Rant: got catfished by a "real person" account on my own street, of all places
So last Thursday I get a friend request from a woman claiming she lives two blocks from me in Akron, and after 3 days of chatting she asks me to send $250 in gift cards for her "sick mom." I looked her up and the profile photo is a stock model that shows up on 6 other pages, plus her grammar switched from normal to super stiff robot-speak mid-conversation. How do you all spot these fakes before they get to the money ask, because I almost fell for it?
Stock photo showing up on 6 other pages is your first clue, but the grammar flip is the real tell. Real people don't go from texting like normal to sounding like a customer service bot in one night. Ask for a quick video call early on, scammers bail every time.