Car dealer hit by sc

Most people know it. A good offer on Facebook. It sounds tempting – and you pick up the phone…

But when something sounds too good to be true, it's often because it is good to be true – and on the other end of the phone there is a scammer ready to take your money.

That's the sad lesson that several potential car buyers in Greenland are left with after they responded to a good offer on a fake Facebook profile for Nuuk company AutoNord.

The fake profile was created on January 18th – and was extremely popular. On March 10th, it had no less than 32,000 followers – and it must be said that this is a high number for a local car dealership in Greenland.

It's completely crazy

When AutoNord discovered that it was completely crazy, they were quick to react.

- We got a few phone calls from some of our regular customers who said that they had seen a good offer on Facebook that they were interested in, says Bo Eder-Jensen from AutoNord in Nuuk.

- We were a bit surprised by that, because it was an offer that we knew nothing about.

- When we investigated the matter, we found a Facebook profile for AutoNord ApS with lots of offers that apparently were made with photos that the perpetrators had borrowed from other car dealerships.

- We reacted in two ways. We put a big red warning on the front page of our website, and we asked employees and friends to report the fake profile to Facebook.

- That helped. The profile hasn't been updated since February 18th - and for a few days last week it wasn't available either. But unfortunately it's still there.

The scam works by posting a good offer - and then customers can call a phone number and find out more.

Mule

- There's a scammer on the phone - and he's very nice and friendly, so he quickly sends a contract for the car and asks for the payment to be sent to an account in Denmark, Bo Eder-Jensen says.

- But the account belongs to a “mule” – a person who typically helps criminals with money laundering and the fraudsters change account numbers all the time, so it is difficult to track the money. And the mules are often unaware of what their account is being used for.

- It is deeply criminal, but there is not much we can do – other than report it to Facebook. And when they won’t do anything, we are powerless, says Bo Eder-Jensen, who is aware of at least two people in Greenland who have fallen into the trap.

Scams are not uncommon

Professor Jens Myrup Pedersen from Aalborg University, who is the engineering association IDA’s expert in cybercrime, tells Sermitsiaq that fake Facebook profiles are not uncommon.

- They often get a lot of followers because the scammers use bots (automated computer programs) to get followers. The profile for AutoNord ApS is a good example of this. It has gained 32,000 followers in less than two months.

- What you get is typically a profile that looks good and trustworthy - and which can then at some point be used for both general scams and phishing attacks, among other things. There are a number of examples of fake profiles being part of an entire “ecosystem”, where scammers, for example, have a website and a Facebook profile, which makes the whole thing appear very trustworthy.

The phishing attacks that Jens Myrup Pedersen is talking about are the emails or messages via social media where scammers try to fish (phish) your personal information.

- In the fake email, the hackers try to trick you into sharing your personal information, for example, your CPR number, your bank details, your credit card details or your NemID. They do this by luring you into clicking on a link, entering your information or installing a file with a computer virus. If they succeed, the hackers can misuse your data, take over your computer or sell your information onwards.

Last week the private customer director Malene Christensen from the Bank of Greenland here in Sermitsiaq said that you should react quickly and report it via the bank's website, if you suspect that something is wrong with a payment – ​​for example fraud.

If you have paid by card, the payment can be stopped and reversed. Therefore Malene Christensen recommends that you always use a payment card if you are asked to send money to a company you do not know.

The Police Online Patrol, which monitors the internet, advises that you report all attempted fraud to the local police.