By Gus Saltonstall
An Upper West Sider was recently swindled out of $9 million in gold bars, police announced on Wednesday.
The crime dates back to the spring of 2025.
On March 26, 2025, a 67-year-old man who lives on the Upper West Side received an alert on his computer from an unidentified person falsely claiming to work for a security company and stating that the man’s financial assets had been compromised, police said.
The unidentified person then convinced the victim to purchase $9 million worth of gold bars, saying gold bars were safer than cash, and that in exchange for several of the bars, he would fix the financial security alert, NYPD added.
Then, on April 16, 2025, the 67-year-old man met the unidentified person on West 81st Street and Broadway, where he hand-delivered the gold bars to him, police said. The unidentified man then immediately fled the Upper West Side street, NYPD said.
On Wednesday, police sent out a crime sheet on the specific case and also a photo of the suspect.
This August, the NYPD warned New Yorkers about a sophisticated group of scammers targeting seniors with the gold bar scheme that had already netted around $100 million.
Sergeant Rashawn Vaughn of the NYPD’s Financial Crimes Task Force explained the scheme in more detail to AMNY.
“Somebody gets on the line explaining that their computer was infected with a virus, and they need to gain access to their computer so they can fix the issue,” Vaughn told AMNY. “In this process, the victims are coerced into providing remote access to their computers, allowing these perpetrators to gain control. It means that they have access to your webcam, your printer, your audio, and your computer.”
The victim is then persuaded to liquidate all of their assets into gold bars. The people targeted in the con are between their 60s and 90s.
Anyone with information regarding the Upper West Side incident is asked to call the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782).
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I feel horrible for the victim but I am also amazed that someone dumb enough to fall for this also accumulated $9 million. Did he win the lottery or was it inherited?