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A Florida man was arrested for allegedly impersonating tech billionaire Elon Musk and scamming an elderly woman out of “approximately $600,000,” according to her husband. The man, Jeffrey Arthur Moynihan Jr., 56, was taken into custody last week by the Bradenton Police Department Elder Fraud Unit.
Moynihan allegedly had a 74-year-old Texas woman send him $250,000 with a promise of millions in return on her “investment.” The victim’s 80-year-old husband said the total amount was actually much higher, telling “investigators his wife gave ‘Elon Musk’ approximately $600,000.”
Moynihan, who was arrested at his Bradenton home on Tuesday, Nov. 19, allegedly befriended the woman on Facebook, posing as the billionaire SpaceX founder. Then, for several months, he exchanged messages with the woman, eventually asking her to invest in one of his “businesses.”
The Bradenton Police Department reports the money was transferred to bank accounts owned by Moynihan and his business, Jeff’s Painting and Pressure Washing, LLC.
“He suggested that if she gave him $500,000, he could turn that into $55 million,” Scripps reports BPD detective Jim Curulla said.
Curulla also reported Moynihan used the real Elon Musk’s real social media posts to scam the woman into believing he was real in their conversations.
“So, if he went and saw a launch, he would say, ‘Well today, I’m at a launch but maybe we can talk tonight when I’m free’ or ‘This week I’m going to go talk to some high-profile people and maybe you can watch me on TV tonight.’”
“The victim was convinced she had, in fact, invested her money with Elon Musk,” Curulla added. “The victim felt like Elon really was her friend.”
When her husband questioned whether she was talking to the real Elon Musk, Curulla said, “She was like, ‘Yes it is him because he’s doing a launch tonight, he doing this, he’s working with Tesla tonight, he’s got a big shareholder meeting.'”
Earlier this month, it was reported that another group of scammers had managed to steal one million dollars from an elderly man who believed he had become friends with WWE star Alexa Bliss.
“It’s an epidemic, but it’s not just here in Bradenton. I deal with detectives from Seattle to New York to Miami. We’re all having the same problem,” Curulla said.