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Since a couple of weeks a friend of mine is sharing stuff like: "when this gets shared X times the first/random X persons get 1000$"(or more), most likely in the hopes of easy money. I'm highly sceptical about that.

cheking those accounts they do those sharings quite regularly (i've seen some accounts doing that multiple times per week). they sometimes say, that they got rich by investing and now have so much money... they just share it. they sometimes show pictures of - what LOOKS like - a paypal account with a positive way above 1 Million $ balance.

Now this could actually be real... but fast&easy money usually doenst exist; and when its to good to be true... it probably is. Why give money to total strangers when you could share it with friends or charities?

But how would such a scam work (if it is one)?

If they ask for bank account informations or you have to make an initial transaction it would be a red flag and i wouldnt ask.

If it uses paypal, would they wait some time for the transaction to be cleared and reverse the transaction for whatever reasons (e.g. bank refuses transaction)? Would something like that work?

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    Sounds more like someone just trying to get their posts shared more by promising money they have no intention of paying. Or it could be someone trying to lure in marks for any number of other scams.
    – glibdud
    Commented Feb 17, 2019 at 3:35

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But how would such a scam work (if it is one)?

By faking the screenshots.

Using browser development tools to (locally) change the contents of a web page is trivial -- you can literally just right-click on the web page, click "Inspect", and start changing what shows up on the page. For instance, congratulations, you now have a reputation of 100 gazillion:

enter image description here

Of course, you don't actually have that much reputation. It isn't even a real number. And the money in the Paypal screenshots isn't real, either. No money ever gets sent to anyone; the purpose of the scam is to get people to like/share/upvote/etc the content.

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    I think you should also mention the benefit to the scammer.... Any time anyone shares/likes a post from someone facebook will show their content to that person. Even more so if it's "highly rated" content (many interactions). The "scammer" can then profit by being highly visible on facebook, maybe get paid to share other content or try to sell stuff themselves.
    – xyious
    Commented Feb 18, 2019 at 18:40
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They are just looking to get gullible people to share their posts. Their posts are likely some lure to hook gullible people into giving them money.

It can also be the start of scamming you. By giving you a task that is easy to say yes to, they make it more likely that you will say yes to the next thing they ask you to do.

As @duskwuff mentioned, they may or may not have that money in their account (likely not). They, however, have no intention of giving any of it to you.

At best, one of the other people sharing the post is either them under a different account or a friend. That account will win the "random" drawing. Most likely, there is no money and no drawing.

You will get nothing but a reputation of of spamming for scammers.

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