This Vermont senior is fighting back against cyber criminals in his spare time

BRATTLEBORO, Vt. (InvestigateTV) - A senior in Vermont spends his days deliberately sabotaging his own computer security, setting up fake email accounts, and hunting down cyber criminals who are trying to steal your money.

When you walk into Elliot Greenblott’s home office, what strikes you is his love of the Yankees.

“Everyone I knew was a Red Sox fan, and I just could not stomach just joining the crowd,” Greenblott said.

The Burlington native said he was never good at sports, but for the last 10 years, he’s played hardball against cyber criminals.

“Am I busy? I’m very busy,” Greenblott said.

He is the volunteer coordinator for the AARP Fraud Watch in Vermont.

“Frankly, the scariest line I ever hear -- and I hear it frequently -- is, ‘I’m too smart to be scammed.’ Trust me, nobody is,” Greenblott said.

Greenblott admits he’s been scammed himself.

He was trying to get through to a company and ended up going on the wrong website, and was charged $59 for some advice after giving his credit card number.

The former teacher now helps get the message out any way he can, from newspaper columns to radio interviews to community outreach.

“I often, in presentations, will say this is the mafia on steroids,” Greenblott said.

He said the bad guys are getting even more sophisticated with the advent of AI. He said if you think your personal information is contained, it’s not.

“We have to, first of all, put up some barriers. We can’t stop them from getting the information, but we can impede their use of it.”

The 77-year-old cyber sleuth spends hours a day trying to find out the latest ways criminals try to steal your money.

“I guess you can say I’m obsessive about this,” he said. “I go to the enemy, because if you ignore it, you’re not going to learn anything.”

He uses multiple email accounts to bait his adversaries. On his laptop, Greenblott demonstrates how he deliberately compromises his security to attract scammers.

“It says, wow, I just won a brand new 170-piece Stanley tool set,” he said.

The fake promotion appears to be from Ace Hardware, but Greenblott said there’s a good way of telling it’s not legit.

“I take the top line -- the address line, or the URL -- and I open it up to see what’s there,” he said. “If you look at this, it looks like a bunch of gobbledygook.” Nowhere to be seen is “Ace Hardware.”

“There’s a reason the criminals are using Ace Hardware,” Greenblott said. “Virtually every town in America has an Ace Hardware.”

“I would almost say, there is nobody walking down Main Street in Brattleboro who hasn’t had their identity stolen,” Greenblott said. “So, what you have to do, is protect yourself from that information being used against you.”

He recommends checking your bank and credit card statements on a regular basis.

“My objective was, if I can make a difference in protecting one person at a time, that’s what I’m going to do,” he said.