Facebook fake account scam promising "Mega Bonus"

This morning a friend said hello on Facebook messenger. The message said that we hadn't talked before - which was believable as we normally use other modes. I accepted the message and we were away:

"doing pretty good" was a red flag right away. "help the Old, Retired, Disable, " was another indicator. Why can't these people get basic grammar right? Or is it deliberate? I asked for more.

Of course I won't be making contact and I wonder what the next steps would be. Presumably this is a 419 scam where some fees need to be paid to clear the way for the $150,000 (which will never arrive).

Meanwhile, I viewed the account page and could see a fake Facebook account with Richard's profile picture on it and no other content.

I was really hoping the scammer would answer my video call but no such luck.

This happened to me a decade ago and I know Facebook has a mechanism to report fake accounts. You go to the profile page, click the "..." under the profile picture and choose "Find support or report profile". There is an item there for fake accounts.

The instant I reported the account I started getting "query error" on it so I suspect others had also reported it. Facebook did act quickly in this case.

To create the fake page they must have been able to see Richard's page and copy his profile image. The scammers must be able to see his friends list too - which is concerning.

I looked at my privacy settings but they seem to change frequently and I'm really not sure if I'm still vulnerable. There should be one big switch that defaults to private but there's not.

The Facebook platform seems to be a major location for scams including all the posts designed to go viral that gather engaged users or capture information that could be used for identity theft.