Has a federal officer asked you to buy gold bars?
A federal officer may text, call or email telling you that your finances have been compromised and you need to put all your assets into gold bars and deliver it to them. Montgomery County law enforcement officials are using World Elder Abuse Awareness Day to warn seniors about the scam.
These scammers will initially contact you through a pop-up ad or phishing text and pose as one of your financial institutions. They’ll claim your accounts have been compromised and put you in contact with a faux federal officer.
“Some three-letter, four-letter government entity (makes) the victim believe that they are being helped,” said Montgomery County police Detective Sean Petty.
Petty was one of the guests at the Older Adult Safety forum in Silver Spring, Maryland, on Tuesday morning.
“They may be told to withdraw money from their bank account, or to use their money to then purchase gold bars,” Petty added.
Scammers will then ask you to meet “couriers” at a certain location, like a grocery store parking lot or another public place. They will often even tell folks that they’ll use a code word to verify that it actually is an officer. Petty said red flags will be present — these couriers won’t be in any sort of uniform and will not drive a police vehicle.
“The victim is left believing that they were being helped, but in the end, they were actually being conned and scammed out of, typically, their life savings,” Petty said.
It is nearly impossible to get that money back.
Numerous seniors have come forward as victims of this or similar scams every week. In March, a California man was convicted of defrauding one Montgomery County woman out of nearly $800,000.
Another man duped a Montgomery County senior out of $900,000 in May of last year.
Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy gave advice to seniors: “If you look at your phone and a number comes up and you don’t know the number, don’t answer the phone, don’t click on pop-up ads that come up that take you into a black hole on the internet.”