Scammers persuaded an 82-year-old Montgomery County, Maryland, woman to buy a fortune’s worth of gold bars and then hand them over earlier this year, according to prosecutors, who said the scammers posed as federal agents working to protect her savings.
Zhenyong Weng, 19, of New York City, has been arrested and charged with attempted theft for taking part in a monthslong theft scheme in the case, which is just the latest in a string of similar incidents in the affluent Maryland county, according to Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy.
“This woman lost $900,000 in this case. The amounts are escalating, the number of incidents continue to grow. We now have at least 17 victims here in Montgomery County, to the sum of millions of dollars,” McCarthy said.
McCarthy’s remarks on Tuesday followed a hearing in Maryland District Court, in which Weng was ordered held without bond. McCarthy said Weng showed up Monday to pick up the latest gold bar that the woman was persuaded to obtain, but Montgomery County police were waiting there instead.
“This was going to be the third pickup. This woman lost $900,000, and they were on their way to $2.5 million more. This was a big-money scam,” McCarthy said.
Charging documents indicate the victim received an alert on her computer directing her to call a phone number. The alert falsely claimed that criminals had compromised the woman’s computer, bank account and Social Security number.
The scammers convinced the woman to pay $46,000 to safeguard her computer against Russian thieves, according to charging documents. Then, over several months, the woman was told her savings remained in jeopardy and she was advised to convert her savings into gold bars that federal agents would come by to pick up for safekeeping.
McCarthy said two other individuals are being held without bond in Montgomery County for similar gold bar scams and it’s not known if they are related to this case.
He also said it’s unlikely the gold that the woman gave up can be recovered.
“The reality is, getting back those gold bars is very tough. … Are they in the country? Have they been melted down, changed into other forms? They are essentially not traceable,” McCarthy said.
“There are people losing their life savings to this scam and it’s not just here in Montgomery County … it is across the country,” he added.
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