Page has few posts, all enticing to like, share and comment

Apr 1, 2015 15:47 GMT  ·  By

The latest celebrity name used in a Facebook scam is Floyd Mayweather’s, as crooks have set up a page impersonating the boxing champion and advertise that he is giving away colossal sums of money to randomly selected fans.

The profile created by one crook is called MayweatherHQ (it is still active at the moment of writing) and has absolutely no affiliation with the champ.

Millions of dollars given away

In one of the most recent posts on the fake page, the impersonator advertises giving away a total of $10 / €9.28 million to 10,000 lucky fans. As proof that the money is real, the scammer posted a picture of a coffee table made entirely of dollar bills.

The crook’s demands are simple and do not require the potential victim to navigate to a third-party website to become eligible for the alleged donation. Liking, sharing and commenting on the post would do just fine to qualify.

This is not harmful to the user, but does help the scammer achieve his/her goal by increasing the popularity of the page, which can then be sold to marketers or other cybercriminals, and used for more or less legitimate purposes.

The activity is called like-farming and pages sold this way are delivered to the highest bidder along with all the information they contain, which includes the comments and usernames that contributed to making it more visible.

Freshly created page has only enticing offers

MayweatherHQ Facebook profile was created just a few days ago, with the first post dating from Tuesday.

To make the scam more credible and attract a larger number of social network users, the scammer also posted congratulatory messages directed at people who allegedly won in previous raffles.

“Congrats To Little Emily Meyers, Winner Of the 1 Million dollars, Now you can have your open heart surgery, Its a great thing her mom is gonna do with some of the money.. Donate it to St. Jude's Hospital... Now you can be the next Winner, I Will make anything happen, and I always put my money where my mouth is,” reads the first post on the page.

Floyd Mayweather has 47 wins and no losses as a professional boxer, and is scheduled to fight Manny Pacquioa in early May.