Two men were arrested after allegedly trying to scam an 85-year-old Washington, D.C., man into handing over more than $200,000 in gold bars, the Metropolitan Police Department said Friday.
Police identified the suspects as Chu Lin, 50, of Fresh Meadows, New York, and Xiean Cheng, 42, of Cornelius, North Carolina. Both were charged with second-degree financial fraud, police said.
Authorities said the scheme began July 8 when scammers contacted the victim by email and later by phone while posing as federal agents. The callers told the man his bank funds were “in jeopardy of being lost” unless he secured the money by buying gold bars and turning them over, police said.
Believing the scheme was legitimate, the victim tried to purchase more than $200,000 worth of gold bars before the gold dealer recognized the apparent scam and alerted him, police said. The gold dealer then notified the MPD Financial and Cyber Crimes Unit and the FBI, authorities said.
When the alleged scammers later arrived at the victim’s home to retrieve the gold bars, officers with MPD’s Violent Crime Suppression Division arrested Lin and Cheng, police said.
Jon Ross Myers is the executive editor and publisher of the Mississippi News Network, Mississippi's largest digital only media company. He can be reached at editor@tippahnews.com
