Social media cash flipping scam disproportionately targets people of color and single parent families

How to spot this “Jessica Allen”-type Instagram scam and avoid being a victim!

We work in IT Security, so naturally in our spare time we like to mess with scammers and figure out how they work. We normally focus on the crypto-centric Instagram scams (aka Insta-scam), but we recently got caught up in one that sent us down a rabbit hole. The initial scam that caught our attention was crypto-based, but it led us to become aware of a possible network of scammers working together to attract a much broader audience. If you are interested in how the following story began with the crypto-based scam, you can read about that on a recent blog post at:

https://bitcoinfaq.info/2021/03/18/anatomy-of-a-crypto-scam/

This particular Insta-scam was accomplished via a large number of profiles using a benign seeming alias, “Jessica Allen”. If you search Instagram for accounts that hold the name “Jessica Allen”, you will find a bevy of accounts aiming to pull you into what is termed Cash Flipping Traps. Cash Flipping is the idea that if you give somebody a set amount of money, they will multiply that amount many times over via some mysterious process and then pay out the profit to you. Sounds great, right? Also sounds too good to be true — and it is. If a person had this unique ability to make money out of nothing, why would they share it for free with total strangers?

Before delving into our analysis of this “Jessica Allen” Insta-scam, we present the following example of a victim’s experience based on our own interactions with a scammer while undercover. Put yourself in the position of someone who has $500 rent due at the beginning of the month but only $300 in their checking account. Now “Jessica Allen” reaches out to you on Instagram and promises that if you give “her” $100 she will turn it into $300 within a week for you. Desperate to make rent, you send her $100, leaving you with $200 in the bank. The day that you are scheduled to receive the promised $300, you are sent a message along the lines of, “Only $98 made it into the account but the system is set to initiate at $100, therefore your initial investment is locked and I cannot touch it until you put in the right amount… No, sorry, I cannot add the missing $2, you just have to put in a little over $100 to be sure it goes through this time. I promise I will send you back the $98 as soon as the $100 goes through.” Well, at this point you have invested $100 so it is a sunk cost to back out now. There is no way you are going to make rent, so you send $103 to be sure “the system” accepts your deposit this round. You hear back from “Jessica Allen” who informs you that your $203 has been invested and your return will now be $600! As rent day approaches and your profits are set to transfer to your account, you hear back from “Jessica Allen” again and she has GREAT news! Your investment did so well that your return is now $1100. But, “the problem is that you joined with a junior, entry level account and there is no way to withdraw that much money from a junior account.” Now you must upgrade to a diamond-gold level account to be able to withdraw that much money. To upgrade, she is going to need another $200 to upgrade your account and enable the $1100 withdrawal. Well, remember you only have $97 in your checking account so you cannot pay that. Being in this tough position, you can either borrow $103 from someone and have the possibility of paying rent for 2 months or stop now and be sure to not have enough money to make rent this month. All the while the scammer is showing you pictures of similar conversations where other people have had all the same doubts you have but, in the end, those other people got all the money and are happy. Having borrowed money, all in, you have sent “Jessica Allen” $403 and are now indebted to a friend or family member $103 and your bank account is empty. Suddenly, “Jessica Allen’s” Instagram account is deleted. Once you put yourself in the shoes of someone who is being targeted for this particular type of scam, it is easy to see how they can be manipulated into continuing.

We decided to dig a bit deeper to uncover how this scam works and identify their target audience. We collected data from 42 of these Jessica Allen accounts, selecting only those that mention cash flipping, and created a set of metrics to analyze them by:

1. What implied race are they portraying themselves as?
2. How many followers do they have?
3. How many accounts are they following?
4. How many posts have they made?
5. When did the account first post anything?
6. What payment method are they using?

Of the 42 Jessica Allen Instagram accounts, 26 represented themselves as young Black women. The rest were determined to be White (Caucasian), Asian, or Hispanic/Latina. Two of these Instagram accounts used non-gender conforming and racially indistinct avatars. All of the accounts wherein we could determine the race represented, presented as female. This large number of Jessica Allen Cash Flipping Trap accounts suggests multiple people are working together to perpetuate this Instagram scam and are using female personas to more easily gain the trust of their target audience, potentially financially vulnerable women.

To determine which accounts were most active, we analyzed the number of followers and the number of accounts they were following. Overall, these accounts had more followers than they were following. On average, accounts representing as Black or White were following an average of approximately 1,000 accounts, while those representing as Hispanic/Latina followed 1,500, and Asian or where the race was not apparent followed 500. Some of these accounts representing as a Black Jessica Allen were following between 5,000 and 6,000 Instagram accounts, indicating these accounts may be more active than others. These data further support the notion that these accounts are run by a group of people to perpetuate this scam, with follower and following activity representing an individual time investment. If one person is the ringleader, it is possible these other accounts are managed by individuals below them, much like a Multi-Level Marketing (aka MLM) set up.

To further determine which category of account is most active, we also analyzed the number of posts each account had and categorized them by the race represented in the Instagram accounts. Overall, the average number of posts was similar between different categories. We noted that some of the posts were identical between accounts, a parameter not apparent in this analysis but an important feature of these scam accounts to be aware of. It is likely these accounts are sharing and recycling content to limit their production investment.

In an effort to identify when the Jessica Allen Insta-scam began and/or how long they last, we collected the date of the first post on each account. Three of the 42 accounts we analyzed were set to private, so we were unable to obtain information further from these accounts. Analysis of the rest indicated this scam dates back to at least September 2019. Multiple accounts appear to become active every month, with some becoming active as recently as March 2021 (when this data collection and analysis was performed). Most recently, there has been a surge in accounts becoming active in December 2020. This is presumably to prey on people trying to obtain money around the holidays and on through the continuation of the SARS CoV-2 pandemic.

Lastly, we wanted to determine what methods these scammers are using to obtain money from people. This presumed ring of scammers is utilizing highly accessible money transfer apps, such as CashApp, PayPal, Chime, and Apple Pay. They also seem to accept money transfers through Western Union, Forex, and also take BTC. Some accounts do not advertise the apps they prefer, but they likely use the same or similar types of money transfer apps. Nineteen of the 42 accounts list 2 or more money transfer apps.

We also noted in our analysis that BTC and Forex was mentioned as money transfer mechanisms for 6/9 accounts represented as White “Jessica Allen” while they were mentioned in 2/26 accounts represented as Black “Jessica Allen”. CashApp was mentioned in 29/42 accounts and in 21/42 accounts representing as Black “Jessica Allen”.

To visualize how BTC was used to obtain money from victims of this Insta-scam, we determined the frequency of BTC mentions from all the accounts based on the representations of each race used in these profiles. We found that BTC was not equally utilized across all the different races used in these Jessica Allen profiles; despite a disproportionate representation of accounts representing as a Black Jessica Allen, the frequency of BTC mention in these accounts, out of all accounts, was 2.4. In other words, BTC showed up in 3.8% of accounts representing as a Black Jessica Allen, 1/3 of accounts representing as White, 2.3 of accounts representing as Asian, and 100% of accounts representing as Hispanic/Latina. The specific use of BTC on the Hispanic/Latina Jessica Allen profiles are likely due to Venezuelans and other Latino communities turning to crypto-currencies since the devaluation of the Venezuelan bolivar (https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47553048). This finding indicates that the Insta-scammers are selecting money transfer methods with intent, targeting different populations based on the money transfer method they most likely have on hand based on either their own experience or research.

Finally, how much are these scammers getting away with? We scanned their profiles to get a sense of what the lowest buy-in amount to the Cash Flipping Trap was for each account. Six of the 42 account did not state that information on their feed, but the remaining 36 did. We analyzed this data and found that the average lowest buy-in price for White and Asian representing Jessica Allen was 3-fold higher than those representing as Black Jessica Allen. This indicates the scammers are likely disproportionally targeting a Black audience with less to spare, and more to lose.

Overall, our detailed and careful analysis determined that these scammers are disproportionally targeting people of color (Black, Asian, and Hispanic/Latino), particularly Black people, and/or people who have fallen on difficult financial times.

What makes this particular scam so egregious is that they are taking the last bit of money from people who are in dire financial situations, promising to save them but in reality, stealing the last bit of their financial resources. Our analysis gives us some information into the anatomy of this Insta-scam but does not capture the psychological manipulation of the audience targeted. To connect the data with the content these accounts present, we collected some screen shots of their Insta-feeds.

Here is one account promoting a “single parent special”, clearly preying on people supporting a family with a single income.

Here is an example of a post targeting anyone who is having trouble making rent or car payments.

Here is an example of an account targeting people who have been hit particularly hard by the pandemic with a “Corona special.”

So, what can be done about these scammers? We propose that financial apps with money transfer features put in place protective measures to prevent people from sending their money to these scammers. Additionally, we propose that Facebook, the owner of Instagram, works to shut down these types of accounts. Jessica Allen was the focus of this article, but there are other names used by Insta-scammers in similar ways. Lastly, we need to educate our communities. Here are some things you can tell friends and family about to help them never fall victim to these types of situations.

1. No one who has the power to make money into more money is ever going to be sharing that power freely to the masses. If they did, they wouldn’t be promoting it in tacky Instagram banners.
2. If you are ever going to enter into a financial agreement with someone, do a little research first. Like we said earlier, a simple search of the name being used by this ring of scammers pulls up enough info to let anyone know something fishy is going on here. In other words, what are the chances of 42 different Jessica Allens all promoting the ability to flip cash?

If you or someone you know has fallen on hard times, there are legitimate organizations trying to help. Reach out to them before falling victim to anything that sounds too good to be true. Here’s a list of over 400 programs designed to help people who have been hit hard by the pandemic pay rent or find other solutions:

https://nlihc.org/sites/default/files/Emergency-Rental-Assistance-Programs-3.pdf

If you have any further questions about how this type of scam works or would like us to investigate some other scam you’ve seen you can reach us at info@bitcoinfaq.info and our site is www.bitcoinfaq.info .