Video Captures Undercover Deputies Arrest Gold Coin Scammer: 79-Year-Old Widow's $700,000 Nest Egg Saved

The man who turned up to collect $700,000 (£522,000) in gold from a 79-year-old Michigan widow left in handcuffs. The box he was handed held foil-wrapped chocolate coins, not bullion.

His arrest, caught on footage released on Wednesday by the Kent County Sheriff's Office, closed out a gold coin scam that nearly wiped out the widow's life savings. The video shows undercover detectives converging on the courier in a strip mall car park near Rockford, moments after he took the decoy package from an officer posing as the victim.

It started in early May, when the woman from Ottawa County drove about 40 miles to a coin shop, persuaded by a caller that her savings were in danger.

How the Gold Coin Scam Nearly Cost a Widow Her Savings

A caller named Eric, who said he worked for Social Security, told her that her Social Security number had been tied to terrorism, drug activity, and money laundering. To protect her money and help investigators trace the supposed criminals, she was told to convert her savings into gold. Detectives believe the operation was run out of India.

The widow wired $700,000 to Grand Rapids Coins. Owner Ben Soldaat, who opened the shop in 2020, sensed something was wrong before the metal left the premises. She showed little interest in the gold, repeated questions already answered, and seemed gripped by urgency and confusion.

'It just didn't add up to me, and I've run into a few (scams) before in the past,' Soldaat told WOOD TV8's Target 8 team.

He called the Kent County Sheriff's Office. The widow later described how completely she had been taken in. 'He really pressed me about whether I was sure about this. I was so convinced that what I was doing was the right thing to do,' she said.

A Sting Built on Chocolate Coins

Detectives confirmed she was being conned and turned the handover into a trap. With little time to prepare a decoy, someone at the shop suggested chocolate coins in place of the gold. 'They didn't know they were getting chocolate gold coins,' Soldaat said.

An undercover detective, in a white winter hat and sunglasses, drove to the meeting with a brown cardboard box on her lap, pretending to take phone instructions from the scammer. She intentionally let the suspect overhear the conversation before saying, ' I'm supposed to give you this, I think.' The suspect then recited a code of letters and numbers to the detective.

At this point, the deputies moved in. Later footage shows the man, 20-year-old Yug B. Chauhan of Elmhurst, Illinois, slumped over a table in an interrogation room.

Chauhan told investigators he had been directed by a man he knew only as Bhawsh, had never met him, and dealt with him through WhatsApp. He faces charges of false pretences of $100,000 or more and using a computer to commit a crime, each carrying up to 20 years in prison, plus conducting a criminal enterprise. He is held on a $100,000 (£75,000) bond with an immigration detainer and is due back in court in mid-July.

It was not the only such case locally. In a separate Ada Township scheme, two out-of-state suspects were arrested after allegedly posing as federal agents to push an elderly couple into converting $250,000 (£186,000) into gold.

Why Gold Courier Scams Are Costing Older Savers Millions

According to the FBI, Americans aged 60 and over reported roughly $7.7 billion (£5.7 billion) in fraud losses across more than 201,000 complaints in 2025, up 37 per cent on the year before. The bureau now logs gold and cash courier pickups as their own category, recording 525 such complaints and about $219 million (£163 million) in losses in its 2024 Internet Crime Report.

The script rarely varies: fraudsters impersonate government officials, frighten victims into liquidating their savings, then send someone to collect the metal in person.

'It's a nationwide trend,' Kent County Sheriff's Office Sgt. Scott Dietrich said. 'It is going to take family members and businesses to step in early and protect those vulnerable adults from losing all their money.'

The FBI says no legitimate official will tell someone to buy gold or hand savings to a courier, and urges anyone targeted to report it at ic3.gov. For the Michigan widow, the alarm was raised in time. Her $700,000 was recovered, and the courier left with chocolate.