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Trea Turner Imposter Puts Scam Tactics In Spotlight
About a month ago, there were headlines in our area about an older woman who got scammed out of $50,000 by someone who was posing as Phillies shortstop Trea Turner messaging her. While it's never good to hear about a scam like this being successful, there are things many users can glean from this event.
For example, a few of the things that made this scammer successfully convince their victim of their identity were sending photos of the Turner family and using knowledge of his performance in each game.
In this way, the scam was very similar to the way that many phishing attempts try to target end users. The "proof" like the pictures and batting stats were public information. Just like when someone tries to make themselves appear to be the boss or a contact at a company by spoofing their address to look like it's coming from the person. In most of these cases, the situation is the same - the bad actor has only public information on the person like their name, title, and maybe a few other things if they've found a social media account.
All that is to say, it's important to trust that gut feeling. If the request is out of the blue (especially an odd one that requires sending money), just be wary of that. Check to make sure the contact is right, don't let information easily found online fool you, and verify (preferably through other means of communication) the request is a legitimate one.
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