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Women’s March Targeted by Facebook Scams

Event pages for 2019 Women’s Marches across the country are reportedly part of an elaborate scam out of Bangladesh.

The Women’s March appears to be the latest target of an elaborate Facebook scam. Web developer Ruby Sinreich responded to a Facebook event for a 2019 Women’s March in Raleigh, North Carolina, and grew suspicious when “weird, partisan memes that seemed totally out of character” began appearing on the page. She then noticed that the event was scheduled for the wrong date. Activists in Maine, Vermont, and other places also noticed similar pages with false information claiming to be a part of the organization. A CNN investigation discovered that the fake pages were created in Bangladesh and “designed to exploit Americans’ interest in politics and protests in order to sell T-shirts.” Most of the fake events had no followers or attendees, but fake events in Philadelphia and Chicago received over 10,000 RSVPs each. One in Seattle had over 20,000 responses. Facebook has since removed the pages reported by CNN and launched an investigation.