This TikToker wanted to fly to the Bahamas but ended up in handcuffs.
Luxury watch dealer, TikToker and YouTuber Vookum was arrested at Newark airport on his way to the Bahamas. The twist: he apparently didn’t do anything wrong, as someone else had been impersonating him.
Vookum Spends Two Days In Jail After Impersonator Scams Fans
The social media influencer Tyler "Vookum" Mikorski focuses his content on selling, buying and auctioning luxury watches. With his uploads on YouTube he regularly gets over 100,000 views. On March 1, however, he was in for an unpleasant surprise: when he wanted to fly to the Bahamas with his girlfriend and her family, he was arrested at the airport in Newark, New Jersey. The police told him that there was a Florida warrant against him. Vookum was apparently only informed why he had been arrested roughly an hour after his detention:
“They tell me like, ‘Yeah, so the reason you have been arrested is that you have a grand larceny charge in the state of Florida over $5,000 and under $10,000.’”
Apparently authorities treated the situation as a potential attempt to flee. Then a business partner informed him that apparently someone had scammed a customer on Facebook Marketplace for over $6,000 using his name. The customer wanted to buy a watch, but the seller never delivered. Still, the TikToker got arrested and had to stay at Essex County Correctional Facility for two days while his legal team tried to prove to the authorities that Vookum is actually innocent.
On March 3, he was finally released when his attorneys were able to convince authorities that Vookum is not the one they are searching for. Vookum shared that there are no more charges against him:
“Now obviously there are no charges on me right now because they dropped the charges because I didn’t do anything.”
He further emphasized that he wouldn't sell his wares online through anything but his official accounts:
“Don’t buy from me online unless it’s my eBay live, or you’re in person in front of my face.”
In the end, maybe don’t spend $6,000 on a random Facebook Marketplace deal. Large investments on unverified platforms with minimal security are a bad idea, because if a deal seems too good to be true, it usually is.
