SAN DIEGO — Do not trust anybody who says your money is not safe in the bank and it needs to be converted to cash or gold bars and moved to another location.

These instructions might seem simple to heed, but San Diego County crime victims are falling prey to a trending crime where people hand their life savings to criminals in the form of wire transfers, cash and gold bars and never see that money again.

How does this happen?

Thieves run elaborate, multi-step ruses that fool even smart, cautious people.

“The latest scam that targets our seniors, especially, is a is a combination of a tech support scam with government impersonation,” San Diego County District Attorney Summer Stephan said in an interview at her downtown office. Victims believe these fake government messages and they go to local precious metals businesses to buy gold bars, which they then give to strangers, thinking that will protect their savings from fraud. But that is the fraud.

“The U.S. government will never ask you to purchase gold or other precious metals for the purpose of safekeeping. That does not happen. And that should be a big red flag,” said Michael Rod, a supervisory senior resident agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s San Diego Field Office.

The gold bar twist is a new face on an old ruse: scare people into thinking their money isn’t safe and has to be removed from the bank.

Life savings, gone

A 94-year-old San Diego man and his 87-year-old wife gave gold bars in seven batches worth more than $3 million to scammers who they thought were government officials keeping the couple’s money safe from scammers. Two men, suspected of being part of a Chinese money laundering network, were arrested last month and face federal charges. A third died in a fatal crash while trying to escape.

In 2024, a sting operation caught two men who pleaded guilty to participating in a scheme that stole almost $1.5 million from an elderly Carlsbad resident. Scammers “convinced her she could safeguard her funds by obtaining gold bars and sending them to the U.S. Treasury,” the U.S. Department of Justice said. Over several weeks the victim sent around $1,335,000 in three wire transfers to a precious metal business in San Marcos.

“The victim was instructed to pick up the purchased precious metals—consisting of mostly gold—and to package them. The victim was then directed to hand the package over to an individual under the false pretense that it was being ‘secured’ for safekeeping,” the news release said.

San Diego County’s Elder Justice Task Force, a multi-agency partnership, identified more than 4,600 victims and more than $325 million lost to financial crimes against elders since its founding in 2020. Over just the past 12 months, criminals have stolen $140 million from local seniors.

Losses used to average $10,000. “Now we’re seeing, regularly, amounts of $100,000, which really is the difference between that senior staying in their home, having food, and not. So it’s a major public safety issue,” Stephan said.

Gold bars, highly valuable and compact, make it easier to take more in one swoop.

Seniors are targets, Stephan added, because they have money saved for retirement. “We’ve had people scammed that have multiple degrees and (are) very successful financially,” Stephan said.

She offered a theory why tech scams are en vogue: during the COVID pandemic, “we saw more and more seniors learn how to use technology, and have laptops, and engage in technology. And that became an opportunity for scammers.”

Gold: a new twist

Gold bar theft, combined with a tech and government impersonation scam, has become more common in the past two or so years, officials said.

“We see that the fraudsters are continuously changing their methodology in order to get the maximum amount of loss from victims, and to lure more victims into trusting them,” Stephan said.

The opening gambit is typically a pop-up window with a hack alert, followed by outreach from someone impersonating a government figure, who makes the victim think his or her money is not safe. This is the root of several kinds of scams.

What is new: victims are told to buy gold bars and take them home, where they’ll be picked up for safekeeping. The gold amount and size vary, Rod said. Victims are commonly instructed to photograph the gold once they have it, and/or photograph the receipt or proof of its purchase at their home to show that the gold is on site — and that law enforcement is not present.

Meetups with couriers typically happen outside or near the victim’s home, and sometimes at a public place, like a grocery store parking lot, Rod said.

The last step: the victim hands the gold to a courier. The gold is then given to a money-laundering criminal organization.

Why gold?

Criminals like precious metals because they are compact and hard to trace. “With the gold bars, they’re picked up, and they’re gone,” Stephan said.

Large wire transfers are more likely to be scrutinized, and the public has begun to understand their role in scams.

“The gold is a manner by which they can extract a large dollar amount from the victim without raising too many suspicions, because people buy gold in larger quantities,” Rod said.

Rod added that these crimes often unfold in episodes, over several months. They ask for a smaller amount first, then more and more. First might be a cash or wire transfer. Gold bar theft comes later.

“The bad guys are taking more than one bite at the victim. It’s not just a single transaction,” Rod said.

In the past two years, the task force has filed cases against more than 40 couriers who handled cash or gold. These can be challenging to investigate and prosecute.

In one recent case, a call center was operated from Dubai and India. It “generated pop-up advertisements on individuals’ computers that directed them to call for technical support,” the Department of Justice said.

The elderly victims paid for fake tech support services. Scammers also lied and said people needed to pay back thousands of dollars that had been wrongly refunded into their bank accounts. More than 500 victims in the U.S. lost more than $42 million.

Red flags

Stephan sounded the alarm about elder fraud in a recent op-ed. “Scammers are improving their ploys to be even more convincing,” she wrote. Her message: “Stop. Hang Up. Tell Someone.”

In the subsequent interview, she shared this warning: “My key message is that you should not respond to anything that is unsolicited.”

Another is secrecy, Rod said. “They’re going to direct you not to tell all the people that you would normally tell when there’s a problem in your life. Don’t tell your husband, don’t tell your wife … don’t tell your kids,” he said.

Some scammers have even sent fake nondisclosure agreements to victims, leading them to believe “they’re contractually prohibited from telling people.”

When someone says “not to tell somebody that you live with or are close with that a problem has popped up, that is also a big, big red flag,” he said.

A merchant’s perspective

Stephan credited local precious metals merchants with educating consumers and working to block such crimes.

Jonathan Cavuoto, the owner of First National Bullion, with stores in San Diego County and Arizona, has seen several victims walk into his businesses to buy gold. The recent high price of gold has made buying this metal popular, but mixed in with legitimate buyers are people being scammed, he said.

“A lot of people want to buy gold and silver, but there’s certain red flags with a first-time buyer,” he said. One is a large transaction size. The other is speed. “If they needed to buy in a rush, that was one of the key giveaways. Most people are not in a big rush.”

He has been in touch with law enforcement. He estimates that four or five couriers have been arrested after picking up gold purchased by victims at his stores.

Metals merchants have to strike a delicate balance, on one side being discreet, on the other working to prevent fraud.

“I’m not looking to share customer information with law enforcement,” Cavuoto said. “People want a certain amount of privacy when they’re buying gold.” But if a customer’s language or behavior raises red flags, dealers will involve authorities so customers are not harmed. Dealers “don’t want to see people get ripped off,” he said.

He said that even when he did due diligence and cautioned customers he suspected were being scammed — showing several a letter from the FBI about gold bar theft — some still proceeded.

“They assured me that they were not going to give this gold to anyone else,” he said of one couple. “They assured me that … they were not under duress and that they were buying this as an investment they wanted out of the bank. A couple of months later, they bought again,” he said. A relative noticed the pattern and contacted the police.

Several months ago, Cavuoto learned that a different customer sitting in his shop “had already given these people $20,000 in cash and she was supposed to hand them the gold.”

She had gotten an email from what looked like antivirus software. She called a phone number in the email.

“It wasn’t really Norton, nor McAfee. But they answered the phone as if they were,” Cavuoto said. “They explained that her computer was, in fact, infected and it’s a good thing that she called.” They reassured her that someone from the fraud department of her bank would reach out and explain the next steps, so the scammers do not “completely wipe out her bank account.”

Those next steps: “She needs to go get as much cash as she could get out of the bank, and they’ll send a courier for safekeeping. And then she needs to go buy gold,” Cavuoto said. “She believed that they were going to be able to take the money out of her bank account, so she needed to get it out … before the scammers could.”

Advice: Stop. Hang up. Tell someone.

What to look out for with tech and government impersonation scams that involve gold bars and cash:

1. A computer pop-up or text message says your device has been hacked. Or a phone caller says your bank account has fraudulent activity. This is a lie.

The message appears time-sensitive. The vibe is, “Something is happening and you need to act fast,” Stephan said.

2. To “fix” the problem, scammers often install remote access software. This is a legitimate tool used in a malicious way: to spy on you, learn how much money you have in your accounts or even “actually transfer (funds) from one account to another,” Rod said.

3. A scammer claims to be a government official and alerts you about a “problem” with your bank. “They create a whole story around it,” Stephan said. The bank system is insecure or the government is investigating high-level fraud, the scammers say.

4. They convince you it’s necessary to transfer your money into gold bars. Scammers coach victims and give them scripts, because buying gold might be unfamiliar to them.

5. A courier leaves with the bars or cash. In only one case that Rod knows of, the victim went with a courier. The rest did not.

6. Versions of this scam can involve pornography and blackmail, Stephan added. Whether it’s a text message, phone call or voicemail, if someone reaches out to you first, “that’s going to be a scam,” Stephan said.

7. If you are being targeted or have been scammed: Stop. Hang up or close the message. Tell someone.

Alert both local law enforcement and the federal government’s Internet Crime Complaint Center at ic3.gov. https://www.ic3.gov/. The FBI also has a PSA on its website.

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