It started with a friend request.
Abigail Ruvalcaba, a 66-year-old woman from Southern California, accepted a message from someone who claimed to be actor Steve Burton — the same actor she'd watched on General Hospital for years. He was charming, attentive, and surprisingly personal. The videos he sent were warm and specific: he called her by name, told her she was special, promised her a future. Within months, she was in love.
Then the requests for money began. Small at first. Then bigger. By the time her daughter Vivian discovered what was happening, Abigail had sold her Harbor City condo for $350,000 — well below market value — after being manipulated into draining her savings to send money to the scammer. The man in those videos was never Steve Burton. The footage was a deepfake — AI-generated videos assembled from stolen voice clips and publicly available photos.
"To me, it looks real, even now," Abigail told KTLA. "I don't know anything about AI."
She lost everything. And she is far from alone.
The Numbers Don't Lie — But the Scammers Do
Here's the uncomfortable truth: Facebook scams are not a fringe problem. They are an epidemic, and they are getting worse every single year.
In 2025, Americans lost a record $15.9 billion to scams — up from $12.5 billion just a year earlier, according to the Federal Trade Commission. That's not a typo. Fifteen point nine billion dollars. Reported fraud losses have risen nearly 430% since 2020. And here's the kicker: the FTC estimates the actual cost of fraud could be as high as $195.9 billion annually when accounting for underreporting.
Social media sits at the heart of this crisis. In fiscal year 2025, consumers reported losing more than $2 billion in scams that started on social media — making it the top contact method by reported losses. And among all social media platforms, Facebook remains the world's most used — and therefore the most hunted.
In the second quarter of 2025 alone, financial scams on Facebook surged by 340%. The playground didn't change. The predators just got smarter.
Why You Are the Target
Before we get into the scams themselves, we need to confront something uncomfortable: the reason these scams work has nothing to do with your intelligence.
Security experts have spent years trying to correct the myth that only "gullible" people fall for scams. Cybercriminals don't succeed because people are careless. They succeed because they understand how people think. As one cybersecurity writer puts it bluntly: today's social engineers are psychological profilers first, hackers second. They don't break into systems. They're invited in.
Every well-designed Facebook scam exploits at least one of the following:
- Urgency — When you feel rushed, your prefrontal cortex (the rational-thinking part of your brain) goes offline. Time pressure short-circuits logical thinking. "Act now or lose your account" is not an accident. It's a weapon.
- Authority bias — We are hardwired to obey authority. When a message appears to come from Facebook security, your bank, or even the CEO of a company, our brain's first instinct is compliance, not skepticism.
- Optimism bias — We tend to believe that bad things are more likely to happen to others than to us. "I'm too smart for that" is exactly what scammers are counting on you to think.
- Social proof — If 500 people "liked" a giveaway post, it must be real, right? When someone else appears to trust a message or product, we are more likely to also trust it.
Understanding these levers isn't about blaming victims — it's about knowing the lock so you can change it. Now let's look at how scammers pick it.
The Scams That Keep Winning
1. The Romance Trap (Now With AI)
The romance scam is arguably the cruelest scam in existence because it doesn't just steal your money — it steals your dignity. And in 2025, it evolved into something terrifying.
The classic script goes like this: a stranger sends you a friend request. They're attractive, worldly, successful. They message you daily, they remember the little things you mention, they express deep feelings faster than seems reasonable. Then, weeks or months in, a crisis strikes. They're stuck overseas. They need money for a medical emergency, a plane ticket, a business deal gone wrong. Can you help?
According to the FBI's Internet Crime Report, losses to romance scams topped $650 million in a single year — and the FTC puts it even higher, with romance scam losses reaching $1.3 billion in 2024–2025. Both figures are almost certainly undercounts. Shame keeps most victims silent.
Now add deepfakes. A French woman made international headlines in early 2025 after being conned out of €830,000 by scammers who used AI-generated images of Brad Pitt to convince her they were in a relationship. She had even performed a reverse image search on the photos — but couldn't find them because they were entirely AI-generated. "I looked those photos up on the internet but couldn't find them so I thought that meant he had taken those selfies just for me," she said.
In another case, a woman moved from the US to New Zealand because she genuinely believed she was in a relationship with actor Martin Henderson — losing $375,000 in the process. The same deepfake technology used on Abigail Ruvalcaba with Steve Burton — where the actor's face and voice were replicated with chilling accuracy — is now accessible to any criminal with a laptop and a free AI tool.
One deepfake expert reviewing a scam video noted that even trained professionals couldn't immediately tell whether the video was real or AI-generated. If the experts struggle, what chance does the average person have?
Watch for: Relationships that accelerate unusually fast. Anyone who refuses to do a live, spontaneous video call. The pivot from emotion to money. Any request to move the conversation from Facebook to WhatsApp or another encrypted app — scammers do this to avoid platform moderation.
2. Facebook Marketplace: The Digital Wild West
If you've ever bought or sold something on Facebook Marketplace, you've entered one of the most scam-saturated environments on the internet. Almost one in five Facebook Marketplace users reported being scammed in 2023. That's 20% of everyone who used it.
One of the craftiest schemes targets sellers. A "buyer" contacts you about your item, asks for your phone number, and then requests to send you a verification code — supposedly to confirm you're a legitimate seller. Here's the trap: that code is actually a Google Voice verification code. If you share it, the scammer can hijack your phone number and use it to run further scams under your identity.
Another growing variant targets buyers: a seller sends you a link to "deposit" your payment at your financial institution. The website looks legitimate. But when you enter your banking information, it goes straight to the scammer — giving them access to your bank account.
The Marketplace scam works because it feels transactional and familiar. You're just buying a used couch. You're not thinking about identity theft. That gap between expectation and reality is exactly where scammers live.
Watch for: Any request for verification codes sent to your phone. Links to external payment pages. Buyers who insist on unusual payment methods like gift cards, Zelle, or cryptocurrency. If the buying process becomes too complicated, walk away.
3. The "You've Won a Prize!" Giveaway Scam
You've seen them. A post from what looks like Coca-Cola, Amazon, or a local lottery page. "Congratulations! You've been selected for a $1,000 shopping spree. Like and share to claim your prize!"
It's designed to feel exciting, low-stakes, and effortless. And that's exactly why it works.
In one documented case, a victim named Emma received a message claiming she'd won a $1,000 shopping spree — all she had to do was pay a small "shipping fee." After handing over her bank details, she realized too late it was a scam. Her story is not unique. Thousands of people fall for identical tactics daily.
The information extracted from these interactions ranges from email addresses and phone numbers to, in some cases, security question answers harvested through "fun" personality quizzes. Many Facebook quiz questions are actually common cybersecurity questions — your mother's maiden name, your first pet, your childhood street. You're handing over your password recovery answers while thinking you're having fun.
Watch for: Pages that have few followers but run high-engagement "giveaways." Any prize that requires payment, personal details, or sharing your information. The fact that legitimate companies do not run real giveaways through direct messages.
4. Investment and Crypto Scams: The New Gold Rush Con
This is where the money truly bleeds. Investment scams cost Americans $5.7 billion in 2024 alone — a 24% increase over the previous year — and remain the highest-loss fraud category tracked by the FTC. A staggering 79% of people who reported an investment-related scam lost money, with a median loss exceeding $9,000 per case.
On Facebook, these scams arrive dressed as opportunity. A targeted ad shows you a video of a successful investor — sometimes a real celebrity, sometimes a deepfake of Elon Musk or another high-profile figure — promising extraordinary returns on cryptocurrency or exclusive investment platforms.
The page it leads you to mimics a real news website. There are fake testimonials, fabricated screenshots of earnings, and a warm, knowledgeable "advisor" ready to guide you through your first investment. For weeks, everything works. You put in $500, and the platform shows you "earning" $2,000. Then you put in $5,000. Then $20,000. Then, when you try to withdraw your money, the fees are endless, the advisors go quiet, and the platform vanishes.
Scammers masterfully exploit urgency ("limited opportunity!"), greed ("don't miss this"), and social proof to keep victims invested — literally and emotionally. In 2024, older adults reported social media as the most common method of contact for investment scams, and total fraud losses among adults over 60 have quadrupled since 2020, reaching $2.4 billion in 2024.
Watch for: Unsolicited investment advice from strangers or "friends." Platforms that show you extraordinary gains but create obstacle after obstacle when you try to withdraw. Any celebrity endorsement of a financial product you've never seen advertised on mainstream media.
5. Hacked Account Impersonation ("Hi, It's Me — I Need Help")
This one hurts the most because it comes from someone you know and trust.
Your friend's account gets hacked. The scammer, now controlling it, scrolls through the contact list and starts messaging: "Hey, I'm in a tough spot. My wallet was stolen while I was traveling. Can you send me $200 via PayPal? I'll pay you back tomorrow." The message sounds exactly like your friend — because the scammer has read months of their previous conversations to mimic their tone.
Depending on the information they obtain from a compromised account, scammers can take over your Facebook account and con your friends, pretending to be you. It's a self-replicating scam — one hacked account becomes the tool to harvest the next.
Watch for: Urgent money requests from friends, even close ones. Verify by calling them directly on a number you already have — not through any contact details in the suspicious message.
The Shame That Protects Scammers
Here's something the fraud industry quietly relies on: your silence.
Only about 22% of romance scam victims contact the FBI. Fewer than 30% report to local police. The reason is almost always shame. Victims feel stupid, embarrassed, or afraid they won't be believed. That shame is the scammer's last line of defense — it gives them room to disappear and find their next target.
Vivian Ruvalcaba, reflecting on her mother Abigail's case, said it plainly: "She's ashamed. I know she is."
This is why reporting matters — not just for your own case, but for the next person. In the United States, you can report scams to the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov. For romance or financial fraud involving international elements, the FBI's IC3.gov is the right destination.
How to Slow Down Before You Fall Down
None of this requires you to become paranoid or stop using Facebook. It requires you to build a few habits:
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Pause before you act. Urgency is a weapon. If a message is screaming "act now," that's your signal to slow down, not speed up.
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Verify through a different channel. If a friend asks for money on Facebook, call them. If "Amazon" says your account is compromised, go directly to Amazon's website — don't click the link in the message.
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Never share 2FA codes. A legitimate service will never ask for your two-factor authentication code. Anyone asking is stealing access to your account.
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Do a reverse image search on new contacts. Tools like Google Images or TinEye can reveal if someone's profile photo is stolen from another source online.
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Talk to someone before sending money. Scammers depend on isolation. Before you send significant amounts of money to anyone you've met online, tell a trusted friend or family member and ask for their reaction.
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Treat video as identity, not proof. In the age of deepfakes, a video call no longer confirms who you're talking to. Ask unexpected, spontaneous questions, and watch for unnatural movements or responses.
The Bottom Line
The reason these scams keep working isn't because people are foolish. It's because the scammers are sophisticated, well-resourced, and fluent in human psychology. They study us. They test scripts. They use AI that would fool professionals, and they target the moments in our lives when we are most vulnerable — lonely, hopeful, stressed, or distracted.
Reported fraud losses have risen nearly 430% since 2020. That trajectory will not reverse on its own.
What can reverse it is a more suspicious, slower-moving public. One that pauses at urgency. One that talks to family before wiring money. One that reports what happened instead of hiding in shame.
Abigail Ruvalcaba lost her home because she fell in love with a lie so convincing it fooled even the people trying to help her. The least we can do is make sure her story is heard — so the next scammer finds us just a little harder to fool.
