MELBOURNE BEACH, Fla. -- Gary C. Jones was sent to Florida in October by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help hurricane victims rid their homes of mold and mildew.

He wound up ridding a 72-year-old woman of her oceanfront home -- for $250,000 -- after she walked into a FEMA service center seeking his advice on mold removal, according to a Local 6 News investigation.

Oceanfront homes near the one at 5235 Highway A1A in Melbourne Beach have sold for $1 million or more in recent years; one nearby half-acre oceanfront lot, with a hurricane-damaged home gutted to four walls, is listed for $925,000.

"People have been selling properties as soon as they list them for sale," said Hank Saunders, who's sold Brevard County beachfront for 33 years and was contacted by Local 6 for his opinions on the market. "I just can't see a piece of property on the ocean selling below $750,000" even if, as was the case here, the home had roof damage and a mold problem.

But Jones, 62, paid only $250,000 in January 2005, according to Brevard County official records, and he does not have to make a single payment on the $300,000 mortgage he acquired at the time until December 2008.

When first contacted in Missouri in March by Local 6, Jones denied ever working for FEMA. Asked then how he found the property, he said he was in Florida "just looking around."

But, after Local 6 filed a Freedom of Information Act request, FEMA verified Jones has been a "hazard mitigation counselor" for the agency since April 1998, assigned to Florida from October 6 to October 30, 2004.

Asked last month why he did not at first tell the truth about his FEMA employment, Jones said he hoped we would have "gone away."

Video

FEMA Worker Buys Storm Victim's Oceanfront Home For $250,000

Instead, we showed up one recent afternoon as he and his sons were renovating his family's new Florida home.

Asked how a FEMA employee wound up in position to obtain for $250,000 a house similar to those selling for about $1 million or more, Jones repeatedly responded, "I have no comment. That's my business."

Indeed, real estate is his business.

When not responding to disasters as an on-call FEMA counselor, Jones is a licensed real estate broker, according to the Division of Professional Regulation in Missouri, where Jones has lived for decades.

Real estate listing records show Jones had the 2,000-square-foot Melbourne Beach home listed for sale for $700,000 in November -- contingent on him first closing the deal with Diane Greco, the woman who, with her late husband, owned the 0.29-acre lot since 1971 and built the home in 1973.

Greco told Local 6 she had no idea he was a real estate broker and that he had a Realtor list it for sale on November 2.

Jones withdrew the property from the market two days later after, he says, his wife convinced him her prayers for a "lifestyle change" were apparently being answered by the pending purchase of the home, in which Jones and his family now live.

Greco, who split time between her oceanfront home and another in Rockledge, declined an on-camera interview, but said she had no problem with the sale. She told Local 6 she reached the $250,000 asking price after recalling an estimate she was given for the lot value only years earlier. Unable to make quick repairs in the wake of the storms, she said it was an emotional relief to sell it and harbors no bitterness toward Jones -- even when she now realizes the property is worth much more.

But her son, Marcus, says he believes Jones "100 percent took advantage" of his mother, whom he described as "upset and devastated" after hurricanes Frances and Jeanne damaged the roof and washed away the dune. "She couldn't sleep at night. She kept driving down there" to look at the damage to the house she had hoped to move into full time, he said.

"I said, 'Call FEMA and see if they can help you.' That's why FEMA's here -- to help people," Marcus Greco recalled. He was surprised to later learn the FEMA employee had contracted to buy the property for $250,000 -- plus a $50,000 advance on an anticipated insurance settlement that was later signed over to Jones.

"I said, 'This has got to be against the law. You’re stressed out. He works for the government,' " Marcus Greco said. But, he added, his mother was adamant: she did not want to keep the burden of the house or place it on her family. And, he said, he could not have compelled her to do anything else.

The FEMA worker, Jones, said he was just trying to advise Diane Greco on mold removal when she suggested the home was a burden and that she might be interested in selling to him.

Jones said he took an extended lunch break to inspect the home, still wearing his FEMA clothes, and quickly determined he would buy it.

"She set the price on the house. She wanted to sell it. I bought the house," Jones told Local 6. He also denied ever having the property listed, but -- after he was shown the real estate listing service sheet asking $700,000 -- he repeated once again: "This is all my business."

Actually, now, it’s also the business of the Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security. FEMA said Jones remains an on-call employee; Jones said he's told FEMA he's "unavailable" for more work.

We asked FEMA spokeswoman Crystal Payton if the agency approved of a counselor entering into a private financial deal with a distressed owner of hurricane-damaged property and obtaining it for a fraction of its estimated value.

"Some might look at that and say, 'He was taking advantage.' Is that a potential here?," we asked.

"Well, let us look at it," said Payton. "Let's see where it stands, where we are as far as it going up to the (Inspector General)."

That was more than two weeks ago; we've yet to hear back from FEMA.

Federal law prohibits government employees from using their positions for private gain or using nonpublic information to further their private interest.

Whether Jones did that is up the federal investigators and, perhaps, the courts to decide.

He says he was just at the right place at the right time.

"I had no intention of finding property, looking for property asking people about it or anything else, that was never my intention," said Jones.

So how did it happen?

"It just happened."