Person posing as Scotty McCreery online to scam fans
Scotty McCreery stole America's heart after winning American Idol, and now someone is using his photos to try and scam people in the Triangle area.
Red flags went off for Angel Franklin shortly after liking Scotty McCreery's fan page.
"I told my daughter, oh my God I'm talking to Scotty McCreery," Angel said.
It started out to be a normal conversation, but things quickly changed.
"He says, 'can I trust you, are you a woman of your words, are you honest?'," Angel said. "'I have a personal issue I need to take care of, can you help me?'"
One of the messages from who she thought to be Scotty asked her to pick up a personal briefcase from a security company.
"It contains $100,000, I will give you $20,000 of that. I will need you to pay for the delivery fee," she said.
And that is when Angel noticed it was a scam. If she would have paid the delivery fee for the briefcase, she would have wired money and it would be gone.
The person messaging her was not the real Scotty McCreery. Instead, someone who used McCreery's fan page profile picture to message Angel and make it appear it was the country music star.
"I almost fell for it myself, and if other people fall for it," Angel said. "I think you can easily be trapped in this sort of thing especially with the money."
A common trick for scammers is to steal profile pictures of celebrities to make you think you are talking to the real person. This scam has happened with Mark Zuckerberg and President Obama, just to name a few.
You can also get a message that appears to be from one of your Facebook friends, but instead that friend's Facebook page got hacked.
The best advice, anytime someone asks you through Facebook to pay money, it's a scam.
