At first, Karina Wells got a message from a Facebook acquaintance, Adrian. This friend claimed that he was penniless in Lagos, Nigeria, and asked her for $500 to get back home.
The message seemed legitimate, but things gradually changed when Wells started noticing that the man to whom she was writing didn’t quite fit Adrian’s regular speech. It seems that the main tip off was that the scammer kept using the "cell" instead of "mobile phone" (apparently, the term is not very popular in Australia).
In the end, the conclusion was clear: someone managed to take control of Adrian’s Facebook account.
As it follows, Wells decided not to send the money after all. Instead, she informed both and authorities and Facebook about the scammer and sent all the information she could gather. As the scammer was supposed to get the money via Western union, one can only hope that he got there in time to meet the police.