KC man claims social media strangers scammed him out of thousands

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KCTV) - John Reifsteck thought he had made a friend on Instagram when a stranger named Kevin sent him a message.

“He was like, ‘Hey, how are you?’ Stuff like that,’” Reifsteck recalled. “He seemed like a nice, normal guy.”

Reifsteck, 66, said he began messaging back and forth with Kevin via WhatsApp. He said they seemed to share mutual interests and even talked on the phone once.

Kevin then started asking for money, claiming he needed help with a modeling career. Reifsteck wanted to help and started sending him money regularly in the form of gift cards and CashApp transactions. He said Kevin claimed to need money for photo shoots, agency fees, and even seed money for a business venture.

“When he told me he needed money, everything seemed legit,” Reifsteck said.

At that point, Reifsteck had no idea that he had likely fallen for a scam online.

He also believed the next person who messaged him, which was someone claiming to be an FBI agent. The supposed agent told Reifsteck he had committed a crime and needed to pay fines to avoid an arrest.

“It made you feel like, if you didn’t do it, you’d go to jail,” Reifsteck said.

Reifsteck began stretching himself thin, spending almost all of his paychecks to keep up with the payments. The demands continued, even when CashApp started blocking the transactions. The scammers instructed him to switch to Bitcoin and eventually got his bank information.

Reifsteck said he even took out a second mortgage to keep up with the demands. He estimated that, over the last year, he has lost $100,000 to the scammers.

“It kept getting bigger and bigger,” Reifsteck said. “He kept telling me he needed to pay people off to keep me out of trouble.”

It wasn’t until someone tried to copy Reifsteck’s paycheck that he realized what was going on. He works at E2 Embroidery and Screen Printing in Kansas City. Dawn Eddings, one of the owners of the business, received a fraud alert from her bank last week,

Eddings said she asked Reifsteck about the issue and put everything together.

“He was so scared,” Eddings said. “These people were asking for money. They asked for his and , and he just gave it to him. It was that easy.”

Since then, Eddings has been helping Reifsteck gather information for the Kansas City Police Department, the FBI, and the Missouri Department of Senior Services.  In an effort to help him avoid losing his home, the business has also helped collect money to cover Reifsteck’s utilities and other bills. She also helped Reifsteck block and report the people messaging him on WhatsApp.

Reifsteck said he feels hurt and betrayed that someone would pretend to be his friend. He hoped that, by sharing his story, he could help prevent it from happening to someone else.

“They have to stop,” he said. “They can’t keep doing this to people. It’s wrong.”

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