fallen for this if it hadn’t been for my friend. She’s a very nice person and I never thought of her page being copied. I haven’t told her about this for one, I’m pretty embarrassed that I fell for it and two, she would be upset.

Whoever the person is that is doing this still texts me every once in a while. I ask for my money and they say they will give it back, they are not trying to scam me. The last contact was December 23, 2013. They said if I gave them my paypal ID and password they would return my money. I told them they were really being funny now. 

I didn’t contact anyone sooner about this scam because I really didn’t know who to contact. I told a reporter at the Union Leader and he gave me a couple of places to contact. I don’t want my name or my friend’s name used in this please. I just want to keep these people from doing this to others.