The Anatomy of a Suspected Facebook Group Scam, Part 4: Connect the Dots

It’s been a little while since Part 3.

I had to put this series aside for a bit while I took my mom to Las Vegas to spend some much-needed time with family. Now that I’m home, I want to finish what I started, because there are some important lessons from this whole rabbit hole that I haven’t shared yet.

And one of the biggest is this:

It took me four articles to tell this story. It took me seconds to decide not to click JOIN.

Something about LIFE on GUAM made me suspicious almost immediately. I didn’t know exactly what was going on. I certainly couldn’t prove it was a scam.

I didn’t need to.

I knew enough to decide not to join the group my cousin had invited me to.

Instead, I kept digging because I wanted to understand what had set off my alarm bells, and because I thought what I found might help other people recognize some of those same warning signs.

I still never joined the group.

Within a few minutes, I had found enough publicly visible connections to start fleshing out what I suspected might be going on.

The part that took time was turning those few minutes into four articles: documenting what I found, verifying what I could, researching it, and being careful not to claim things I couldn’t prove.

Spotting enough red flags to protect myself wasn’t.

Don’t just look down. Look sideways.

When something questionable appears on our screen, we tend to look directly at it.

Is this profile real? Is this post legitimate? Is this website safe?

Those are good questions. But sometimes the more revealing information isn’t directly in front of you.

It’s beside it.

Who runs the group? What do their profiles look like? What other groups do they run? Do the same names keep appearing? What are they asking members to contribute? Where are their links trying to send you, and what can you learn about that destination without clicking the link?

That’s what I mean by look sideways.

You don’t need special software. You don’t need to be a cybersecurity expert. And you don’t need to spend your Saturday night pretending you’re in the FBI.

Look around. Look at the people behind what you’re seeing. Look for patterns.

An odd-looking profile doesn’t prove somebody is a scammer. Neither does an AI-generated image, selling a T-shirt, administering multiple groups, or asking people to share photographs.

But when oddities start piling up, the pattern can give you a reason to slow down.

Parts 1 through 3 took us through the administrators, the engagement and local information members were being encouraged to provide, the merchandise links, and eventually the discovery that one of my own photographs had been reposted without my permission.

I still can’t tell you exactly who was behind all of it or what their ultimate purpose was.

But I didn’t need to know that to make a decision about my own participation.

Why does any of this matter?

I hear versions of this all the time:

So what? It’s just Facebook.

It’s just a picture.

It’s just a group.

The problem is that scams and identity theft don’t necessarily begin with someone asking for your Social Security number or bank account.

Sometimes they begin by learning who you are.

Where did you grow up? Where were you stationed? What school did you attend? What places do you recognize? What makes you nostalgic? What will get you to comment? What will get you to click?

And perhaps most importantly:

What will get you to trust?

That’s why affinity groups can be so powerful.

A group about your hometown feels familiar. A beach you recognize feels familiar. A photograph from your old school feels familiar. Someone talking about the military base where you were stationed feels familiar.

We think:

These are my people.

Maybe they are.

But the subject of a Facebook group and the people operating that group are two different things.

Familiarity can feel like trust. That doesn’t make it verification.

That doesn’t mean we should stop participating. We need community. These groups reconnect classmates, veterans, military families, hometowns and people with common interests.

I don’t want us to become afraid of interacting online.

I want us to become harder to fool while we’re doing it.

And by the way, Facebook was no help

I reported what I was seeing.

A lot of it.

I reported the groups. I reported a number of the accounts. I reported activity that concerned me.

And over and over, I received essentially the same response from Facebook:

“We didn’t remove the…”

The group. The profile. The content.

Whatever I had reported.

That reinforced something important for me:

Facebook deciding not to remove something does not mean Facebook has determined that it is safe, legitimate or trustworthy.

It means Facebook didn’t remove it.

Those are not the same thing.

A group has thousands of members. Facebook hasn’t shut it down. Surely somebody must have checked it out, right?

Don’t count on it.

Facebook provides the platform. You provide the discernment.

Discernment means paying attention, examining what’s in front of you, and deciding what you are comfortable trusting.

You don’t have to know another person’s intentions to do that.

Trust your gut. An invitation is not an obligation.

Here’s the easiest piece of advice in this entire series:

If something about a group makes you uncomfortable, don’t join it.

That’s it.

You don’t have to investigate it. You don’t have to prove there’s anything wrong with it. And you don’t need enough evidence to convince the person who invited you.

Just because a friend sends you an invitation doesn’t mean they’ve investigated the group either.

If you want to say, “Thanks, but I took a look and I’m not comfortable joining that one,” say it.

A reasonable friend should respect that.

And if somebody gets seriously offended because you declined an invitation to a Facebook group, well, you may have just identified an entirely different problem.

Sometimes our brains notice little inconsistencies before we’ve consciously put them together.

Something feels off.

That’s enough to stop.

Still interested? Give me 60 seconds before you click JOIN.

If you’re still interested in the group, give yourself a minute before joining.

1. Look at the admins. Click a couple of profiles. Do they appear to have a genuine connection to the community they’re running?
2. Look sideways. What other groups, pages or public activity are connected to them? Do the same accounts keep appearing?
3. Look at what the group wants from you. Are there repeated requests for photographs, personal stories, locations, identifying details or other information?
4. Don’t click the shopping link first. If someone is promoting a product or website you don’t recognize, open your search engine separately and look up the business or website name yourself. Try searching “XYZ Store reviews.” Look for information from sources other than the seller’s own website. If you find little or nothing about a store that supposedly has lots of customers, that’s worth paying attention to. Only after you’ve done your homework should you decide whether you trust the site enough to visit it, much less give it your money or payment information.
5. Don’t confuse popularity with legitimacy. Thousands of members don’t tell you who created a group or why.
6. Listen to that little voice. You don’t need enough evidence for a courtroom. You need enough information to decide whether you want to proceed.

And even if you join, you don’t have to hand over every piece of yourself.

You can read without commenting. You can comment without sharing personal photographs. You can enjoy the nostalgia without clicking the T-shirt link.

And if something has already happened, use S.A.F.E.

Most of what we’ve talked about so far falls under the first two steps of my S.A.F.E. framework:

Stop. Don’t let greed, curiosity, urgency, fear, excitement or nostalgia make the decision for you.

Assess. Look at what you’re actually dealing with. Check independently. Look sideways.

But if you’ve already interacted with something suspicious, the next two become especially important:

File. Save the evidence. Screenshots, usernames, URLs, messages, receipts and dates. Online content can disappear quickly.

Engage. Report suspicious activity. If you’ve lost money, exposed personal information, or believe identity theft or another crime may be involved, contact the appropriate financial institution, company, law enforcement agency or consumer-protection agency as appropriate.

And tell the people you care about.

A two-minute conversation might keep somebody else from making a very expensive mistake.

So, was LIFE on GUAM a scam?

After four parts, you may expect me to answer that question.

I can’t.

What I can tell you is what I observed and documented. There were enough red flags for me to become suspicious almost immediately, and enough additional connections when I looked sideways to reinforce my decision not to participate.

What I cannot tell you from publicly available information is exactly who was behind the activity, how all of the accounts may or may not have been connected beyond what was publicly visible, or what their ultimate purpose was.

That’s why this series has always been called The Anatomy of a Suspected Facebook Group Scam.

And here’s the thing:

I didn’t need to solve the mystery to protect myself.

Neither do you.

Don’t stop joining communities. Don’t stop sharing memories. Don’t stop reconnecting with people.

Just remember that a familiar subject doesn’t automatically mean familiar people are behind it, and the platform hosting it may not catch something before it reaches you.

Pay attention.

Trust your gut.

Do a little digging.

Don’t just look down. Look sideways.

And use your discernment.

Sometimes a few seconds really can make all the difference.

Catch up on the investigation

This is Part 4 of a four-part investigation.

Part 1: Who’s Running the Show?
Part 2: Engagement Is the Bait
Part 3: Follow the Money
Part 4: Connect the Dots (You are here)

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This series documents publicly visible Facebook activity and other publicly available information I found while investigating these groups and related activity. I have distinguished between what I could verify, what raised questions, and my own observations or theories. A red flag is not proof of wrongdoing, and inclusion in this series should not be interpreted as an allegation that any individual or business has committed a crime or engaged in fraud.

If this series gave you something new to look for, please share it with your friends and family.

You don’t have to turn them into internet detectives.

Just help them learn to stop for a few seconds and look around before they trust what they see.

Knowledge is power. Pass it on.

P.S. I’ve started something new. I’m writing on Substack now, too. Ask MeShawn is where I’m sharing more of the things I investigate, question, learn, and think are worth talking about. If this series is your kind of rabbit hole, I think you’ll feel right at home there.

Come join me on Ask MeShawn.