Get Rich Quick Schemes That Target Young People Online Proliferate l ION International
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Get-Rich-Quick Schemes That Target Young People Online Proliferate
Many scams can seem surprisingly legitimate to those who spend a lot of time on social-media platforms
LaNiah Moon had just moved out of her college dorm and into her parents’ house in February when she received a direct message on Instagram from a woman named Maya, offering her an opportunity to “make some quick cash.”
Ms. Moon, 22 years old, had lost her on-campus job the year before when the Covid-19 pandemic began, and was taking classes remotely from home in Chicago while also looking for a job. She says Maya told her that if she gave her $150, she could “flip” it into $1,500.
Although Ms. Moon was a bit skeptical, she says that Maya had several thousand followers on Instagram, including a “mutual”—someone Ms. Moon also followed—which gave the woman’s profile an air of legitimacy. She also saw pictures of Maya posing on top of a car and says that vision of success played a role in her gullibility.
“I think I was just really, really vulnerable at that moment,” says Ms. Moon. “I thought, ‘I’m going to just send this and see where it goes.’ ”
Ms. Moon sent the money via Cash App, a mobile-payment service. When Maya disappeared, Ms. Moon had no recourse: While Cash App asks users to confirm what they are doing before sending money to a new person, once payments are made they cannot be returned unless the recipient chooses to give them back.
The cash-flipping scam Ms. Moon fell for is one of dozens of ways that swindlers steal money from young adults after first approaching them on social-media platforms. While such scams have been proliferating for years, there was a sharp uptick in 2020 as people started spending more time online amid the pandemic. Reported consumer losses from scams that started on social media totaled $261 million in 2020, according to the Federal Trade Commission’s Consumer Sentinel Network. That compares with $113 million in reported losses for all of 2019.
Cybersecurity experts say millennials and members of Generation Z are particularly susceptible to these scams because social media is so integral to their lives. More than older generations, they use these platforms to forge relationships, gather information, shop, espouse political views, conduct business and more. A strong sense of familiarity lends legitimacy to everything they do and see on these platforms—and swindlers know how to take advantage of this. The lightning speed with which money can be exchanged also puts young people at risk—they often realize they’ve been scammed mere minutes after a transaction they can’t undo.
A young adult may not fall for the email from the prince promising them money, says Alethe Denis, a cybersecurity consultant and social engineer who studies how psychological manipulation can lead to security breaches, but “what they’re maybe not considering is that somebody who is in their direct messages on LinkedIn promising a job that sounds too good to be true” also cannot be trusted.
Myriad schemes
Today’s most common scams fall into three categories: online-shopping deals and product giveaways in which the goods are never delivered; offers of free cash or too-good-to-be-true investment opportunities, sometimes involving cryptocurrency; and fabricated romances, says Satnam Narang, a research engineer at the cybersecurity firm Tenable who has been studying social-media scams since 2007. No platform is exempt from these schemes, he says.
Brand or celebrity impersonation is at play in many of these cases, according to Mr. Narang, who says a direct message on Twitter from someone impersonating a celebrity that says, “You’ve won my Cash App giveaway!” could look legitimate at first glance.
The rapper Megan Thee Stallion really did give away money to Twitter users via Cash App this year—and dozens of impersonators used that event as an opportunity to reach out to hopeful fans with bogus news that they won, asking them to send small sums of money before receiving their winnings, says Mr. Narang.
The use of hashtags on social media can make it particularly easy for bad actors to target a certain audience, says Jane Lee, a fraud-prevention adviser at digital fraud-prevention firm Sift. Scammers, for example, can use a hashtag like #fashion or #cybermonday to tailor malicious posts for people who are following those topics, or can simply look for users posting those hashtags to identify who might be susceptible to a DM approach, she says.
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