1 hour ago
3
Facebook Marketplace deals are turning deadly, with two people murdered this year trying to sell items.
On Jan. 27, Illinois teen Nedas Revuckas allegedly stabbed 30-year-old pregnant mom Eliza Morales 70 times before setting her house on fire.
Revuckas, 19 — who cops say confessed to the crime — was dissatisfied with a red 1994 Ford Ranger pickup truck he purchased from Morales’ husband through Facebook Marketplace a week previously. Revuckas is awaiting trial and has yet to enter a plea.
A few days earlier, on Jan. 23, decorated Marine and pastor Michael Ryan Burke, 42, was gunned down in his Columbia, Missouri, home. He used his final breaths to text his mother and sister: “I am dying, I love you.”
Four people who had been on a Marketplace phone-stealing spree in the area were arrested and charged with second-degree murder. One of them had responded to Burke’s ad listing his iPhone 15 for sale.
Three of those charged are adults who have pleaded not guilty and are awaiting trial. The fourth is a juvenile; the status of their case is unknown.
Victims say Marketplace — a free, built-in section of Facebook’s platform where any user with a profile can buy or sell stuff — is rife with scams, sales of hot merchandise, robberies or worse, and that users need better protection. The feature has over a billion monthly users, according to analysts.
Meta, parent company of Facebook, advises on the platform about how people should arrange meetups and says: “If you see any signs of suspicious activity when using Facebook Marketplace, immediately cancel the transaction, stop communicating with the other party and report the listing or person.”
However, it’s too late for teen Carlos Carrazana Ricardo, of Lancaster, Pa., who senselessly died helping out a friend.
His buddy, Erik, needed a car and found one for sale in Baltimore, 80 miles away. Erik didn’t speak English and Carlos — who worked at an Amazon warehouse and dreamed of going to college when he graduated — volunteered to drive and act as translator.
But when the boys, both 18, arrived to inspect the used Acura listed for $4,000, they saw it was in bad shape. Erik no longer wanted to make the purchase, so they got in Carlos’s car to head back to Pennsylvania.
However, just as he shifted to first gear, the seller, 18-year-old Marquis Harris, pulled out a gun and opened fire. One bullet hit Carlos’s car and went through his skull, killing him instantly.
“We left Cuba for a better life, and my son is killed by the hand of an American,” Carlos’s mother, Yanet Ricardo Vega, speaking via a translator, told The Post through tears.
That was November 2023, and the family had only been in the US a little over a year when Carlos’s short life was tragically ended.
Harris was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to life plus 10 years.
Meta did not respond to a request for comment from The Post.
One Missouri couple that year decided to do something about it when they were victims of an armed robbery from Facebook Marketplace in March 2025.
A user going by “Hotrod Scott” asked the couple to hand-deliver a $240 electric fireplace they listed for sale, but after plugging it in to demonstrate it worked, he pulled a gun on them.
The pair posted about their experience on Facebook, which led to dozens of comments from others who had similar stories — including one user who was robbed by the same guy, who was eventually arrested.
“The scammers have a knowledge of psychology that Freud would have envied. They’re able to prey upon people, and they do it with the assistance of companies like Facebook [who] make it easy [to do],” cyber security expert and Bentley University professor Steve Weisman, who runs a scam-prevention blog called Scamicide, told The Post.
Facebook, he said, seems to stand out because it attracts an older demographic, while most perpetrators are teenagers or in their early 20s. Violent meet-ups are usually for the more expensive items listed—frequently cars and cellphones, according to reports analyzed by The Post.
Criminals often make fake profiles and arrange for meet-ups in shady locations with poor security, Weisman said, in order to shield themselves.
“Facebook makes a lot of money from this, and they really don’t police their site to the extent that they could and should, particularly using AI and the advanced analytics that we have today,” Weisman charged.
Most law enforcement in the US does not track crimes that specifically originate on Facebook, but a 2021 investigation by nonprofit news site ProPublica found 13 homicides that year tied to Marketplace.
Police in Dayton, Ohio, reported at least 40 thefts tied to Marketplace meet-ups in 2025.
In one 2024 crime ring, the NYPD reported a pattern on nine armed robberies where the suspects had posted fake ads on Marketplace to lure victims in the Bronx and Queens. They made off with at least $17,000 in cash and cell phones taken at gunpoint. The perpetrators used the aliases “Akeem Brown” and “George Smith.” They remain at large.
The issue has caught the attention of Congress. During a September 2025 Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on tech and privacy former Meta integrity researcher turned Facebook whistleblower Jason Sattizahn blasted his ex-employer, telling lawmakers, “Marketplace causes suffering for users, including financial loss from stolen or counterfeit items, and personal safety issues ranging from being sexually propositioned by strangers to physical assaults and attempted kidnapping.”
Sattizahn’s research found that 9% of people reported at least one negative experience in the last month with the platform.
Critics and watchdogs have long complained that Meta puts profit ahead of safety and that the tech behemoth could easily weed out bad actors.
“They’re not checking these things out. They have the statistics. They know when I brush my teeth,” Weismann said.
“Facebook could require verified ID. They could have more educational material. The people that often do these crimes, do them repeatedly. Behavioral analytics would be able to pick up and flag a lot of phony sales that turn into violence. Just by taking those steps Facebook could make it a lot safer.”
Facebook advises users to review the seller’s profile before making a deal and to arrange a meeting “in a public, well-lit area,” and to share your plan with loved ones.
For Carlos’ mom and many others, it’s now too late.
“I thought Facebook Marketplace was a secure place,” the grieving mother said, fighting back tears. “There should be more verification somehow.”
“Carlos was the best son in the world. He was a great student, a great brother and son.”
Additional reporting by Isabel Vincent
English (US)