‘Facebook Organization Promotion Program’ Advance Fee Scam

Outline:
Facebook Message claims that your name has been selected by Facebook  CEO  Mark Zuckerberg as the winner of $100,000 USD in the ‘Facebook Organization Promotion Program’.

Brief Analysis:
The message is not an official Facebook prize notification and you have  won nary a cent. There is no prize. The message is a scam designed to trick you into sending  your money and personal information to cybercriminals. There are many variations of this scam. Facebook does NOT run lotteries or promotions  in which randomly selected users win large sums of money. Any message that makes such a claim  is sure to be a scam.

Detailed Analysis:
According to this private message, which is sent via Facebook’s internal messaging system, your name has been selected as the winner of  $100,000 USD in the ‘Facebook Organization Promotion Program’. Supposedly, Facebook CEO and founder  Mark Zuckerberg himself made the winning selection using an ‘advanced automated random computer search’ of Facebook email addresses. The message claims that the promotion is a new  innovation by Facebook aimed at offering thanks to the company’s users.

But, alas, despite the claims in the message, you have  not won any money, there is no prize, and there is no such thing as the Facebook Organization Promotion Program. Nor, of course, was the message sent by  Mark Zuckerberg or any other Facebook staff member.

In fact, the message is a typical advance fee scam designed to trick you into sending your money and personal information to online crooks.

If you reply to the message in the hope of claiming your unexpected windfall, you will soon be drawn into an ongoing dialogue with a scammer posing as a Facebook official. After some initial conversation to set up the con, the scammer will ask you to send a specified amount of money  that is supposedly required to cover costs associated with processing your prize.  The scammer  will explain that you must pay for these costs in advance or you will forfeit your claim on the prize. And, the scammer will insist that the costs cannot be paid out of the prize itself.

If you do wire  the amount initially requested, further requests will likely follow. The scammer will claim that the extra funds are needed to cover various unexpected costs that have been incurred during  prize processing. The scammer will probably continue to request further fees until you realise that you are being conned or run out of money to send. At that point, the scammer will simply disappear with your money.

Moreover, as the scam progressed, you may have been asked to provide a large amount of your personal and financial information, ostensibly as a means of proving your identity and verifying your claim. This information may later be used  to steal your identity.

Scams like this are  very common and have been around in various forms for decades. They are often distributed  via email. Because this version is distributed via Facebook’s own messaging system, some recipients may be more inclined to think it is genuine.  The  messages are often sent from hijacked  Facebook accounts that have  been repurposed to make them appear to be official ‘Facebook Promotion’ profiles. Sometimes, the messages may appear to come from one of your own Facebook friends. But, the friend’s account may have  been compromised and he or she may not be aware that the messages have beens  sent in his or her name. Or the  messages may have  been sent via a cloned Facebook Profile.

Bottom line? There is no such thing as a Facebook lottery or promotion in which random users are selected as winners of large cash prizes. Any message in any format that makes such a claim is  sure to be a scam.

Last updated: June 2, 2016
First published: June 2, 2016
By Brett M. Christensen
About Hoax-Slayer

References
Advance Fee Lottery Scams – International Lottery Scam Information
Facebook Promotion, Lottery and Award Scams
Advance Fee Scammers Using Cloned FB Accounts To Gain Victims