Friend I haven't seen in 15 years wants to borrow money

[ONte]

Old childhood friend that I haven't seen for about 15 years. We were close at one point but she spread around some sensitive personal information about me as teens that caused me alot of upset and embarrassment. I forgave but never forgot iykwim.

Anyway we have one another on Facebook now and are both mothers, exchanging congratulations when our babies are born and occasionally having a little catch up.

Today she messaged me out of the blue asking if I can lend her £20 for gas as her children's father hasn't paid her and it's left her in a difficult position.

I know it's not much but we don't have alot of money, we live in an expensive (overpriced!) area and have been surviving on one wage since I had to stop working during my pregnancy due to health problems. Said pregnancy is now a 3 week old newborn.

I'm not sure I feel comfortable doing it as I've no way of guaranteeing she'll pay me back and £20 is two tubs of formula to me, I live 250 miles away now and she used to have form for borrowing things and not returning them (not money, clothes etc)

She does have a large family and I'm assuming other friends she can ask.

WWYD?

@RockinHorseShit

Crikey this thread is quite scary, the number of people who believe the message from OPs old friend is real is astounding. Easy to see why these scammers do this shit, when so many of you are ripe for being conned 🥴

Because OP said it sounded like it was her old friend asking

Anyway tbh I would ignore both anyway whether I thought it was a scam or request form said old friend. If it had been a close friend and I thought it genuine - I would ring and speak to them in person

However I can't imagine any friend messaging to ask for money- rather than ringing to talk and that'd be only if a very close friend. I just done lend money unless it's a "have to pay deposit for works dinner/ for present but can't get into the office.." type thing

Just a thought/suggestion. If she really needs the money for her heating bills, and you can afford to never see that money again, why don't you ask her for the details of her account so that you can do an EFT directly to her service provider?
Then you'll find out if the request is genuine (if she protests a bit saying "Oh no, I can look after that" kind of thing then it probably isn't genuine) but if she goes "Oh, that's brilliant, thank you so much", she probably was being genuine.

Just a thought.

@RockinHorseShit

Crikey this thread is quite scary, the number of people who believe the message from OPs old friend is real is astounding. Easy to see why these scammers do this shit, when so many of you are ripe for being conned 🥴

Oh come on...the messages from scammers can be spotted a mile off...ive had a couple and could see instantly that it was a fake profile.

She's been hacked. I've been asked for money 3 times now in this way. Not once was it the actual fbook friend asking for it.

@myusernamewastakenbyme

• RockinHorseShit Crikey this thread is quite scary, the number of people who believe the message from OPs old friend is real is astounding. Easy to see why these scammers do this shit, when so many of you are ripe for being conned 🥴* Oh come on...the messages from scammers can be spotted a mile off...ive had a couple and could see instantly that it was a fake profile.

That's incredibly naive, it's big business to them, so a bit of research on the profile they've just hacked goes a long way. The recent ones are far cleverer & are really not anything like as obvious. Otherwise our friend wouldn't have been stung for thousands when she received such a message from her DS who was travelling abroad. They mimicked his writing style to a tee, knew she was his mum & she panicked at the story he told her of being mugged & in trouble, so sent the money to get him home. She's mortified at getting caught out, but the police have told her that these hackers can be way more sophisticated than many presumed

The message I got even used a NN my old friend used to use... going through previous chat history obviously gave them that, but they were very plausible & did sound like him, the only thing that alerted me was that we hadn't actually spoken 1-1 in a long time & he asked for £££ when I know he's in the US

@myusernamewastakenbyme not true. People get their Facebook accounts hacked all the time - it's not always a fake profile, it's a genuine profile that a hacker logs in to. I've had with a random girl I worked with asking me for money, it sounded genuine but I didn't know her very well, so thought it was strange. Luckily I checked directly with her and her account had been hacked and the hacker had messaged everyone on her friends list.

Ok fair enough...i didnt realise these scams had got more sophisticated...the ones i got were terrible...bad spelling...broken english and the profile just had my friends name...no photo...no posts nothing...it was blindingly obvious it wasn't her.

No they're now appearing to come from the friends profile. Not fake profiles set up just using their pictures. I've noticed a huge increase in it the last couple of months

If you can't afford to and your family would miss out the no you should not.

Only give if you can write it off as gift and won't feel used by her.

Ok fair enough...i didnt realise these scams had got more sophisticated...the ones i got were terrible...bad spelling...broken english and the profile just had my friends name...no photo...no posts nothing...it was blindingly obvious it wasn't her.

Fair play to you. I remember those ones too though & had a few myself, but they've definitely moved on since then & as above they are now hacking real accounts & doing their homework by looking at the account & messages & mimicking the person whose account it is. I've posted an article on it further up thread

@RockinHorseShit yes i read the article you posted above...thats scary stuff.

Isn't is just @myusernamewastakenbyme 🥴

Our friend was caught off guard late at night after a hectic day at work & a couple of glasses of wine. She's normally very shrewd, but a late night frantic message seemingly from her son saying he was in big trouble, had lost everything, was injured & just wanted to come home had her send him money straight away as I think most of us would do if we thought our kids were in trouble. It came from her DSs normal account too, but hacked. She couldn't afford the money & now feels so stupid, it affected her very badly

@RockinHorseShit

Crikey this thread is quite scary, the number of people who believe the message from OPs old friend is real is astounding. Easy to see why these scammers do this shit, when so many of you are ripe for being conned 🥴

You've never met a homegrown pisstaking scammer/scrounger? Or a drug user? They're all foreign hackers and a British person would never do it?

You're lucky if your life has never been troubled by somebody you know like this wanting something 'for the baby/kids' or a stranger approaching you in the street with a story about a baby in hospital or being locked out and needing money to go to their mum's.

What the actual fuck are you on about @NeverDropYourMoonCup

No, no, no!

@RockinHorseShit

What the actual fuck are you on about *@NeverDropYourMoonCup*

You seem to think people are stupid for thinking it's the person and not a hacker/scammer unknown to both. It's more likely it is the person taking the piss, as there are people like that everywhere.

@NeverDropYourMoonCup

Do read the link I posted BEFORE my comment you quoted earlier

I never mentioned anything about people being "stupid" that's how YOU choose to read my post. Get that chip off your shoulder & try reading properly next time

I simply meant this is a KNOWN scam that is doing the rounds, as many other posters where pointing out too. No idea WTAF you read

& FTR, as above my friend got scammed in this way & she is FAR from stupid, but that was a while ago, so this newer more believable version of this scam wasn't so known about then.

Lots on here, including you, who clearly don't know it's a known scam, & aren't reading the posts on this thread that inform them, so are sadly ripe for getting caught out

This is interesting because my friends fb account got hacked. The scammer messaged all her friends to ask for money. One friend she barely knows, sent it!