LIKE-FARMING SCAM – ‘Australian Cash and Prize Giveaways’ Facebook Page

The Page is a scam designed to accumulate likes under false pretences. There are no prizes. The ‘prize’ images included in the Page’s bogus posts are stolen from elsewhere and depict cash bundles seized in various police raids on drug dealers and other criminals. Do not like or otherwise interact with this scam Page or any material that it posts.

A Page on Facebook that calls itself ‘Australian Cash and Prize Giveaways’ is promising large cash prizes for people willing to like promotional images and the Page itself. The promotional posts feature photographs of large wads of cash in Australian dollars.

But, there are no prizes and no winners. The Page is just one more in a long line of like-farming scams. The primary purpose of this bogus Page is to accumulate as many likes as possible. Facebook Pages with high numbers of likes can later be reused to perpetrate further scams or promote dubious products or services to a now greatly inflated audience. Sometimes, the Pages are sold via a thriving black market to other criminals. The piles of cash featured in the posts on the Page are certainly not prizes as claimed. In fact, the images depict cash seized in various police raids in Australia. The images have been stolen from news articles about these raids and reused on the scam page. Even the Page’s cover photo shows cash recovered in Australian Crime Commission raids of a money-laundering network.

It appears that the perpetrator of this scam is also responsible for a number of other like-farming schemes, including a despicable Page that used fake missing person posters to entice people to like. Thankfully, it appears that the fake missing persons page has at long last disappeared from Facebook.

If this Page or one of its fake posts comes your way, do not like, share, or comment on it. Users sometimes like such material ‘just in case’ it is true. However, by doing so, they are not only aiding and abetting criminals, they are exposing their friends and families to the scams. The best way to combat these scammers is simply to never interact with their Pages in any way whatsoever. And let your friends know that such Pages are scams so that they can avoid interacting as well.

Although Facebook’s response to these scams has been decidedly poor, to say the least, it is still worth reporting them. Some like-farming Pages are actually removed due to reporting.