Chilling gold bar scam warning as elderly are fleeced out of life savings

A woman has described how she was scammed out of nearly $500,000 by suspects who have already targeted 49 people across Wisconsin alone. 

The Prescott woman, asking to not be named, laid out the con in a filmed interview with WISN 12, showing receipts as proof.

The receipts were for gold bars purchased at the behest of the scammers - after they successfully convinced her that her bank account had been hacked.

Told to invest in gold as a result, the victim was then goaded into giving the confidence-men the gold - after being told they'd be best-suited to protect it.

At that point, after emptying her accounts, the senior was swayed into thinking her savings - now all in gold - would then be transferred to the Fed in Washington, DC.

A 'courier' later identified as Indian fraudster Gourav Patel proceeded to pick up the haul - only to then disappear.

Now out some $433,279.53, the woman recalled how the case started.

It began with an email on her iPad from someone claiming to be from Apple, saying her IP address had been hacked.

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'I thought, I have an Apple phone, I have an Apple iPad,' the woman said, showing slips that showed how she first withdrew $134,000, and then another $298,768.

 'So, I thought it was legitimate.' 

She recalled how she proceeded to call the number advertised, before being met with someone on the other line falsely claiming to be Alvaro Bedoya.

Bedoya, the head of the entire Federal Trade Commission, went on to plead with her in a subsequent voicemail, 'I am in the office, ma'am, and I want to talk to you.

'So, please answer the call or call us back.'

The request came after the call got disconnected - after which the man on the other end immediately called back.

That was the case whenever the calls between the two would drop, the woman recalled - describing how the person posing as Bedoya would call back immediately.

The person, later identified as Patel, would then tell her identity was stolen, that she was now in witness protection, and that someone had gained access her accounts.

It would later come to light that the man on the phone mispronouncing Bedoya's name would be the same person who surfaced at her doorstop days later, after she was carefully instructed to tell the bank tellers and others that she was making the large withdrawals to help a family member's investment.   

Once she wired the cash to purchase the bars, the courier arrived at her house to pick them up, she recalled - remembering how Patel silently stole the sum.  

'He never said nothing to me. I never said nothing to him,' she said - revealing how she handed over the bars three separate times.

She remembered how she later told cops how Patel  never returned with any of the tender - and that she didn't know where the bars were going.

The victim also told police how the same man picked up the gold bars each time - describing him as Mexican with a medium build. 

She also wrote down his license plate, which came back to be registered to Patel, paving the way for  nationwide warrant for his arrest to be aired out of Pierce County.

Police would go on to arrested Patel in a sting operation in Northern Minnesota months later, before linking him back to the case in Prescott.

Officers did so by  uncovering boxes in his car that once contained the gold bars addressed to her, with the details still on it.

He's now facing a litany of fraud charges that carries a maximum sentence of 12 and a half years in prison - as well as a $25,000 fine.

'The first trial I had, when he walked into the courtroom, I said, "That's him,"' she told the outlet of the suspected con man, who is from Stevens Point.

Before that, he lived in Chicago, and before that, India.

Feds say his operation saw 49 people have scammed out of roughly $13 million in Wisconsin alone, as similar scams have been spotted in cities like New York and Baltimore.  

Earlier this year, Patel pleaded guilty to running the scam in both Minnesota and Wisconsin.

At his sentencing, he told the Prescott woman how  he was sorry. He was also ordered to pay back the entire sum.

'I know it's [a] pretty big amount," he reportedly said at the time. 'I can try to at least make it right.'

After 233 days in jail, Patel was given probation and deported back to India - and his mark says she still hasn't seen any of her robber savings.

When asked, experts said that in most cases, the likelihood of anyone getting money - or gold - back from such a scam is extremely low.

'The high-level view is individuals are preying on the men and women of this state through fear,' FBI Special Agent in Charge Michael Hensle told the station of the scams.

'If you think about people's livelihoods, right?' he went on.

'I mean, we have people who are involved in these schemes who give money to these couriers who lose their entire life savings.'

The woman who is still waiting for her money also weighed in. 

 'It did put a strain on me for sure,' she said of the lost sum - almost a half-million dollars.

 'It made me worried. I told my financial advisor I'm afraid to go to the grocery store and write out a check because I might not have enough money in my account.'

She also recalled how she attended every court appearance for Patel, as cops in Waukesha also arrested another man who posed as a courier as part of the same scam - Junjie Liang.

'I wanted him to know that I didn't think this was right,' she said, as Liang remains cuffed on charges he scammed a separate woman out of more than $700,000 using the same model. 

'You know, how could people do this to other people?'

Hensle added how the scam has links to both China and India, telling WISN 12 'There's a huge percentage of these fraud schemes that are perpetuated by nation-state actors, other countries, and individuals within those countries.'

He said the FBI is currently working to those behind the scams, not just Patel and Liang.

'That's our goal in every one of our cases.'

None of the victims were identified in court documents.