Fraudsters have learned to lure hundreds of thousands of dollars from bloggers using Instagram algorithms — Meta experts are powerless

Security experts have revealed a new method of Instagram fraud that helped an attacker known as OBN Brandon «earn» several hundred thousand dollars. The attacker terrorizes famous people on the social network by deleting their accounts and demanding a ransom for restoration.

OBN Brandon has succeeded thanks to an account complaint system that can be easily manipulated. The opportunities for such fraud were created by Meta itself. To protect users from harmful content on the platform, Instagram’s complaint system automatically deletes posts after receiving a notification of inappropriate content.

Fraudsters, including OBN Brandon, have learned to use this complaint system to target Instagram users. One method of account deletion is to duplicate the target profile. Having copied all the user’s posts to their page, the fraudster sends a complaint to the original account, claiming that it is fake. Meta systems immediately delete the account that received the complaint.

As for OBN Brandon, in addition to filing complaints against certain accounts and cheating users out of their money, it advertises its own software that automatically files false complaints. In this way, the attacker makes life easier for other fraudsters and earns money from them.

OBN Brandon offers victims of such attacks to restore their deleted accounts. The fraudster estimates the service at $ 5000. However, the attacker usually does not stop when he realizes that the victim is solvent. He performs the «block/unblock» cycle several times until the victim spends several tens of thousands of dollars.

According to Meta representatives, the fraudster’s profiles are currently blocked on all the company’s platforms. However, this does not mean that the fraudster will not be able to create a new account and continue malicious activities.