John Gauthier
3300 Faith Creek Lane
Richland Hills, TX 76118
zizumara@sbcglobal.net
May 20, 2024

Mark Zuckerberg
1 Hacker Way
Menlo Park, CA 94025

Subject: Facebook needs to do more to address fraud

Mr. Zuckerberg:

A recent friend search has revealed that there are at least 5,800 Facebook accounts claiming to be retired or active U.S. military officers.  All indications are that these accounts are being used to initiate confidence scams or military romance scams.  Several of my female friends have received messages similar to the one pictured below.

 

 

When I attempt to report these accounts via the Facebook reporting tool, the response I get is that the accounts do not violate Facebook's community standards.  Yet those community standards clearly state that it is a violation to not use the user's real name on the account, and it is a violation to pretend to be someone else.

So how do I know these accounts are fake?  Because over 5,800 accounts are identifying themselves as just 19 U.S. Army officers.  Here's the list of names and the number of accounts found for each as of three months ago:

3185 General Paul J LaCamera (U.S. Army)
 552 Lt General William B Garrett (U.S. Army, ret.)
 233 Major General John R O'Connor (U.S. Army)
 153 Major General James W Lukeman (U.S. Army, ret.)
 150 General Stephen J Townsend (U.S. Army, ret.)
 149 General Richard D Clarke (U.S. Army, ret.)
 145 General Carter F Ham (U.S. Army, ret.)
 141 General Austin S Miller (U.S. Army, ret.)
 138 General Douglas M Fraser (U.S. Army, ret.)
 132 General John M Murray (U.S. Army, ret.)
 131 General James C McConville (U.S. Army, ret.)
 123 Lt General Kenneth F Mckenzie Jr (U.S. Army, ret.)
 117 General Randy A George (U.S. Army)
 117 Sgt Major Raymond F Chandler (U.S. Army, ret.)
 113 General Mark A Milley (U.S. Army, ret.)
  89 Major General Markus Laubenthal (U.S. Army)
  77 General John F Campbell (U.S. Army, ret.)
  44 General Morris Morgan (U.S. Army)
  37 General David D Thompson (U.S. Space Force)

I only counted those accounts that either used the rank and name of the officer or that used the name of the officer and a picture of that officer as the profile picture.  There are many more accounts that I did not count that use the same names.

There are also many accounts claiming to be Powerball lottery winners and claiming to be giving away their winnings, which is almost certainly a scam.  I have matched these names to actual Powerball lottery winners and counted the number of fake accounts as follows:

157 Lottery winner Cheng Charlie Saephan
102 Lottery winner Julie Leach
103 Lottery winner Edwin Castro
131 Lottery winner Manuel Franco
138 Lottery winner Mavis Wanczyk

As recently as 2021, the FBI reported that about 25,000 Americans have lost nearly $1 billion to confidence fraud and romance scams, and the majority of these scams are initiated on social media.  I understand that Facebook cannot stop all the scams on social media, but do you have to make it so easy for the scammers?

There are many steps that can be taken to address impersonation scams on Facebook, such as

·         Dedicate a few employees to identifying and shutting down impersonation accounts

·         Add to the list of “pretending to be” reporting options to include military officers and lottery winners

·         Require additional identity verification for new accounts that use commonly impersonated names

·         Partner with law enforcement to better address criminal activity initiated from Facebook accounts

·         Partner with volunteers and volunteer organizations wanting to fight fraud on social media

Education about avoiding fraud is woefully insufficient in addressing this problem.  The onus cannot be entirely on the user community.  I look forward to seeing how Facebook will do its part going forward to fight confidence fraud.

 

Sincerely,

John Gauthier