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Scammed: Lodi Woman In Credit Card Debt From Bogus Facebook Lottery

A 55-year-old Lodi woman says she is in credit card debt -- and she's blaming Facebook scammers.

Kathryn Schwartz of Lodi said in a New York Times article that she's in credit card debt because of Facebook scammers.

Kathryn Schwartz of Lodi said in a New York Times article that she's in credit card debt because of Facebook scammers.

Photo Credit: Kathryn Schwartz Facebook

In 2016, Kathryn Schwartz lost $1,742 attempting to claim bogus Facebook lottery winnings, according to a new report in The New York Times.

She says in the article that she has been thwarting off and reporting messages from scammers ever since then.

The New York Times found 205 accounts impersonating Mark Zuckerberg on both Facebook and Instagram, at least 51 of them lottery scams. 

Schwartz recently received a message from an account named Mary Williams saying she would help claim her winnings, The Times reports.

In March, that account had renamed itself as a Boise, Idaho native working for Facebook and years prior to that was a man in Nigeria, according to the article.

Schwartz last week warned her own Facebook friends in a post that Mary Williams was a scammer, to which the account replied in a comment to Schwartz:“You think you are smart but you are not. If you were smart why were you scammed.” 

Facebook removed the imposter accounts following the publication of New York Times' article.

Zuckerberg in congressional testimony earlier this month maintained that his social media giant was improving its software "to automatically detect and remove such accounts," according to The Times.

Millions of purportedly fake accounts each month are blocked, the article says.

Schwartz isn't alone. Click here for the full New York Times report.

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