A Silverthorne couple nearly lost $150,000 to a complex fraud scheme involving undercover agents, child pornography and bars of gold.
Hang in there – it’s a wild one.
Summit County Sheriff’s Office reports the fraud began with an error message on the couple’s home computer. They called a help-line number on the message, which led to a scammer posing as a Microsoft tech agent.
This person passed them off to another scammer posing as an agent with the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC fraudster said their banking accounts were being used for online gambling and child pornography, and insisted they immediately wire $150,000 to a gold broker.
The next day bars of gold arrived at the couple’s door in Silverthorne – and so did a third scammer posing as an “undercover officer,” or so he said. This scammer told them he was there to retrieve the gold.
This is when the scheme fell apart. The couple had requested a local police officer join the undercover officer. When that did not happen, they became suspicious.
But the scammers did not give up easily.
“During this time, (the couple was) on the phone with the man from the trade commission, who was trying to convince them to hand over the gold bars,” reads the sheriff’s blotter. “The ‘undercover officer’ was on the phone with someone else, speaking in a foreign language.”
The undercover scammer finally left when the couple refused to hand over the gold. They called sheriff’s deputies to report the crime. A fraud investigation is ongoing.
The couple did not lose one cent.
Hear stories like this every week on the Summit County Justice Files podcast from Krystal 93.