Sean Reiser

Last night, or rather early this morning, at around 3AM, I received a Facebook IM from a former coworker (let's call him "Frank") telling me he was in London, "got mugged and robbed at gun point" and needed my help. He went on to tell me that he was beaten and bruised. Where he said he needed cash, my primary concern was for his health. I figured he needed someone to get him to a place where he could get medical care, to a police station, or the US Consulate so I began reaching out via social networking to my contacts in London. When I said I was working on finding friends in London who could render aid he asked me to hold on a minute and disconnected about 5 minutes later. My spider sense screamed "scam" at this point but I still sent messages to our mutual contacts on facebook and linkedin to see if anyone had heard from him. It was confirmed later that his facebook account was compromised and I was talking to an impostor, probably because of a weak password.

In some respects I was the perfect mark for this scam. I was tired because I was up late. I was close enough to Frank that I'd want to help him, but hadn't spoken to him in a while, so I wouldn't know if he were in London or the US. When I heard that he was robbed at gun point my emotions overrode reason.

Call it ego, but I hate to admit that I was in a position to fall for this. But let's learn from my mistakes and see why I did.

The biggest obstacle scammers have to overcome is gaining the trust of their mark (it's not called a confidence game for nothing). As I believed it was Frank, I trusted him as much as I would Frank. In order to keep me "off my toes", the impostor presented a sense of urgency and danger. When a friend's in trouble you don't think about verifying their identity, you think about how to help him.

Looking at this with 20/20 hind sight, the first thing I should've done was ask Frank for his daughter's phone number, so I could call her, to let her know and since she would be willing to help. In the chat there were little things he said and did which were out of character for him, I dismissed clues thinking "he's been through an ordeal". And, of course, I should've called him or asked him to call me.