Scammers posing as federal agents are convincing retirees across the country to liquidate their savings into gold bars, then sending couriers armed with secret passwords to collect the loot. Two recent cases, in Laramie, Wyoming, and Marquette County, Wisconsin, show how the scheme works and how law enforcement is starting to catch up with it.
In Laramie, authorities said an elderly woman handed over about $131,000 in gold to a courier after callers claiming to be Federal Trade Commission agents convinced her that her money was at risk. The scammers pushed her to buy $460,000 in gold, according to the Laramie Boomerang. Police opened an investigation on Sept. 22 after a local coin shop owner grew suspicious of the transaction.
The coin shop owner, police and the victim worked together to set a trap. They borrowed one-ounce gold bars from another dealer to stage a photo of the purchase, and her credit union temporarily processed a $500,000 transaction to make the deal look authentic to the scammers. On Oct. 2, the victim agreed to hand off the gold to a courier at a Qdoba restaurant in Laramie, using a prearranged password, “tulip,” to confirm the handoff. An undercover detective posing as the victim went to the meeting in her place.
The courier, identified as Jithin Sunny, a Canadian citizen, was arrested and charged with felony theft. Sunny told authorities he had been contacted on Instagram about a delivery job in the United States and believed he was transporting antiques to wealthy clients. He said he was instructed to travel to Laramie, pick up a package, and pass it to a second courier, and claimed he didn’t know he was part of a scam.
The FBI describes schemes of this kind as a “sophisticated, multi-layer scam” that targets seniors.
A similar scheme in Wisconsin
In Marquette County, Wisconsin, a similar operation unfolded after a victim using Facebook on a laptop received a pop-up warning of a virus, along with a phone number to call, according to the Marquette County Sheriff’s Office. When the victim called, a man answered and said the call was being transferred to the Federal Trade Commission’s fraud department. Scammers allegedly told the victim that someone had tried to drain their savings account through a wire transfer, but that the transfer had been blocked.
To protect the money, the victim was told to withdraw their savings, convert it into gold bars, and wait for an “officer” to collect them at home. The victim complied, buying gold bars, photographing them and bagging them for pickup.
The sheriff’s office said the victim spent much of Oct. 20 on the phone with a man who called himself “Sam.” When a sheriff’s deputy arrived at the home and the victim mentioned it, “Sam” told them to hang up, say nothing to the deputy, and call back once the deputy had left.
Once the victim resumed the call, “Sam” instructed them to take the bag of gold outside and wait for a courier. Law enforcement caught the man who arrived to collect it, identified as Dhavalkumar Dashrathgiri Bava. He was taken into custody on charges of felony conspiracy to commit theft of more than $100,000 by false representation, with an enhanced penalty applied because the victim was elderly.
An organized, evolving fraud
Tom Hyslip, a former Secret Service agent and professor of cybercrime at the University of South Florida, told Fox News Digital that schemes like these are run by organized criminal networks.
“A lot of them operate out of Africa. There’s been many indictments of arrests over the years for these types of scams. And they’ve been going around for years and the criminals keep changing their MO. It used to be the Nigerian Prince. And then it went to the investment scheme or someone’s been kidnapped,” Hyslip said.
Hyslip said the newer approach is more patient and methodical than earlier versions of the con. “So now they’re trying to take their time, pretend they’re from a government agency or your bank, build that rapport, build the trust, then they make the ask,” he said.
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