Earlier this Fall, I told you that the Boston office of the FBI had issued a warning scams involving people lured under false pretenses to cash in their savings, buy gold bars and deliver the gold to scammers.  Also earlier this year ABC News did a story entitled “Gold Grifters” also exposing these scams.  I have been warning people about this scam since I described it in the Scam of the day for May 7 2024 when I told you about Ravinkle Mathon who was convicted in  Maryland of attempting to scam an elderly man out of $200,000 in an elaborate scam that has increased dramatically in the last year.  The scam began with a phone call from Mathon to an elderly man in which Mathon posed as a federal agent telling the targeted victim that his identity had been stolen and that he needed to protect his savings by withdrawing all of his funds, purchasing gold with the funds and then turn the gold over to the alleged scammer for safe keeping.  Fortunately, a family member of the targeted victim became aware of the scam and notified police who set up a sting and arrested Mathon when he came to collect the gold..

Now two men in Wisconsin have been charged with operating a similar scam in which they convinced an elderly woman that her bank account had been hacked and used for criminal purposes and that she needed to cash in her life savings, use it to purchase gold and turn it over to the scammers who posed as federal agents.

With the value of gold increasing, scammers have increasingly turned to this type of scam which according to the FBI resulted in losses of $126 million in 2024. According to the FBI, many of the perpetrators of this crime are foreigners who have little difficult leaving the country with gold bars.

TIPS

The primary thing to keep in mind in order to avoid this scam is to remember that no government agency or legitimate business will ever request that you purchase gold or other precious metals for any purpose and certainly not to protect them from criminals nor will they tell you that you need to provide the gold to government agents for safekeeping.

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