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Women Busted For Scamming Old Bay Ridge Man Out Of $300K
By
Jen Chung
Published Jun 27, 2011
Modified Jun 27, 2011
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By
Jen Chung
Published Jun 27, 2011
Modified Jun 27, 2011
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A 76-year-old Brooklyn man was taken for a $300,000 ride when two women convinced him to invest his money in gold coins, but there was never any gold involved: According to the Post, "drifters...married to brothers in a gypsy clan" Reeva Johnson, 24, and Holly Mitchell, 23, were busted on charges including grand larceny when one of the elderly man's friend got suspicious.
The man, who would only identify himself as Vincent, tells his sad story, "I don't know how [Johnson] zoomed in on me. I would bump into [Johnson] here and there while out shopping. It was always around the same time." Authorities say that Johnson managed to get Vincent to believe that the gold coins would yield more than his money sitting in a stupid bank earning interest, so when she and Mitchell asked him for $150,000 to give to a coin collector they had recommended, he did it. And when the pair asked him for another $150,000 a few weeks later, Vincent wrote another check, even though he never got any coins.
Vincent was apparently on the verge of giving the pair another $450,000—they used the ol' "Holly needs a kidney transplant" story—but one of his friends contacted the authorities. Still, when he saw Johnson at the stationhouse, he tells the Post, "I wanted to say something to her. I wanted to say, 'Sorry it turned out this way.'" Lesson: Old men in Bay Ridge have lots of money and are still nice after you steal hundreds of thousands from them.
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bay ridge
brooklyn
gold
grifter
gypsy
scam
Jen Chung
Jen Chung is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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