Gold Bars and a Little ol’ Lady

5 con-artists have been arrested for trying to scam millions of dollars from the elderly. Dariona Lambert, 22, Zhamoniq Stevens, 23, Chintankumar Parekh, 51, Mehul Darji, 41, and Sital Singh, 42, were each charged in a October 4 superseding indictment with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Lambert, Stevens and Parekh were originally indicted on that charge in June.

Singh surrendered Monday in Newark, in U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey. Parekh and Darji were both arrested last week in the Eastern District of Michigan. Lambert and Stevens were arrested on the initial indictment and have pleaded not guilty.

The indictment accuses the conspirators of contacting elderly victims via telephone calls and electronic messages, falsely claiming that the victims’ savings and retirement accounts had been compromised. They told their victims to transfer funds to the conspirators to keep their accounts secure, the indictment says. Sometimes, the transfers came via gold bars that had been bought by victims and then picked up by couriers working for the fraudsters, the indictment says. Couriers worked with a “handler,” who arranged transportation for the couriers and shipped the gold bars to others, the indictment says.

An 82-year-old St. Louis woman was one of the victims, having been told by scammers pretending to be from a computer software support team that her financial accounts had been compromised, the indictment says. They said she needed to pay money to prevent her funds from being stolen, the indictment says. The scammers had the victim open new bank accounts, transfer her money into those accounts and wire money overseas, in addition to buying about $250,000 worth of gold bars. On May 1, 2024, Dariona Lambert flew from Gainesville, Florida to St. Louis where Parekh rented a car and drove Lambert to a parking lot near the victim’s home. Lambert then took an Uber to the victim’s home to retrieve the gold bars, but was intercepted by law enforcement agents.