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a woman in Montgomery County scammed out
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of nearly $1 million officials call it
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the gold bar scam and our home of bash
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has been reporting on this for months
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now she joins us live from District
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hom hey Shamari yeah it happened again
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this is the third arrest of somebody in
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momery County involved in these gold bar
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scams this has been happening for months
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victims are being scammed out of
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hundreds of thousands of dollars it is
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so sad in this case the 19-year-old
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suspect was arraigned in district court
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today he is being held without bond so
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let me break down exactly what happened
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how this all unfolded investigators say
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back in April an 82-year-old woman got a
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popup ad on her computer telling her
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she'd been hacked and to call a number
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when she called the person on the line
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told her she needed to wire over more
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than $40,000 to get software to protect
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her from Russian hackers then they kept
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targeting her posing as government
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officials and telling her that she
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needed to convert all her money and her
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assets into gold B s and give them to
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these people for safekeeping this went
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on for weeks guys she handed over
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$900,000 in Gold before she realized
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something was off something was wrong
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she called police Montgomery County
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detectives set up a sting they stepped
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in before she handed over another $2.5
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million that she had converted into gold
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using an online website the man who came
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to pick it up 19-year-old Zen Yong Wang
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out of New York I want to thank judge
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Oliver this young man the young man who
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was arraigned here today is that on bond
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from New York for a violent crime includ
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involving a handgun he drove down from
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Brooklyn to commit this
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crime so right now in Montgomery County
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they have had at least 19 reported
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victims and they have charged three
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people in these gold bar scams they
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don't know if any of these cases are
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connected guys but this is people's life
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savings they're losing hundreds and
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hundreds of thousands of dollars tell
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you home I feel really bad for this
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woman I mean as you just stated her life
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SA is there any hope she can get her
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back according to investigators that is
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very unlikely these gold bars this is
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the reason this scam has become so
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popular not just in Montgomery County
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but all over the country these gold bars
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are actually untraceable so we don't
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know if they're still in Maryland we
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don't know if they're still even in the
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country Shamari all right hom thank you
