Jacksonville attorney says he was nearly scammed by impersonator

A Jacksonville attorney wants to warn others after he says he was nearly scammed out of thousands of dollars.

Mitch Stone said someone impersonated a man he’s known and trusted for decades.

“I didn’t think it was right. There was something wrong about it,” said Stone.

About a week after Stone became Treasurer of the Florida Association of Defense Lawyers, he got some suspicious emails that looked like they came from the president of the organization.

Florida Association of Defense Lawyers President Richard Greenberg confirmed to Action News Jax that it appears to be his email address on the messages Stone received, but said he never emailed Stone to “process a payment of $3,250 to a vendor today.”

Stone said the first red flag he noticed was that the email addressed him as Mitchell.

“Most people call me Mitch Stone. They don’t call me Mitchell. My mother calls me Mitchell. And this was coming from our president, who’s known me for 20 years as Mitch,” said Stone.

Stone said he wanted to come forward after hearing about what happened to the accountant for one of Mayor Lenny Curry’s Political Action Committees.

Eric Robinson told law enforcement he lost $120,000 of PAC money to someone pretending to be Kevin Hoffman, who does fundraising for Curry.

“If you’re not aware that these scams are happening, you can be duped into thinking that you have to transact some business, and it’s quick,” said Mitchell.

It's a reminder that scammers are paying close attention to who has got a hold of the purse strings.

Cox Media Group