Gold scam racket: Indian-origin Roshan Shah charged in US, told victims fraudsters will target them if...

A 21-year-old India has been charged in Wisconsin for fooling people into believing that they need to part with their gold so that the gold can be kept in a safe box in Washington DC, otherwise they will become targets of a scam and all their money will be gone.

According to the Justice Department, Shah was in Canada on a student visa before entering the US on a visitor's visa. The court document said Shah traveled to different states and picked up cash and gold from various fraud victims. He was not alone in this, he had a racket of conspirators who used to get the proceeds from this elaborate scam. Police arrested Shah after he attempted to pick up gold from his fraud victims in New Berlin, Wisconsin.

Details of his co-conspirators are not yet known, but they played key roles in the scam as they posed as law enforcement officials and convinced gullible victims that they needed to transfer their assets to gold and then a courier would pick that and put it in a safety box in DC. Shah said he was just a middleman.The victims had previously given over $500,000 worth of gold to couriers the victims believed to be working with the federal government, the court document said.

If convicted, Shah will face up to 20 years in prison and forfeit property in an amount equal to the value of the property involved in the offense.

How Roshan Shah was caught

A New Berlin couple went to police July 30 to report that they were probably being scammed out of over $526,000 between June 11 and the end of July through a series if transactions involving gold coins. They said they had seen a TV news report about a scam involving gold coins and realized they likely were victims of itThe couple said they responded to a pop-up ad on their computer and called a number.

A person told them he was a special agent with the US Treasury. He told them they were the victims of a massive fraud scheme across the US also being investigated by the CIA and Federal Trade Commission. The man requested identifying information from the couple, and sent them images of a badge and credentials to show them that they were indeed from the government. Police later determined all those were fake. Another associate of that man, identified as a “Scott Bessent,” said he was a chief investigator for the Office of the Inspector General, and the couple was advised to keep in contact with both men, whom they said had Middle Eastern accents and sounded as though they were calling from a call center, the complaint said.

The couple was asked to forward gold coins to a safety deposit box opene din their name in the George W. Bush Federal Building in Washington, D.C., which does not actually exist. The couple engaged in a series of password-protected courier transactions but in the middle of the entire process, they suspected that something was amiss. Shah told police he arrived in the US on June 17 from Canada, only to be a courier for this scam. He arrived in the US in June and has done 10 or 11 jobs, including in Florida, Texas, Colorado, Arizona, Virginia, Illinois, Indiana and Milwaukee.