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Published On: Thu, Jan 17th, 2019

How These Facebook Posts Played a Role in Crimes

Social media has been around for decades now and it has become a staple in our lives. Of course, the most popular social media today remains Facebook, at least in the Western community and other Westernized parts of the world. In fact, nearly ⅓ of the world’s 7.7 billion population has a Facebook account, now, that’s a lot of Facebook posts.

Of course, with that many users, around 2.27 billion, all kinds of people are bound to be included. Criminals are certainly not exempted, after all, they are a part of any society and know all its trends too. Suffice to say, there are a lot of crime-related Facebook posts.

photo/Gerd Altmann

These can range from hilariously dumb to outright alarming and here are some of the most notable ones:

Illegally Blonde

Blonde hair does have its appeal, even to shady people, that’s probably why this random user tried to sell a blonde woman’s passport. Thankfully some of her “friends” saw her post and tried to correct the error of her ways. Identity theft is a rather serious crime too.

Hit and Run

People do tend to share most of their daily activities on Facebook posts from eating, working, out, and most especially dates. Apparently, hitting a pedestrian with your car is also worthy of being shared on Facebook. Thankfully, the guy above is clueless and the police probably had an easy time tracking and questioning him.

Drugs Bust Waiting to Happen

Selling drugs is never okay unless you are a licensed pharmacist or med rep. However, if you are a normal person selling drugs on Facebook, then you are in for a heap of trouble with the police. Turns out, this can be a lot more common in practice, just not done in a public spotlight.

Jared Cano posted photos of himself smoking pot photo/Facebook

The Legendary Florida Man

It turns out, wanted people still use Facebook despite being on the receiving end of a manhunt. This Florida man even had the guts to use his own wanted poster as his profile picture on his actual Facebook account. Suffice to say, the police never had an easier catch that day.

Pornography Spamming

Crimes do not always happen in Facebook posts and public spaces online. Sometimes criminals do them in private. One woman from Memphis Tennessee (above) reportedly hacked into someone else’s account and shared sexually explicit photos and videos to the hacked user’s friends and family. Needless to say, she was charged with harassment.

Facebook Crackdown

Here’s a known fact that seems to elude criminals: the police can also use Facebook. That means they can track known criminals and gang members with Facebook posts and pay them a visit. That is exactly what officer Michael Rodrigues did to known gang members, he sent them friend requests on Facebook and regularly checked their posts. Afterwards, when enough evidence has accumulated, he swooped in for the arrest.

Friends in High Places

Similar to above, this one happened to a fugitive named Maxi Sopo who went hiding in Mexico, this also doubled as his vacation. Apparently, the criminal on the run added a bunch of friends to brag about his “vacation.” It just so happens that one of those friends he added and met was a former Justice Department official in the US. The police used that to get through Sopo and he got caught.

Thanks, GPS

Anyone who has ever used Facebook on their smartphone will surely know that the app will always try to know your exact location. It even does this on regular posts. Unfortunately for a prison sentence escapee James Tindell, his Facebook app kept doing just that while he was on a cross-country chase with police. This led to his being caught and arrested for leaving digital breadcrumbs.

The Great Big Compromise

Some crimes are just too big to ignore and this one happened to Facebook itself. Last year, one of the biggest scandals ever for the social media was the multiple security breaches where as many as 50 million Facebook accounts were compromised. Additionally, around 81,000 accounts had their Facebook private messages posted online by some hackers. The alarming part is that the culprit has not been caught yet. Might want to take this as a warning and use an extra layer of security with the best VPN (virtual private network) on the market.

Author: Nayab Sh

 

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