Bad actor caught red-handed after scamming elderly man out of $150,000 in gold bars

(Confiscated gold, Image credit: MCSO)

For the last several months, Ace News Today has joined with local and federal law enforcement agencies in sounding the alarm regarding bad actors scamming our senior citizen population out of their hard-earned savings.  Today, it’s heart-warming to share that one of those bad actors got caught red-handed and was busted in Martin County, Florida.  This latest case involves a 21-year-old man scamming a local elderly man out of $150,000 in gold bars.

Related, see:

• Criminal cases involving elder abuse are up and growing at alarming rates and intensity  
• U.S. states with the lowest and highest rates of elderly fraud
• Elder fraud: Scams targeting our nation’s seniors on the rise, costing them billions of dollars

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The Martin County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) identified the 21-year-old scammer as Tejaskumar Bipinbhai Patel. Patel, who says he came to the United States from India in 2023 utilizing a green card to work and visit family in Chicago, is linked to a larger group of thieves who call U.S. citizens posing as law enforcement claiming they have outstanding arrest warrants that must be paid, or they will be hauled off to jail. These scammers use fear tactics to convince mostly elderly citizens to pay up or be humiliated when federal agents pull them out of their homes and take them to prison.

Patel knows exactly how this scam works, because he is the one who called a Martin County citizen and convinced him to purchase $150,000 in gold bars, almost enough to satisfy the outstanding warrants.

The elderly victim, fearful at the loss of his freedom, complied and, per Patel’s instructions, took the gold bars to a driver who was waiting for the payment. It wasn’t until the gold was gone that the victim realized he had been ripped off. So, he called MCSO.

Fortunately, Patel’s unconscionable greed got the best of him, and he called the victim back, demanding more gold to clear up the warrant. With detectives now at the victim’s side, Patel arrived at the drop-off location and accepted the package. But this time, Patel was intercepted by detectives and road patrol deputies who traded him gold bars for silver handcuffs.  Inside his vehicle, detectives discovered more than 100 gold bars worth $242,000 that Patel had just defrauded from another citizen in a nearby county.

Patel was arrested and charged with multiple counts of grand theft of $100,000 or more.

The criminal organizations engaged in this type of fraud against our citizens often ship the proceeds they steal to other countries, making it impossible for detectives to recover. But this time, not only did law enforcement recover the stolen gold, they unmasked one of the many voices that lie, steal, and victimize innocent US citizens.

Props to MCSO for their diligence and hard work!

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(Source and Tejaskumar Bipinbhai Patel mugshot: MCSO)

Posted by Richard Webster, Ace News Today
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