Nowadays, everybody and their grandma can be taken for a ride by bad players on the internet,
It has always been like that. The only thing that has changed is that people send messages via Facebook instead of email or post.
The Nigerian Prince scam started out on snail mail, and the pattern of the advanced-fee scam has roots that reach back to the 19th century. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Prisoner Nothing is new.