Suffolk Detectives Stop $140K Gold Bar Scam Targeting Elderly Woman

An elderly woman from western Suffolk County was within hours of handing over roughly $140,000 in savings — converted to gold — to a fraud ring when two detectives intervened at her residence and found that criminals were eavesdropping on the encounter through her hijacked computer, officials announced Monday.

Detectives Thomas Perillo and Anthony DeLuca of the Suffolk County Police Department's Financial Crimes Unit pulled the woman back from the brink of financial ruin, voiding a pair of checks and ensuring the money was safely returned to her bank before any courier could show up, Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said.

The fraud was set in motion by a pop-up message that appeared on the woman's screen. She reached out to someone impersonating a tech-support agent, who claimed her machine had been hit with malware, that her bank accounts were at risk, and that moving her money into gold was the only way to keep it safe. The con artists directed her to buy a one-kilogram gold bar, which she was then supposed to hand off to a courier who would allegedly deliver it to a protected facility.

A bank investigator grew suspicious after learning the woman was having checks drawn to purchase precious metals and contacted police. Perillo and DeLuca went to the woman's home while the scheme was still active. Once inside, Perillo recognized that the criminals could listen in through the still-open connection on the computer and pulled the plug on the device, cutting off their access. DeLuca then reached out to the bank and got two checks made payable to a gold dealer voided.

"These scammers are masters at psychological manipulation, and what they will do is they'll have these people convinced that we're the scammers, not them who are on the other side of the phone," said Detective Sergeant Tom Gabriel, the unit supervisor.

The detectives also assisted the woman in enabling two-factor authentication on her accounts, placed fraud alerts on her banking activity and arranged to have her computer inspected for malicious software. The criminals had intended to dispatch a courier to her home the next evening to pick up the gold.

Perillo, DeLuca and Gabriel were recognized for their actions at a ceremony Monday in Hauppauge. Suffolk County Police Commissioner Kevin Catalina cautioned that any directive telling residents to liquidate their assets and buy gold should be treated as a scam. County legislators put forward a bill that would mandate warning notices at precious metals retailers and establish a 48-hour waiting period on certain transactions.

No arrest has been made and the investigation remains ongoing.