Melanie McGovern was scrolling through her Instagram feed in February 2024 when she saw her 16-year-old niece had sent her a message.
“I accepted it. And then the account reached out and asked me for money.”
McGovern knew her niece as a responsible teenager, and they rarely corresponded via that social media platform. She was skeptical.
“So I texted my sister-in-law and said, you know (her) Instagram has been hacked?”
For McGovern, a spokeswoman at the Better Business Bureau, the experience offered a first-hand look at a would-be crime she sees more and more often online, where fraud schemes are flourishing.
Investment scams have evolved by leaps and bounds from the blatant ploys and spam pitches of decades past, morphing into phoney cryptocurrency websites, false bank correspondence and impersonations of loved ones, including phone calls that draw on voice-cloning technology….