Her name is Debbie Gwen Riley and she’d like to borrow some money. 

Actually, that’s not true, but if you happened to be friends with the South Paris woman on Facebook, it might look that way — Riley’s Facebook account was hijacked earlier in the week and it’s been pure chaos since. 

It’s not just the financial services — PayPal, Venmo, Cashapp — that were suddenly in the hands of a stranger. It’s all the personal stuff, too. 

“This is the first time in 16 years I’ve been hacked by a stranger,” Riley said Friday. “It feels so icky. I kept friends on my page that have passed away just to occasionally go and look at photos and memories. It’s not like I can ask them to friend me on a new account. So many conversations gone!” 

And then there is the component of the scam that gives the appearance that Riley is all over Facebook begging for money. 

“They are asking my friends to borrow money saying I’ll pay them back tomorrow,” Riley said. “I never ask friends to borrow money, but people don’t always know that. I have little old ladies from church asking if I need money. … They used a video chat of me they recorded which makes it even more believable to my friends. My friend who is an IT guy fell for it and sent money.” 

Later in the day, about 4 p.m., the bold scammer was still in action, asking Riley’s daughter to borrow $100 for help paying bills. All she had to do to help, the scammer insisted, was add her credit card to Facebook in order to make the loan. 

Her husband was also pestered for his phone number by the scammer. Neither of them fell for it, but Riley is real worried that others will. 

“The saddest thing,” she said, “is that I’ve worked in schools and social services with people with intellectual disabilities who are on my Facebook and might fall for such as scam. If you do Facebook pay for friends and family your transactions are not guaranteed like regular PayPal transactions.” 

What Riley experienced is not the more common ‘cloning’ tactic used by scammers. In cloning, a scammer simply makes a copy of a person’s Facebook page — they don’t have access to that person’s actual account.

The scammer who targeted Riley, on the other hand, obtained complete control over Riley’s account. For anyone who maintains a Facebook account of their own, it’s a nightmare scenario. The hijack is a social media form of identity theft and can result in untold financial and emotional damage to the true account holder.

How did all of this madness begin? Quite cleverly, really. 

A person whom Riley knows through a Facebook group sent a message on Tuesday — or appeared to. That woman’s account may have been hacked as well — asking Riley for financial help. All she needed, this friend said, was some easy assistance getting her phone working. 

“I don’t remember her exact words,” Riley said. “She asked for my phone number and said she needed my help. Then she tried video chatting me and said her phone was messed up. She asked if she could have a code texted to my phone that I would give her.”

Riley’s good will came back to bite her, and oh, the regret and woe she has felt the rest of the week.

“I’m usually super careful,” Riley said, dismally,” but the person didn’t ask for money, just a security code to help them with ‘their’ account. They immediately changed the phone number, password and recovery email to the account.” 

That all happened at 5:18 p.m. Tuesday. By 5:34 p.m., Riley said, the account had been completely taken over by the scammer, even as Riley tried to reverse the error.

Facebook has a page with advice on dealing with hacked accounts, but according to Riley, none of it helped because the hacker had so quickly taken over all aspects of the account.

“I pressed ‘this wasn’t me’ and got a notification to secure my account,” she said. “When it asked the log in email, there was ‘no account matching that email.’ All of the recovery modes have been linked to the hacker.” 

And that was that. Riley was no longer the person in charge of her Facebook account and she had trouble all over the place. 

Not that she wasn’t doing her best to fight back — Riley contacted her local police department. She got a message in to the Maine Computer Crimes Unit. She contacted the Federal Trade Commission, even, and of course, she reached out to Facebook itself for help. 

Facebook, and its parent company Meta, have been no help at all. She sent numerous reports to their tech support and got vague, irrelevant responses, likely generated by artificial intelligence. She had others report the scam to Facebook and there was no useful response to those, either. 

She’d get messages from the company, but they were in response to moves the scammer had made. Facebook, it seemed, accepted the hacker as the true owner owner of the account.

“I get a message from Meta about a change in my PayPal sending receipt transactions through my Facebook messenger now,” Riley said. “A change I did not request.” 

She asked Facebook to simply take down the account, but they denied the request stating that “community standards” have not been violated.

By late Friday afternoon, Riley was in pure turmoil, trying to undo damage caused by the scammer, but without much success. She was also frantically trying to save photos and videos associated with her account.  

“It’s brutal,” she said. “Photos and memories I may never get back. It’s scary how quickly they can ruin your life … I’m just so appalled that Facebook allows it to continue. You would think three days would be long enough for someone to stop this.” 

Riley said she was contacted by an officer from South Paris police, who recommended that she report the scam to the FTC, which she did. Otherwise, there was not much they could do.

Cases of internet fraud in Maine are generally investigated by the Office of the Maine Attorney General. The office has legal services for the elderly covering matters of internet scams, but at 51 years old, Riley doesn’t qualify for the help. 

She was trying other methods to get the attention of the AG’s office on Friday afternoon. She had even filed a report with the online group Pissed Consumer in her desperation to get somebody — anybody — to help.

She had no immediate luck with any of it. 

“No one seems to want to do anything,” Riley said. “It’s absolutely maddening!” 

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