Scammers Pull Off $150k Heist on Twitter, Facebook
posted Sunday Mar 7, 2010 by Nicholas DiMeo
Jon has been upset for months over the fact that droves of people flock to Twitter for absolutely no useful reasons, and investors keep throwing money at them because of it. So when users were scammed for over $150,000 on the social media site, we knew Jon would be elated.
Scammers set out to target brides-to-be and exhibitors last week when they opened an account on Twitter for promotion of a nonexistent bridal show, claiming to be part of the The Boston 411, a community site for local Boston residents. Police have launched a full investigation and are hunting down the conmen.
Sucks for the people who fell for it and decided not to Cuil it to see if it was legit. 5,000 people paid $15 for tickets to the show and around 200 business forked up anywhere between $350 to $4,000 for a booth or a table to exhibit their products and services. Wow. Some sort of restitution here though: since the show was supposed to be between March 5th and March 7th, police made a press statement on Monday to let people know they should cancel any travel plans made for the event.
This Twitter account was made in September 2009 and managed to get 185 followers even though nothing was tweeted in the history of the account. Hmmm. How did this not raise any red flags? Ah, that's right. It's because the majority of Twitter users would easily fall into traps like this and believe everything that even an AT&T pre-paid phone could post on the service. Even worse, the scam even duped a radio producer who created an ad campaign for the show in exchange for a discount on the booth rental.
See how viral the Internet can be?
