Rev. Franklin Graham wants good-hearted Christians to be careful and not fall for online scams that seem to be gaining more and more popularity nowadays.
Graham writes on his Facebook page that scammers are taking advantage of social media and are even using his name to illegally solicit funds from susceptible users.
"We see more and more social media impersonators, and they're pretty persistent! We regularly find people who use my name and even my photo to try to solicit funds from people following my Facebook page," he warns. "You can know that if I were soliciting funds, it would be on behalf of Samaritan's Purse or the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and would be linked to giving through those websites."
"I have an official Facebook page, Franklin Graham, so you also wouldn't be receiving a Friend Request from me—those are fake. Remember—just because it's on the Internet, doesn't mean it's true!" Graham adds.
A lot of people who are following Graham's account said they have been approached online by these scammers. Thankfully, they were not fooled.
"Got a friend request last week. Thought it was fishy as there was a different pic of Franklin Graham being used for his Facebook," someone wrote. Another wrote, "I never accept friend request from big name ministries. I know they don't have time to communicate with all the people who follow them.
Another Facebook user said he received a friend request from Graham's father Billy. After accepting, he was told to fast for three days and send money to an orphanage.
One person said he got a friend request from someone claiming to be Indian-born Canadian-American Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias. He said he would have given Zacharias funds, but his alarm bells rang off when the scammer told him to deliver the money to a trailer park.
