My close neighbor and his girlfriend were nearly victims of an apparent “e-Bay” scam to the tune of $2,000 that originated from a potential Facebook scam. The gentleman of 63 years was employed at the Mohegan Sun Casino for several years as a security guard and back in about April or May of 2021 suffered a major stroke. Recovery has been good but has left him in a mentally incapacitated frame of mind, which is to says he is not able to make competent decisions for himself.

On Facebook he was instant messaged by someone claiming to be from the FBI, offering him an opportunity to get $70,000 in federal grants in exchange for purchasing $2,000 in e-Bay gift cards. His instructions were to purchase the cards and send him the pictures of the cards along with the corresponding store receipts to the alleged FBI agent. Unfortunately, he did go to the local grocery store did indeed buy the $2,000 in gift cards, but being for the most part computer illiterate, he had no idea how to do this. He summoned me to do the information transfer for him. Of course, I recognized the scam right away and I refused, explaining to him in layman's term what exactly was happening.

Wayne Simon

Norwich