CHICO — Last week, our sports team — in other words Justin Couchot and our editor Mike Wolcott — held the annual sports banquet and it sounds like it went great for the most part.
I’ve been around long enough to know that each year, these two bust their butts to make sure it goes off without a hitch. There was one curious instance on Facebook, however. In the week before the event, Mike reached out to me about a comment on our page when we announced that tickets were sold out. The very first comment was from a profile named Isabella Smith.
The comment claimed that they had a ticket for sale for the banquet.
Now note that I said profile and not woman or person. Well, that’s because this person didn’t seem to exist. It appeared the profile picture was likely stolen off the internet and there were few details on the profile itself.
Looking closer at the comment — or maybe not so closely — it had grammatical errors, strange spacing and was as vague as humanly possible.
My personal favorite line came at the end: “Not looking to make any extra profit off the tickets, I just want them passed on to another true fan!” Followed by a heart emoji.
Now I’m not saying the Chico Enterprise-Record doesn’t have fans, but that sure is a strange way to word that. Afterall, this is a local sports hall of fame banquet that is specific to our region, and yet the comment was worded as though it was a Kings game with all of Northern California as its audience.
Mike did some quick digging and quickly noticed that there was no Isabella Smith on the guest list. Sure enough, this was a bot trying to scam folks.
We know this one. You message the person to try and get a ticket and they ask for money, or a gift card, and you don’t get jack in return. These bots comb social media looking for key words like “sports,” “sold out” and “tickets” and then drop a comment fishing for someone who legitimately wants to attend the event.
This time the bot was dumb enough to try it on a local paper. This goes to show just how unsophisticated some scam methods can be.
Stay safe out there folks and always check profiles before sending messages to strangers.
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Scam of the Week generally runs every Tuesday. Readers are welcome to contact reporter Jake Hutchison to report scams and potential scams they have come in contact with by calling 828-1329 or via email at [email protected].
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