PULASKI, Va. – Scammers are taking over social media.
Law enforcement across Southwest Virginia have put out warnings to prevent people from getting hooked by a scammer’s post.
“At the time that I first saw it yesterday there had been 169 shares already and I had just started seeing it yesterday morning,” Sonia Ramsey, Administrative Manager of the Pulaski Police Department said.
169 shares on a fake post.
The Pulaski Police Department was made aware of a scammers post that showed a woman in a hospital bed with the caption asking to help identify her, clearly pulling at people’s heartstrings.
“The original poster will often go back, and they will change that to like a housing rental site or a housing rental or something for sale, or some kind of post like that inadvertently people will click on and send money to them,” Ramsey said.
The Pulaski police department says if the profile has posts that are very similar and is new is either a scammers profile or someone has been hacked. But be aware scammers are everywhere from social media to phone calls to emails.
“If someone reaches out to you from the Roanoke City Sheriff’s Office, if you can verify that domain, the email domain we always use .gov because we are a city institution. We will never use .com so you can know automatically that is not a correct email address from our department,” Brandi Lazare, Sargent of community engagement at Roanoke City Sheriff’s Office said.
If you see a scam post report it so it can then be deleted and does not trick others into giving money or sharing the post further.