No sleep last night

One of my established Facebook friends sent me a "Friend Request" which seemed a little strange as we were already friends.
I accepted her request and thought no more of it. Strangely I received a message on "Messenger" asking how I was so I had a
conversation with "her". "She" asked if I had heard the news which "she" said was her winning $250,000 in a Facebook/Powerball
competition. "She" also claimed I was on the winners' list and that I should follow it up.
Being naturally sceptical I observed a couple of things:
a) "She" was typing very quickly which surprised me as my friend is 75 years old and does not have a typing background.
b) "She" was using computer terms/expressions which I frankly doubted my real friend would know about.
c) "She" claimed to have already withdrawn $200 from her bank a/c which proved nothing really.
d) "She" told me to contact the Claims Officer, Beverley Brogan, to claim my winnings.
e) I looked up "Beverley Brogan, a Claims Officer," saw her photo and profile on Facebook but delving further found an "Olwyn Belt"
who was also a Claims Officer and was using the same photo.
f) I have had to wait almost 24 hours to contact my real friend by phone and advised her not to give her bank details to
anyone as it appears to be a real scam. She was totally horrified as she knows nothing at all about the scheme.

Has anyone else had a similar experience?

Why do you have to wait 24 hours? Is your,real friend not contactable by phone? I would make the assumption that they have fallen victim and the scammers may now have som kind of control of your friend Facebook account or worse computer.

I don’t use Facebook myself so no idea how it works but scammers and older people seem to be a poor mix.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro

Sorry, should have mentioned, I had been trying to get her on the phone but to no avail.
She had been away visiting friends and could not speak to her until she returned.
You may be right about "old" people and "scammers" not being a good mix but when the
dialogue on Facebook was showing her photo the conversation seemed genuine.
I am about to turn 80 in a few days … perhaps I should revert back to my early
days experience as a Morse Code operator … that might bgr up the scammers.

Just a heads up on what I think was a scam but i wasn't playing the game to find out.

I received an email from someone saying that a member here had visited a site and urged me to do the same and kindly provided a link so I did not have to search for it. When I called him he assured me that it was not the case but what was strange about the email was he had not sent it and the sender in the header was unknown to both of us. I run all my mail through two different servers, Bigpond & Gmail and I don't see many emails of this type so I advise others to be on the lookout for anything similar.

PS: It came from a .edu email address which was also strange.