Dozens of fake accounts purporting to sell Facebook’s unreleased cryptocurrency, Libra, have cropped up on the platform in a concerted scamming effort.
A report from the Washington Post details dozens of accounts, pages, and groups, across both Facebook and Instagram claiming to be official outlets for buying the currency sometimes at a discount.
The accounts, reports the Post, are often times disguised using Facebook’s official logos and other marketing materials, making them fairly convincing to unsuspecting users.
Targets of the scams are sometimes redirected to third-party sites such as BuyLibraCoins.com which, like the fraudulent Facebook accounts, bare the same official-looking branding and marketing materials of the platform.
The Washington Post notes that other sham websites include the almost indiscernibly similar Calìbra.com, which uses a special character instead of the ‘i’ in Facebook’s official Libra website, Calibra.com.
While Libra scams have popped up on other Platforms, including Twitter and YouTube, some experts have been quick to note the significance of scams inadvertently allowed to proliferate via the company’s home network.
There is a deep irony here in Facebook being used as the platform that could undermine trust in the currency Facebook is trying to build trust in,’ Cornell University economics professor Eswar Prasad told the Washington Post.
As noted by The Verge, other cryptocurrency scams have found their way onto the platform in the past, but those leveraging Libra come with particularly salient timing as lawmakers continue to press the company in a sometimes heated public forum.
‘I don’t think you should launch Libra at all,’ Rep. Carolyn Maloney, a Democrat from New York told a Facebook executive in one exchange.
Among the major concerns voiced by regulators are privacy, stability, and its potential use in money laundering and terrorism.
In response to the Washington Post’s report, Facebook offered a brief statement.
‘Facebook removes ads and pages that violate our policies when we become aware of them, and we are constantly working to improve detection of scams on our platforms,’ a company spokesperson told the outlet.
