More than one in 4 people reported losing money to internet fraud in 2021.
The digital world has become the best tool for many people, that is why they use it to educate themselves, recreate, inform themselves and even make purchases. Given this, in recent months many stories have emerged of people who use these Internet spaces to commit their crimes, such as the case of an OnlyFans model arrested for buying luxury cars with bad checks.
And so, as social networks are a great tool, but now many people are also victims of theft and fraud. With digital commerce, many criminals are dedicated to scamming inexperienced users, where a report from the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC), revealed that during 2021, the users of these media suffered economic scams, in principle, in the order of 770 million dollars.
In that sense, the report mentions that in 2021, social networks were much more profitable for scammers than any other method to reach people and represent a surprising increase of eighteen times with respect to the losses reported in 2017.
Likewise, the FTC explained that scams started on Facebook, Instagram and other social networks doubled in 2021 compared to the previous year.
The history
Authorities in Mexico City detained a woman known as “The Corvette thief”, after allegedly taking a vehicle of around one million 300 thousand pesos, after he defrauded an individual with a bad check.
The information was disseminated by the journalist Carlos Jiménez, on his Twitter account, where he maintained that the woman, who was an OnlyFans model, was arrested by police officers from the Ministry of Citizen Security on the afternoon of October 3
According to information from the authorities, the woman contacted the owner of a Corvette through social networks, posing as a person with a lot of money and using the false name of Karla García. After the transaction occurred, the detainee allegedly made a false electronic transfer to the car seller, because the amount never arrived.
SAPO CAME OUT, THE CORVETTE RAPTER
Paola Buen confessed that an inmate of a capital prison orders and coordinates luxury car fraud.
Revealed data on accomplices and locations.
intelligence agents of @SSC_CDMX They stopped her like this.Details at 6 o’clock @multimediastv pic.twitter.com/nzI8fe6tkW
– Carlos Jiménez (@c4jimenez) October 3, 2022
After that, the woman unsubscribed from her social network profiles after seizing the car, which caused him to be a fugitive from justice for several monthswhen reports began to emerge of a woman posing as the wife of a successful businessman.
Following her arrest, the OnlyFans model admitted committing the crime, stating that a person interned in a prison in Mexico City was responsible for ordering and coordinating the crimes.
Thanks to the above, she was a fugitive from justice for several months, when reports began to emerge of a woman posing as the wife of a successful businessman.
To date, it has only been clarified that the woman contacted her victims using her social networks, but it has not been disclosed to how many people he scammed with the same modus operandi.
Let us remember that there are currently many similar cases of people who use their false social networks and identity to commit their crimes. The most popular being the “Tinder Scammer”, which even a documentary on Netflix has where they explain how Simon Leviev worked and the victims he stole only using his account on the dating platform.
And this is how these digital spaces can be a good tool for humanity, but when they are not used well we can also be victims of criminals or people with bad intentions.