Nighttime scammer

Scams come any time of the day. Sleep time hovered when the phone dinged and a message appeared. “How you doing. Sorry for just hitting you up but do you have 80$ I can borrow until tmr (tomorrow) for the kids so I can get them some things?” I knew him, my cousin’s son, but not well enough to loan.
So I replied, “Did you intend to send this to me? It is 11 p.m. there.” He lives one time zone east.
“My apologies. I did.”
Confused, I responded, “I am awake for another hour or so. Just not understanding how you can get anything at this time of day.”
“I was gonna go to the gas station and get some snacks. You know how kids are. Do you have 80$ to spare until tmr? I will come bring it to you in the morning, if so,” he responded.
I laughed. He lives 1000 miles away. He could not keep that promise. Plus, if he could bring me $80 in the morning, why did he need it tonight? This was getting stranger by the minute. Add to that, his elementary age kids had school in the morning. Surely they went to bed hours ago.
I could not help responding “You can’t bring it to me in the morning. I live in Arkansas. You live on the East Coast.”
“IK (I know) but trust me, I will send it back. Ima man to my word.”
“Why aren’t the kids in bed? Tomorrow is school.” I had to hear his answer.
Disregarding his previous message, the beggar responded, “Got a cold. Trying to get some flu medicine or something for their fever.”
I hopped over to his mom’s facebook page, “Are you up? I got such a strange message from your son asking for $80 at 11 p.m. at night for the kids. First he wants it for snacks, then he says for medicine because they have a cold or the flu. So odd. Was his account hacked?”
“I think he is hacked. Kids are fine and he is working. I know he is sleeping because he gets up early. I will let him know. So strange what people do.”
“I agree.”
I flipped back to the scammer/hacker, “No. Money.”
To his mom I wrote. “My daughter will tell you how stingy I am. I refused her request and showed her how she could manage if she cut back on extras. Later, someone asked for money when she was present. She told me, “you better say, ‘No.’”
My cousin’s wife said, “I am like you. I don’t mind helping, but it has to be a real need.”
“We have our reputations to maintain,” I concluded.
The next day the real Facebook page owner posted, “I think someone hacked my account last night. If you got messages from my account asking for money, it was not me. Facebook asked me this morning if it was me logging in from a foreign location. So hopefully no one sent this scammer money. I never borrow money, but if I needed to, it would be over the phone or in person, never through messenger.”
Later he reported, “fixed – after changing my password three times and then finally getting FB to help me out. ‘Dude’ hacked me three times. Man was it a fight getting him out of my account.”
Looking back, there were plenty of hacker clues. 1. We don’t know each other well enough to ask for a loan. 2. The reason changed. 3. No kid needs an $80 snack run at 11 p.m. Eat what’s in the house and go to bed.
I let him know I had not been fooled. I added, “still it will give me fodder for a column and remind readers to be alert for scammers.”