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Police Scotland has issued a warning to people to be careful about infomation they share and receive online, after an elderly Dundee woman was scammed out of £2,000.
Officers said it was the second incident they had dealt with involving social media accounts being used by scammers this week.
A spokesman said: “An elderly lady in Dundee recently received a Facebook message from a “known friend” whose Facebook account had been hacked.
“Using the hacked account, the scammers advised that her name was on a list of winners at a publishing clearing house and had won £150,000.
“After several more messages were exchanged, she was asked to send £2,000 in cash to an address in Hampshire in order to receive her winnings.
“She posted the package yesterday afternoon, and having received no replies to repeated messages from the scammers, called Police in the early hours of this morning, obviously concerned that she had been scammed.
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“Fortunately, with the assistance of Royal Mail, the package was later intercepted, meaning the victim has thankfully not lost any money.
“We have also been contacted by a woman in Kinross who has found that her Facebook account had been hacked, and through this her bank account had been accessed and money transferred out of it.
“The bank have acted quickly to shut this down and have fully refunded her.”
They added: “Hacked social media accounts are an easy way for a scammer to gain a victim’s trust by impersonating a person they know.
“If a social media contact gets in touch asking you to send money, always try and contact then through non-electronic means to ascertain if they have been hacked – they may not know they have been.
“Also, we would always say that if you’re offered a large sum of money or “prize” of some sort that requires to send money or gift cards, this is highly likely to be a scam.”
More information on cyber-scams and how to spot them can be found at this section the Police Scotland website.
