Man Finds Out About His Own “Death” In Facebook Scam

A man in Mesa, Arizona, fell victim to a nasty holiday scam on Facebook this week when he discovered a GoFundMe page raising money for his own funeral.

Jared Aguilar’s Facebook page was tagged in the post, and it was shared 15 times by family and friends. The scam was attempting to raise $5,000 for Aguilar’s funeral. He found out about it when his own brother showed it to him while they were opening presents.

“My phone is blowing up at this point. Friends, co-workers — people I haven’t talked to me in two years are calling me, texting me,” Aguilar said. “It’s kind of scary, but when you look at it in a logical sense, it’s nothing. Just a scam.”

Thankfully, no one actually donated to the GoFundMe page, and Facebook deleted the post immediately after it was reported. Perhaps in the holiday spirit, Aguilar also said that he isn’t looking for the scammer and won’t press charges, even though the cyber crook could be charged with a Class 2 felony.

Facebook has recently taken steps to protect user’s profiles from being duplicated or faked. But this kind of hoax may not be detected by the new measures, since the scammer didn’t actually create an imposter account for Aguilar.



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