Yug B Chauhan (left) was the courier tasked with picking up $700k in gold from an old woman. An alert store owner (right) informed the police and filled the bag with golden chocolate coins.
A 79-year-old widow in Michigan received a sudden phone call informing her that her Social Security funds were being misused to support terrorism, and to stop that, she was asked to buy $700,000 in gold and give it to a person they would send. An old script to polish off one’s savings but here entered Ben Soldaat, the owner of Grand Rapids Coins, from whom the widow wanted to purchase the gold. Soldaat knew it was a scam and alerted the authorities. When the man who was supposed to rescue the woman from the ‘terrorism scam’ arrived to collect the money, he got a bag of chocolate gold coins and eventually a pair of 20-year felonies.The incident took place in May and according to reports, the young man is 20-year-old Yug B Chauhan, with an address in Illinois. Chauhan is locked up in the Kent County jail with a $100,000 bond and a hold from ICE.The widow told the police that the man who called her had a very good voice and he somehow convinced her that her money was being used to fund terrorists. “It’s really kind of devastating to realize how easily I was fooled by these fraudsters,” she said.
Alert storeowner says he saw red flags
Soldaat, who has been running his store since 2000, said he saw the red flags, though the widow did not tell him why she needed so many gold coins. Soldaat said the woman said she wanted to buy the gold as an investment for her children but she showed minimal interest in the product. Soldaat said the woman appeared confused and she was also rushing to get the gold. The woman sent the money to Soldaat but Soldaat dragged his feet and saw the woman get antsy about the delay. “I got the feeling she was really being pushed to come up with a substantial amount of gold fast, and not for the reason that she initially mentioned,” Soldaat said. “Somebody was pushing her in a direction she didn’t want to go.”Soldaat said he contacted the police just to be on the safe side. After Soldaat told the cops about the woman, the cops went to her house. The woman told them that she had been contacted by a Social Security agent. She also narrated what he said. Even when the detectives were at her home, the caller who identified himself as Eric called the woman and asked whether she had gotten the gold.The cops decided to send an undercover agent to the courier. The agent dressed up like an old woman and took a bag of gold chocolates to deliver and Yug got arrested.Yug said he was instructed by a person named ‘Bhawsh’ to have an Uber driver take him from a gas station to a doughnut shop to pick up the courier. He said he never met the man who gave him the instructions and they primarily speak in Hindi during their calls and mostly communicate through WhatsApp.
