How to Avoid the Facebook Page Buying Scam

If you have a larger Facebook page, you probably get swamped with offers to buy your page. I was looking to sell my "100,000 likes" page because I was planning to use one of my new pages that matched my branding and was showing up in search results. Thus, this page with 660,000+ likes would be a great resource to someone that wanted it.

Most people perhaps are not foolish enough to go down the path of trying to sell their page or are not interested in selling their page. As a Facebook page admin that has a lot of pages with a lot of fans, I was foolish enough to at least entertain conversation with some of the people that constantly sent messages trying to buy my page. I even was kind enough to add them as an "insights analyst" so that they could check out my fan base. I also foolishly added them as a friend. Apparently I am not the first to have went down this road but hopefully I can be one of the last. Here is what happened after that.

1) After adding a user from this forum as an insights analyst and a friend who wanted to buy my "100,000 likes" page, he began chatting with me and trying to get added to all of my pages.
2) I got the feeling he was trying to scam me and I removed him as a friend, blocked him, and removed him from my Facebook page.
3) I went to the gym with my wife and forgot about it. The last I saw my Facebook page had me as the only admin on it.
4) When I stupidly checked my phone right before dinner, I saw I had been demoted to a "content creator" on my own page by the guy I had formerly removed. I checked my page and I had been completely removed as an admin. No email or anything from Facebook.
5) I submitted every form I could find on Facebook. None were the least bit helpful and two weeks later I still have not got any help. They don't care one bit.

How did this happen? I believe the email Facebook sent the scammer when he removed my Facebook page had a link to "disavow" admin removal or something similar. Unfortunately I never got one of these emails myself but I did when I removed myself off of another page. I believe this was the method used to somehow remove me from my own page even though I had only provided insights analyst access.

What can you learn from this?
1) Never add anyone to your page you do not trust at any level of admin permission. I trusted Facebook to control access via the admin roles system they have in place and this failed.
2) Do not engage in conversation with people that want to buy your Facebook page. Facebook pages cannot be sold and Facebook will not help either party if there is a problem. I knew this beforehand but I gave into temptation with high offers and a desire to sell a page that I no longer needed. If you make the same mistake, you have been forwarned.
3) If you do get removed wrongly from a page, the only recourse you have is to check the email Facebook sends when you have been removed. If you have those emails turned off in notifications, you have no chance to restore yourself to the page.

What interesting will happen in the future?
1) Large brand pages have been and will continue to be stolen by employees and other people in trust positions. While companies are tending to remove people from pages right before firing them, tricks like this give even employees that have been removed a chance to take the page back by force.
2) Facebook will have to improve their pages admin restoration systems after enough incidents like this happen.

In closing, all of us make mistakes and I am willing to keep going after I do. My new Facebook page is half the size of my old one already and I am going to make it double the size the last one got to. This set me back thousands in lost ad revenue and if that's the worst thing that happens to me this year, I will count myself blessed!