Should I rebuild a friendship with someone who stole money from me?

TLDR: A really good friend ended up stealing money from me after claiming he would send me drugs. We’re both sober now, and he contacted me recently wanting to reconnect. I’m torn on what to do. —— I was really good friends with someone when we were both in high school. It continued off and on into our adult years - off mostly because I moved away and we just kind of grew apart.

We were both on drugs throughout all of this, and even though we did drugs together, I didn’t think of him as a “drug friend.” We just really connected and it was always very easy to talk about stuff with him that I would never have talked with someone who I just hung out with to do drugs. One of my fondest memories was when we were hanging out and went to go see his sister in the hospital. We made an effort to try to compliment everyone we saw to try to brighten their days a little. Never did anything like that with anyone else.

During Covid, we reconnected and played video games with each other almost every day for a bit. He had a prescription for a drug and didn’t take it anymore so I asked to buy it from him. He charged me $300 for it, so I sent it to him on Venmo.

I had recently taken a good chunk of money from my retirement to take a break from working for a bit to try to make a career change, and I remember drunkenly telling him about it prior to this “deal.” A week or so went by and I kept asking if he was going to send it. He kept reassuring me that he was going to send it. I also remember during this time he asked if the money I got was in the 1000s or 10,000s and I started getting really suspicious.

He eventually stopped replying, and I knew I lost that money.

He emailed me a couple months ago, telling me that he’s sorry for what happened, and that he never meant to fuck me over like that. He claims that CPS came and searched his house, and they found the drug, which I still don’t fully believe, but he also claims he’s been sober for 4 years and wanted to make amends, and even offered to give me the money back. I refused and told him the apology meant more than the money.

He said he wants to reconnect because of the great friendship we had. Part of me wants to, because I do remember he was one of if not the only friend I had where I felt truly natural talking with him and we connected on a lot of stuff.

But I’ve been fucked over a few times in a similar way, and at a certain point I just stopped being able to trust people as friends, and nowadays I don’t really have any friends other than my girlfriend. I’m torn on whether I should try to reconnect, or if it’s just another ploy and I’ll end up getting fucked over again somehow. Part of me thinks it would be a good idea and could help me learn to trust people more again, but another part feels like if I get fucked over again, my trust issues would only worsen.