Gathersburg, Maryland. Authorities said Thursday that a 26-year-old male from New York had been taken into custody in relation to a complex gold bar scam that robbed an elderly woman from Montgomery County and her daughter out of almost $2.3 million.
The scam started in February 2023 when an 88-year-old woman and her 61-year-old daughter were approached by someone posing as the Department of Justice. Baldwin, New York resident Yash Shah is suspected of serving as a courier in the scheme. They were instructed to convert their assets into gold bars and cryptocurrencies by the scammer, who claimed that their bank accounts were connected to unlawful gambling, human trafficking, and child pornography.
The victims cooperated over a period of five months, delivering several shipments of gold bars. One of those supplies, worth over $83,000, was purportedly received by Shah.
In collaboration with New York authorities, detectives from the Montgomery County Police Financial Crimes Section named Shah as a suspect and obtained an arrest order for him. He is being jailed in Nassau County while he awaits extradition to Maryland after being arrested in New York.
The investigation is still ongoing, and this case represents the first documented case of this kind of government-imposter gold bar scam in Montgomery County.
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