The New York City Police Department's Financial Crimes Task Force (FCTF) estimates that hundreds of people in the city have been victims of gold bullion scams recently, ABC News reports. The victims are elderly people, and the damage already exceeds $100 million.
Police representatives told the TV channel how the deception is carried out: a pop-up window appears on the pensioners’ computer screen, allegedly from Microsoft, which says that the device is infected with a virus and to unlock it you need to call the specified number.
After the call, victims unknowingly gave scammers access to their computers and bank accounts. The scammers then contacted the victims again and introduced themselves as employees of the US Treasury Department or the police. Under the guise of law enforcement officers, they offered pensioners to protect their funds by purchasing gold bars.
Subsequently, a courier came to the victim to collect the precious metal and called a special code, also announced by the scammer over the phone, which was supposed to convince the victims of the legality of the procedure. The operators of the scam themselves could, according to law enforcement, be located outside the United States, including in Asian countries.
“We want as many victims as possible to come forward so we can try to solve this problem across the United States, not just in New York. The amount of money they [мошенники] received from some of these victims is simply staggering: $9 million one time and $5.8 million the next,” Sergeant Rashawn Vaughn of the FCTF told ABC News.
As Vaughn explained, the problem is nationwide and cases have been investigated by the NYPD since May 2024 in conjunction with the Department of Homeland Security, the IRS and police in other states.
During investigations and searches, the police managed to seize several gold bars used in the fraud. Law enforcement officers hope to pay part of the compensation to victims in the city at their expense.
Last July, the US Department of Justice reported charging two US residents with Chinese names in a similar case, and in Missouri in May of this year, an Indian citizen received 15 and a half years in prison for acting as a courier in such a bullion scheme.
Earlier, RTVI talked about a new type of bank fraud involving cash withdrawal, when scammers call the victim, pretending to be bank employees, and convince them, supposedly to prevent theft, to withdraw all the money from the account.
