CLEVELAND — A Stark County woman said her Facebook account was hacked; the hacker tried to con her friends and family out of hundreds of dollars with the promise of Taylor Swift tickets.
Debbie McKinney said she really likes Taylor Swift; if she had tickets for the Eras Tour, she said she would be there. That's how her friends knew something was wrong when they saw a post on her Facebook page selling tickets.
"She couldn't believe that I would be selling Taylor Swift tickets because she knows that I would take my granddaughter, her daughter, to the concert," McKinney said.
Locked out of her profile, McKinney wanted to get the post down. But it wasn't as simple as just changing her password.
"A lot of people get their Facebook accounts hacked into, but they don't go to the extreme of changing all three ways of identification. In my case, they changed my email address, they changed my password, and they changed my phone number," McKinney said.
Debbie shared screenshots that her friends sent her with News 5. The hacker was asking potential buyers to send ticket money to Venmo accounts under different names.
"There's nothing I could do; I was completely helpless. There was no way to get this down, and I just felt helpless," McKinney said.
Friends on Facebook continue to report fraud on ticket posts on Debbie's page. Meanwhile, the Cleveland Better Business Bureau said this isn't the first and won't be the last Taylor ticket con.
"Scammers pay attention to what's in the news, and so that's where they try to take advantage of people because they know that's where your mind is," said Ericka Dillworth, director of operations for the Cleveland Better Business Bureau.
The BBB suggests a few ideas if your account is hacked.
Make sure you have two-factor authentication on, change your passwords frequently, and never pay for tickets online with your bank card. Also, make sure you reach out to the site where the fraud happened.
"Reach out to Facebook because, in a lot of cases, there may be some way that Facebook can help her recover her identity. They know that this happens, and although she's not been able to do this on her own, Facebook might be able to help her do that," Dillworth said.
McKinney did report that her account was hacked to Facebook's parent company, Meta, several times. She even filed a report with the Stark County Sheriff's Office. So far, no response from Facebook.
"The account that I have is probably pretty much gone, which also makes me scared because what's going to happen in the future, is it going to be something else that they're going to try to sell?" McKinney said.
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