‘I want to know why?’: Charity event warns others after being targeted by Facebook scammers

RICHMOND, Va. (WWBT) - A Richmond charity has offered a fun night for a greater purpose for the last two years. The organizer says online scammers have been targeting people doing something good.

“Last year was the first year that multiple women showed up and didn’t have real tickets, and we were able to get it figured out, but my heart broke for them,” explained organizer Amanda Moore.

Moore founded the Richmond Mom Prom, a night out for women, with 100% of proceeds going to a child-centered nonprofit. The 2025 Mom Prom benefitted Connor’s Heroes.

“Oftentimes women, and not just moms, but women in general, they take care of everyone else and don’t take the time to treat themselves and to have a great night with their girlfriends,” she explained. “There’s dancing and dinner and silent auction, and it’s just a lot of fun.”

Moore says there is a link through Eventbrite to buy a $100 ticket, which quickly sells out, but on the Mom Prom Facebook page, people will comment that they have tickets they can no longer use and offer to sell them to someone else.

“We just ask you to be very cautious and make sure you know you’re doing due diligence and making sure they’re real,” she explained. “They’re more sneaky. You know, you’ll see a post with a mom as the main profile picture with her children. There’s definitely been an increase this year. Last year, I remember a handful. We’ll check the page, and I don’t know where these people are in the world. They could be anywhere.”

Moore says that when her team has done more digging into the profiles offering tickets, it becomes apparent that they are not legitimate.

“We’ll go to look at their page, and there’s nothing. It was created hours ago. We have a way in our back office of Eventbrite to look up who’s purchased tickets so we can easily check,” Moore said.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, said in 2022, it saw a decrease in fake accounts to 1.3 billion from 1.5 billion. The social media company also says fake accounts are expected due to the “highly adversarial nature of this space.”

“I really want to know why. What would make you want to do that? And why choose this kind of event? It is just like the lowest of the low. [To] target a young mom or any mom who is trying to do something good for the community and for herself? I just don’t understand it,” said Moore.

As organizers look ahead to the 2026 Mom Prom and others continue to plan events to benefit non-profits, she encourages people to take their time before buying from someone selling a ticket online.

“See if you have mutual friends. You could even ask to jump on a phone call or a FaceTime,” Moore explained.”Doing that extra legwork, it’s a pain, but it could mean, you know, not giving a scammer.”