Someone pretending to be Prince Harry on Facebook is now $40,000 richer after he or she scammed an Austrian tradesman.
According to the Kurier newspaper, someone operating a “Prince Harry” Facebook profile reached out to the man and offered him £835,000 to renovate the floors in Buckingham Palace. There’s just one catch. “Prince Harry” was a little short on lettuce at the moment, and needed the man to deposit £23,000 (about $38,000) into several bank accounts to get things moving.
The man acquiesced, and naturally, he never heard from “Prince Harry” again.
Though he made an initial deposit of €2,500 at a Lloyd’s Bank account, the remaining €25,000 was paid through two separate Western Union transfers. Sophos notes that since Western Union is “notoriously hard to track,” it’s unlikely that this tradesman will ever see his money again.
Indeed, police investigating his case told him that his chances are “slim.”
Prince Harry’s identity has been co-opted for financial scams before. In 2010, someone posing as the prince on Facebook tricked at least 20 American women out of about $2,500 each. The scammer said that the money was needed for charity relief in Africa.
This is one of those things that we’d hope is just common sense, but if a celebrity or public figure like Prince Harry reaches out to you on social media asking for something, it is absolutely bullsh**. I’d go into more detail about this case, but this is seriously one of those things where it’s like:
[Image: The Prime Minister’s Office]
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