Swedish woman victim of Facebook fraud
A Swedish woman has lost thousands of kronor after she was tricked into revealing her bank account details to a contact on popular social networking website Facebook.
Assuming the identity of an acquaintance, American fraudsters got in touch with the woman from Skåne in southern Sweden.
"It was an schoolmate I'd been in contact with. He wrote to me about an American lottery," she told Sydsvenskan.
Soon after she had registered for the lottery, the woman received a phone call from the United States. She was told that she had won a trip to Florida and was asked to supply her bank account details to cover a small part of the travel costs.
Only when she was asked to confirm that she had not in fact won the trip did she begin to realize that she had been duped.
But it was too late. By the time she managed to cancel her debit card, the fraudsters had already managed to withdraw 6,400 kronor ($1,000) from her account.
Her friend suspects that somebody hijacked his account with the intention of perpetrating fraud.
Anders Ahlqvist, a commissioner with the police service's IT crimes unit, said he had not come across Facebook fraud before. But he was not surprised.
"There are new varieties emerging every week," he said.
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Assuming the identity of an acquaintance, American fraudsters got in touch with the woman from Skåne in southern Sweden.
"It was an schoolmate I'd been in contact with. He wrote to me about an American lottery," she told Sydsvenskan.
Soon after she had registered for the lottery, the woman received a phone call from the United States. She was told that she had won a trip to Florida and was asked to supply her bank account details to cover a small part of the travel costs.
Only when she was asked to confirm that she had not in fact won the trip did she begin to realize that she had been duped.
But it was too late. By the time she managed to cancel her debit card, the fraudsters had already managed to withdraw 6,400 kronor ($1,000) from her account.
Her friend suspects that somebody hijacked his account with the intention of perpetrating fraud.
Anders Ahlqvist, a commissioner with the police service's IT crimes unit, said he had not come across Facebook fraud before. But he was not surprised.
"There are new varieties emerging every week," he said.
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