Woman falls victim to Facebook scam, loses rent money

HOUSTON (KTRK) -- A single mother fell for an online scam and lost all of the money she had left.

Sherita Britton and her two daughters will be evicted from their apartment in southwest Houston near Fondren Road this week.

"I'm sitting here like, how am I gonna tell my kids that we don't have nowhere to go," Britton said. "Because we have basically been through this before and I'm not trying to put my kids through this again."

Britton lost her job recently. When she saw an opportunity on Facebook to make enough money to pay her rent, she took it against her better judgement.

"He messaged me, 'How much you tryna flip,'" Britton said. "He had it advertised saying you can make such and such amount of money with this little amount and everything."

Britton said she used $400 she received from her income tax return to invest with a stranger online. She has not heard from him since.

Her 5-year-old daughter has a learning disability and suffers from severe asthma. She said her 10-year-old is being bullied at school.

"I don't want them to have to go through this no more," Britton said.

Britton said she and her daughters lived out of a car for four months before she was able to lease the apartment. Eyewitness News called the Salvation Army Tuesday afternoon to ask if the organization could help Britton. A social worker interviewed her and decided to offer Britton and her two daughters rooms in their shelter.

She said her daughters always encourages her.

"We'll sit here and read our Bibles, and they'll say a prayer and say, 'It's gonna be okay Mama, God's gonna help us,'" Britton added. "We're gonna get through this."