14 DAY TRIAL // A page promoted on Facebook claiming to have been created by rap artist 50 Cent advertises that the star is giving away millions of dollars in cash prizes to anyone following three simple steps to qualify for the raffle.
Anyone looking to get a chance to become rich without any effort is asked to like the post, share it and then like another page that is allegedly an official online location of the artist.
Images of the rapper with stacks of money act as incentive
The page, however, is not affiliated in any way with the rapper and is part of a scheme where online crooks try to make it more popular in order to trade it for cash. The practice is called like-farming and is not new, but it started to become more popular lately.
As an incentive for the visitors to like the page and thus contribute to increasing its popularity, the crooks posted images of the rapper in front of large amounts of money, taken from various online resources.
In one of the recent posts, the individuals behind the scam lured unsuspecting users of the social network with a message saying that four persons have already received their cash prizes and that another four were about to get selected randomly, for getting $1 million / €835,000 each.
After racking in large numbers of likes, these pages are generally sold to other scammers or to marketing companies, which can promote different products more successfully. By acquiring sufficient traction, these pages have a better chance of popping up in the newsfeed of Facebook users, thus being able to reach a wider audience.
Eminem's name was also used in a similar scam
50 Cent is not the only rap artist whose name has been used in this sort of scams. Before Christmas, a similar message was passed on Facebook, claiming that Eminem gave away $5 / €4.181 million to one lucky fan.
Even if the rappers did have a fortune so large that millions of dollars would be like a drop in the ocean, the story still looks suspicious and users should not engage in clicking on any link in the post, regardless if it is recommended by a friend.
Many fall for this trick, which allows the perpetrators to cash in amounts as large as a few thousand dollars. Some online reports say that the price for one million likes could go as up as $7,000 / €5,800.
Maybe videos like the one below (mind that it was shot in 2010) fuel the belief that rap artists would give away money for no apparent reason.
