u/IdeallyCorrosive

I had an older cousin over recently, I heard he watched The Wire back when it was airing and I couldn’t pass up the chance to talk about it to someone who’d seen it. I brought it up and he told me he loved it, but asked me if I knew about my great uncle. The uncle he mentioned is a guy I’ve never met before, only heard his name a couple times, but apparently he was a Baltimore cop or detective working closely with Ed Burns himself, but the more insane detail is that my great uncle’s confidential informant was the guy who Bubbles was based on! I don’t know if there are any records I could find to prove this, certainly none about the informant himself, but my mind was blown. It’ll be weird to rewatch, knowing I have a connection to the show. I didn’t even know I had any family from Balitmore lol! I don’t even know if this uncle is still alive but man I’d love to talk to him about what it was like

I am normally very good at catching scams, but this one is baffling me. I received physical mail from “usbank” claiming I have a $100 unclaimed visa gift certificate that is due to expire next month. I was wary about calling the number on the mail, so I went directly to usbank, but they weren’t really able to help, especially since I don’t have the card or much information besides a Property ID. I looked up the number on the mail, and it actually is a legit number on Kroger’s website (I’m not sure if I’m allowed to post the number, if I get confirmation I will, but you can also find the number very easily online). I called it and they told me they can see I am missing the card and told me to fax my government ID and something else (possibly SSN but I couldn’t hear well what else she asked for) to a separate number. This is where alarm bells went off, I saved the number but didn’t send anything, reached out to a bunch of different usbank and Kroger numbers, and spoke to many agents who were confused and agreed that it sounded weird, but couldn’t 100% confirm that this was a scam. Missingmoney.com doesn’t have $100 missing listed, but does show me missing 33 cents from usbank, however the Property ID doesn’t line up.

Anyway, I’m very confused, is there a chance this is legit, just very strange all around? Or is this number that’s listed on many legit websites associated with scammers? I can’t see why they would need me to fax my information to them.