On April 3, 2025, the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office in Florida arrested Wilkens Eugene for serving as a money mule for multiple scam operations. The first was a simple PayPal scam, where
- The scammers sent a fraudulent email under the guise of PayPal, falsely claiming their victim, in this case an elderly female, purchased Bitcoin from Coinbase.
- The victim called the designated phone number and was greeted by a bhenchod, “David Barker,” who gained remote access to the victim’s phone through the Control app.
- “David” gained access to the victim’s bank account and urged her to withdraw $12,000 and hand it off to Eugene.
- The scammers would call the victim several times afterwards, asking her to withdraw $30,000 and, later, $60,000.
The other was a more-elaborate Social Security scam, where
- The scammers sent a fraudulent email under the guise of PayPal, falsely claiming their victim purchased $20,000 in Bitcoin with the intent of transferring it overseas.
- The victim called the designated phone number and got ahold of “John,” a bhenchod who falsely claimed to work from the “Anti-Fraud Unit of Chase Bank” and falsely claimed a warrant was out for their arrest.
- “John” then transferred the call to a coworker of his who posed as “FBI Officer Jason Brown” and instructed the victim to withdraw $18,000 from her account so they can be “secured” into a “new account.”
Wilkins is now being held on a $450,000 bond in the Palm Beach County Jail on charges of
- Occupied burglary
- Grand theft over $10,000
- Conspiracy to defraud
- Computer crime to defraud property.