Gold bar fraud has hit yet again in Montgomery County, this time defrauding a 74-year-old Bethesda man out of $1.1 million, officials said this week. The victim, who has memory loss, was duped into thinking he had to convert savings to gold bars and give them to the fraudsters for supposed safekeeping, according to court records.
Prosecutors on Friday described the man they linked to the latest case, 52-year-old Vipul Thakkar, as a Maryland resident with overseas connections. “It appears that he has worked with people in India while doing this particular scam,” Montgomery County Assistant State’s Attorney Robert Hill said in court.
All told since July 2023, Montgomery police said, the force has tracked at least six victims of similar gold bar swindles with losses totaling more than $5.1 million. Investigators said they thwarted an additional $3.4 million worth of gold bars from being lost when they learned of the fraud in progress.
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Four new cases have surfaced in the past three months, Hill said.
“It’s a bit of an epidemic,” he said in court.
In court filings, detectives have described the ruses as “government impostor scams,” whereby fraudsters pretend to be officials from the FBI, Justice Department, Treasury Department, Federal Trade Commission or other agencies. The suspects convince targets that their bank holdings aren’t safe and that they should liquidate into gold bars so they can transfer the bars over for safekeeping. The transfers often take place in parking lots and are cloaked in secrecy as victims are convinced criminals are closing in on them. The gold is never returned.
The victim in the latest case called police after he saw a news report about the fraud and became suspicious about gold transactions he’d been making, according to charging documents. He showed investigators paperwork for eight purchases of gold bars totaling $1.1 million, which he’d given to people he thought were helping him.
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“While talking to [the victim] he displayed signs of memory loss, highlighting his vulnerabilities,” police wrote in court filings, adding that he “acknowledged he was becoming more forgetful.”
The victim worked with detectives to set up a sting, though. On Wednesday afternoon, a detective posed as the victim and handed a package purported to contain $246,500 worth of gold bars to Thakkar, according to court records. After Thakkar drove off, other plainclothes officers who were watching him stopped his car and arrested him.
Investigators spoke to Thakkar, who indicated he was to get a 2 percent cut of the $246,500, police said, and that he had made similar pickups from older people elsewhere in Maryland as well as in Virginia, Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey.
Investigators charged him with four counts, including obtaining property from a vulnerable adult, according to charging papers.
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In court Friday, Thakkar’s attorney argued he should be released because he has family connections in the area, had never been in trouble with the criminal justice system before and, if anything, was a minor player in what happened. “Mr. Thakkar’s role in this case, based on the allegations, appears to have been as a possible courier for a scam artist,” the lawyer, Ilan Friedmann, said, adding that his client cooperated with investigators and showed them the contents of his cell phone.
“These are not the actions of someone who is trying to evade justice [or] is orchestrating this kind of scheme,” Friedmann said. “I think it’s entirely possible that he himself was a victim of this scam.”
But District Judge Holly Reed ordered Thakkar to remain in jail without bond.
“He is a clear danger to the community, and to any vulnerable adults in the community,” Reed said.
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Earlier this month, Zhenyong Weng, 19, was charged with theft counts after police said he was connected to a group that took more than $900,000 in gold bars and money from an 82-year-old woman and almost got an additional $2.6 million from her. He is due again in court Aug. 8, according to online records.
In March, Wenhui Sun, 34, was charged with theft counts after authorities said he was linked to a group that stole about $789,000 from a woman in her 60s. He is set to be tried starting Dec. 2, according to online court records.
The latest scheme started in March, police say, when the victim received an email purportedly from the FTC that explained how a “suspicious deposit of $1,499 had been made into his Capital One bank account.” The email said the FTC was filing a lawsuit in the matter, that the victim was entitled to receive $90,000 and that he was to call an FTC attorney named Mike Rodgers.
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The man did so and was told to convert his assets into gold. The victim started making trips to a local coin store, which was not identified in court records.
“Following each purchase, ‘Rodgers’ arranged to have the gold picked up the same day by individuals ‘Rodgers’ identified as his ‘associates,’” police wrote in court filings.
The man never saw the gold again, according to court records. It could have been even worse, police say.
On July 12, the man returned to the store and bought another $246,500 worth of gold bars — to be picked up the following week. As he was waiting, he saw a report on WUSA9 about the gold bar fraud involving the 82-year-old that had just happened. He called the police.
Investigators who met with him reviewed invoices from the gold bar purchases, as well as the initial email purporting to be from the FTC and notes the man had kept about the transactions since March.
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The investigators worked with him to continue communicating with “Mike Rodgers” and convinced “Mike Rodgers” he had more gold bars ready for pickup. Detectives said they packaged a fake box inside a yellow bag and waited for the courier to arrive.
And at 1:09 p.m. Wednesday, a blue Honda CR-V pulled up to the victim’s home. A detective posing as the victim then completed the handoff, as directed by “Rodgers,” which entailed the Honda driver uttering the passcode “8501” and the fake victim putting the bag on the back seat of the Honda, according to court records.
That driver, it turned out, was Thakkar, police said.
Under questioning, charging documents state, he told detectives he had made a similar pickup as recently as the previous week and indicated he’d done so in multiple states. “He admitted that one gold delivery was conducted in a parking lot of an AutoZone in Virginia,” Hill said.
When investigators looked at Thakkar’s phone, according to Hill, they saw a screenshot of an article about gold bar scams. “The defendant admitted that he knows this is not how people typically send money,” Hill said.
“Thakkar acknowledged that those whom he’s obtained gold or cash from have all been elderly men and women,” investigators wrote in court papers.
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