iNDICA NEWS BUREAU-
A woman of Indian origin has been arrested for scamming a Florida man of $1.5 million. The accused, a US resident, arrested on May 9 is a key figure in a multi-state gold bar fraud in which scammers posing as federal agents would convince their victims to purchase gold bullion and hand it over for secure storage.
Shweta Patel, who has been arrested, had defrauded $1.5 million from a Bradenton resident. In April, the Bradenton Police Department received a report of fraud from an 80-year-old man. She and an accomplice posing as federal agents in February 2024 had showed up at the victim’s house with a fake arrest warrant alleging financial irregularities. They had also pretended to invite their supervisor.
“The supervisor then spoke to the victim and said they thought he could do more good than being arrested,” Det. Jim Curulla told Fox13. Over the next month, this “supervisor” communicated with the victim daily, building rapport and trust, according to a tweet posted by Bradenton police from their official handle on X. The scammers told the senior citizen that he was going to help with social security fraud. They convinced him that he would need to come up with seed money and that they were going to do a sting operation. Over several weeks, police say the scammers conned the man into transferring a total of around $1.5 million of his retirement money in gold bars. “The victim was retired military, so they played upon his experience in the military,” Curulla said. “They played upon his patriotism.”
Detectives say the man was instructed to make multiple transfers and meet the fake agents at different locations for organized drop-offs of the gold bars. According to an affidavit, investigators tracked one of the cars used at a drop-off to Patel, one of the alleged mules, who lived in Georgia.
Patel, who is charged with grand theft of more than $100,000, has also confessed to another case of fraud in which she went to North Carolina to collect $25,000 from an elderly woman. The police investigations have revealed that fraud schemes involving gold bars have become a trend across the country. “Gold is immediately liquidated, you’re never going to see that gold again if they melt it down,” an investigator said.
Curulla said that there have been a number of reports of elder fraud in Bradenton. Police say elder fraud cases reported to the Bradenton Police Department are up 50% this year. BPD recently launched an elder fraud unit, dedicated to combatting these types of scams. An FBI report released in April says scammers stole more than $3.4 billion from Americans 60 years and older.
