ALWAYS USE COMMON SENSE WHEN POSTING ON SOCIAL MEDIA ORLANDO (FLA.) SENTINEL ORLANDO, Fla. — As people head off on summer vacations, they should be aware that con artists have come up with a new twist on an old financial fraud, the grandparent scam, that exploits the information tourists post on the Internet during their travel adventures. Using data from social networking sites, such as vacation photos posted on Facebook, criminals are targeting the vacationers’ family members, particularly the elderly ones, with bogus calls about loved ones injured, jailed or otherwise caught in a jam during their trips. Hundreds of Floridians were persuaded last year alone to wire huge sums of money to rescue their relatives from nonexistent predicaments, according to one money transfer company. The scam, which targets travelers and relatives of all ages, amounts to millions of dollars a year nationwide. “When families go on vacation, they don’t do their relatives any favors when they post Facebook pictures and tell everyone how long they’ll be gone,” said Barbara Fore, an elderrelated-crimes investigator for the Seminole County Sheriff ’s Offi ce. “Criminals are monitoring things like Facebook all the time and they can often fi nd out just about everything they need to know to run their cons.” The grandparent scam is not new, but the social media connection is an emerging trend, according to MoneyGram International Inc., a Dallas-based money wire services company. Nearly one-third of consumers ages 18 to 49 reveal details of their vacations online, which criminals can exploit, according to a recent survey sponsored by the company. Floridians lost $444,000 last year using MoneyGram wire transfers as a result of 293 scams that targeted vacationers’ relatives, the company said. And more than 40 percent of those Florida scams occurred during the summer months, MoneyGram said. The company added that it prevented some of those transactions from going through, though specifi c fi gures were not available. Nationwide, unknowing victims of the grandparent scam used MoneyGram to wire $20.5 million to con artists in 2012, the company said. MoneyGram said it prevented $14 million worth of those transfers and returned that money to the victims. MoneyGram’s research does not include scams or losses involving Western Union or other money transfer companies. And although it is not clear how many of the criminals working the grandparent scam use information from Facebook or other websites, investigators say they have noticed a dramatic increase in social media involvement in the past year, said Kim Garner, MoneyGram’s top global security executive.
Posted on: Sun, 30 Jun 2013 17:04:46 +0000