Facebook Blind Date Leads To Supermarket Robbery

A Belgian supermarket was robbed this week after the stores manager was duped into a scheme that led him right into the hands of the stores would be robbers.

According to reports the manager received a friends request in February from a young female named Katrien Van Loo and they began an online relationship, when he was invited to her apartment it turned out she didn’t exist and instead he was instead blindfolded and gagged by two men who stole his supermarket keys and the keys to his apartment.

The keys were then given to a third accomplice who entered the store, accessed the locations safe and made off with the stores cash.

The two men who kidnapped the store owner were also caught on CCTV footage (the footage appears at the 1m50sec mark):

 

This newest attack isn’t the first and surely won’t be the last Facebook attack on an unsuspecting Facebook user. Not a day goes by where I don’t read about another home that was robbed because a Facebook status was posted in which the user said they were going out of town and didn’t realize the friend request they accept was from a criminal looking for some quick scores in their area.

As a general precaution to Facebook users, it’s always a good idea to know who your accepting into your friends network before you accept their requests. If you don’t remember them as an old high school or college buddy or a co-worker it’s probably smart to deny the friends request until you have a better understanding of who you’re accepting into your network.

It also wouldn’t be a bad idea to keep certain messages isolated to only your most trusted friends by creating a “trusted friends” list in Facebook and then posting your private messages, such as vacation information only to those friends using the “lock icon” under your Facebook status message before posting.

Finally, when meeting friends in public who you haven’t seen in a long time or perhaps you met through the social network, meet them in public until you get to know them better, after all it’s always smart to be safe instead of sorry.

o