A Florida man impersonating tech titan Elon Musk was arrested on Tuesday night time for scamming an aged girl. In accordance with US media stories, businessman Jeffrey Arthur Moynihan Jr was apprehended at his Bradenton dwelling.
Beneath Musk’s false id, the 56-year-old man reached out to the aged sufferer, a 74-year-old Texas resident, on Fb in 2023. Now charged with grand theft, the businessman promised the girl a $55 million return on funding. Nevertheless, the Texas particular person was reportedly scammed out of at the very least 1 / 4 of 1,000,000 {dollars}. Her husband reported the whole quantity was $600,000.
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Texas sufferer believed she was truly speaking to the true Elon Musk
On November 22, The New York Put up reported that the girl “felt like Elon actually was her pal.” She was satisfied that Elon was, in actual fact, on the opposite finish of these on-line interactions because the con man would recurrently inform her about “Elon’s” day. His briefing would usually depend on current Musk-related information tales. Bodycam footage exhibits police strolling in the direction of a shirtless Moynihan, discussing the small print of his arrest.
He’s heard questioning the character of the “grand theft” he was being accused of. The Elon Musk impersonator finally tells the authorities that the $250,000 transferred into his account was for a girlfriend he’s believed to have a purely digital relationship with. The police division suspects that he, too, is a sufferer of a separate scheme.
Bradenton Police verify Elon Musk himself shouldn’t be beneath investigation
In accordance with a division spokesperson, Bradenton Police detective Jim Curulla is behind the investigation. Authorities in Frisco, Texas, beforehand intimated to him about an incident wherein a sufferer had purportedly unloaded an enormous sum of money to somebody presenting himself because the SpaceX CEO. The police have since stated in a press launch, “The true Elon Musk was in any other case engaged with the newest launch of SpaceX and isn’t beneath investigation by BPD.”
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Officers reportedly traced a sizeable chunk of that quantity to Bradenton banks. Additional investigation decided that Moynihan was the particular person behind these accounts and $250,000 was transferred to them. The accounts additionally belonged to the scammer’s enterprise, Jeff’s Portray and Stress Washing LLC.
Native authorities in Texas try to determine the whereabouts of the sufferer’s remaining cash.
