A Florida man impersonating tech titan Elon Musk was arrested on Tuesday evening for scamming an aged girl. According to US media experiences, businessman Jeffrey Arthur Moynihan Jr was apprehended at his Bradenton residence.
Under Musk’s false identification, the 56-year-old man reached out to the aged sufferer, a 74-year-old Texas resident, on Facebook in 2023. Now charged with grand theft, the businessman promised the lady a $55 million return on funding. However, the Texas particular person was reportedly scammed out of no less than 1 / 4 of one million {dollars}. Her husband reported the entire quantity was $600,000.
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Texas sufferer believed she was really speaking to the actual Elon Musk
On November 22, The New York Post reported that the lady “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 latest Musk-related information tales. Bodycam footage exhibits police strolling in direction of a shirtless Moynihan, discussing the small print of his arrest.
He is 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 will not be beneath investigation
According to 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 a large sum of money to somebody presenting himself because the SpaceX CEO. The police have since stated in a press launch, “The actual 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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Officials reportedly traced a sizeable chunk of that quantity to Bradenton banks. Further 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 Painting and Pressure Washing LLC.
Local authorities in Texas try to determine the whereabouts of the sufferer’s remaining cash.