Meta accused of enabling Instagram online fraud by scam victim

Nineteen-year-old Alex gave away his login details to a scammer who took control of his Instagram account

An Instagram user has accused parent company Meta of enabling online scams to continue after his social media account was targeted by a fraudster.

The 19-year-old gave away his login details to a scammer who had promised a five-fold return on crypto currency.

He said he tried to report his account being taken over but got no reply. The scammer then conned dozens of his followers out of thousands of pounds.

Meta said it was investing in fraud prevention.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4's You and Yours, Instagram user Alex, from Oxfordshire, explained how he had been initially contacted by the scammer through Snapchat.

He had promised to return an investment of £200 in crypto currency "five-times over", but needed his Instagram account details to "verify" Alex's identity.

"He was very good at making you believe what he said," Alex, who did not want to give his surname, said.

"He made it quite time pressured which made it easier for me to fall in to.

"It was such a heat of the moment thing, it was late at night which impairs your judgement, and he just took over control from there," he said.

"It was heart wrenching. I was frantically trying to contact Instagram - there is no live person you can talk to. I couldn't believe Instagram and Meta had absolutely no help."

The scammer took control of the Instagram account to target followers

He subsequently began to get aggressive messages from some of his 5,000 followers and realised others had been defrauded by the same criminal posing as him.

One school friend, Tom, was tricked into sending his entire savings of £19,000 to the fraudster, believing him to be Alex.

"I believed it was a real account as I'd followed him for years," he said.

"So I fell into it and sent him a message saying 'lets give it ago'.

"It's horrendous - it's awful to think it's all suddenly gone overnight."

'So avoidable'

Another friend lost £16,000 - money which he had inherited from his late mother.

It is at least 60 users have been targeted and 30 have lost money.

Alex's father accused Meta of being "100% complicit" in enabling the fraud to continue by not responding immediately to the report.

"It's the frustration of knowing it was so avoidable. I couldn't have done more to try and get Instagram to stop the account being used to defraud people. They are totally and utterly responsible," he added.

Following an approach by the BBC, Alex's account has been reset and he has regained access to it.

Meta added it would "continue to invest in people and technology to help detect this type of activity and remove the people responsible".

In a statement, Snapchat said: "Snapchat is designed for close friends - so you can't receive messages from someone you haven't accepted as a friend.

"We encourage our community to not accept friend requests from people they don't know and to use our in-app reporting tools if they see any suspicious activity, so we can investigate."

Thames Valley Police said it had received a report of a 19-year-old being defrauded out of £200 and locked out of his social media accounts.

"The report has been filed pending any further information coming to light," it added.

You can listen to the full interview on BBC Radio 4's You & Yours via the BBC Sounds App.