An 86-year-old Indian River Shores woman narrowly escaped losing $165,000 in a scam operating in multiple states after a last-minute premonition caused her to stop at the police station on the way to give the scammers her life savings.
Two other Shores residents, both elderly women, were not as lucky. One of the women lost $1.8 million while the other lost $174,000 when scammers convinced them to convert their savings into gold bars and bitcoin, and turn the proceeds over to people they thought were government agents.
“This is a fairly large ring that is operating throughout the country,” Shores deputy police chief Mark Shaw said. Similar scams have been reported in Martin, Volusia, Polk, Lee and Sarasota counties. Investigators believe the ring members take the gold to a safe house somewhere in Florida, melt it down, form it into car parts, and ship the parts overseas to India.
Investigators are tracking additional suspects in Colorado, Kentucky and Ohio, Shaw said.
The woman who escaped the scammers in May agreed to speak with Vero Beach 32963 about the experience, but authorities asked that she remain unidentified because the investigation is ongoing.
On May 3, the woman clicked on what she thought was Amazon’s home page on her computer. Instead, a message labeled “Microsoft Support” popped up, she said. She then heard a man’s voice, identifying himself as Sean Smith from Microsoft Support.
After providing an employee identification number to authenticate himself, “Sean Smith” said he would instruct an agent from the Federal Trade Commission named David Shackleford to call her with more instructions.
Minutes later, a man identifying himself as Shackleford called and told her he had received a report from Microsoft that her computer had experienced a “cyber breach.”
Shackleford told the woman hackers from China and Russia had stolen her identification, her Social Security number and online credit card and banking information. The hackers had tried to open a bank account in her name, she was told. Later, the man calling himself David Shackleford sent her his badge number and a photo of himself.
“It looked believable,” the woman said. “The idea that my bank accounts were frozen scared me.”
In a series of phone conversations over the next few days, Shackleford got the woman to reveal how much money was in each of her accounts. He told her the best way to secure her funds would be to close all her accounts and convert the money into gold. A car would be sent to her house to pick up the gold and transfer it to the U.S. Treasury, where it would be held until the hackers were captured. She would get her money back eventually, along with 22 percent interest as a reward for helping to capture the hackers, she was told.
In the meantime, Shackleford said he would contact the Department of Homeland Security about the hack. He told the woman not to tell anyone about what she was doing, that her landline phone had been tapped, and that she needed to act fast.
“He told me to transfer $150,000 from my Money Market savings account to my checking account, and to call him when the transfer was completed,” the woman said. “I wasn’t sleeping, I wasn’t eating. I was so upset,” she said. “It was pretty much all the money I had in the world.”
Lying awake late one night in early May, it occurred to her that the whole thing might be a scam, she said. “[Shackleford] had some sort of a foreign accent,” she said. “When he was telling me where to go to buy gold, he could not pronounce the names of the towns in Florida correctly.”
When she told Shackleford she was uneasy about him, he said he would have an officer from Indian River Shores Police contact her to put her mind at ease. A man identifying himself as Det. Kyle Smith then called and told the woman to keep working with Shackleford.
The woman called three gold dealers and eventually found one in Melbourne with enough gold bars on hand, she said. She doesn’t drive long distances any longer, so she hired a driver to take her to Melbourne the next morning, May 9.
Before going, though, she decided to try to speak to Kyle Smith one more time. This time, though, she drove herself to the Indian River Shores police station. There, a receptionist told her Smith was off duty for three days. When she said she might be the victim of a scam, the receptionist contacted Smith at home and learned that he and the woman had never spoken.
“That’s when it finally came to an end,” she said.
The woman was referred to Shores Det. Rodney Grass, who began an investigation. Grass instructed the women to continue following Shackleford’s instructions. A detective drove her to Melbourne to buy the gold. The woman then called Shackleford to tell him the gold was ready to be picked up.
But when the driver came to her home to pick up the gold the next day, detectives were watching. They were also monitoring her phone conversations with Shackleford. The gold had been removed from the box and placed in a police locker. Weights were placed in the empty box to make it heavy.
Shackleford instructed the woman to place the box in a vehicle that would come to her home, but only after the driver gave her the correct password. Before long, a vehicle drove up but did not stop at her house. Officers apprehended the driver as he was leaving the community and questioned him but could not arrest him because he had not picked up the gold or interacted with the victim.
Shaw said one female suspect has been arrested in Georgia, and local detectives are working with FBI agents from Fort Pierce to secure warrants for additional suspects here. Shores police have been working on the case since late 2023, he said.
Martin County Sheriff’s Office detectives recently arrested a 21-year-old Indian man who allegedly defrauded elderly victims out of more than $260,000 in gold bars by posing as law enforcement and convincing the victims they had outstanding arrest warrants and had to pay to avoid being taken to prison. Detectives believe the man may be part of the same international ring.
Authorities are warning residents about the scam and notifying bank employees and precious metals dealers to be on the lookout for people seeking to buy large quantities of gold.
“I feel so much compassion for people who have been hacked. It’s so hard to know what to do,” said the 86-year-old who escaped the scammers’ clutches. “The Indian River Shores police were wonderful. My advice would be, if it sounds suspicious, go to the police.”
