Man faces up to 20 years for $9 million real estate Ponzi scheme<\/a><\/p>\nThe case began in January, when a Payson resident reported a possible fraud to police. <\/p>\n
Investigators determined scammers had first contacted the victim in 2025, claiming to be representatives of the government. <\/p>\n
Police said the scammers told the victim they had uncovered information showing her identity had been stolen and that, to protect her remaining assets, she needed to purchase a large quantity of gold.<\/p>\n
Police said the scammers instructed the victim to turn the gold over to their agents so it could be safeguarded while the identity theft was investigated. <\/p>\n
A courier was then sent to the Payson area to collect the gold, according to investigators.<\/p>\n
After providing a considerable amount of gold, the victim became suspicious and contacted the police. <\/p>\n
Detectives worked with the victim and coordinated an additional exchange of gold with the scammers. <\/p>\n
When the couriers arrived in Payson, they were taken into custody without incident.<\/p>\n
Police said they have reason to believe the couriers were aware they were involved in criminal activity. <\/p>\n
However, investigators said there is currently no information indicating Singh and Gonzales were the ones making the scam calls to the victim or that they were involved in earlier courier pickups.<\/p>\n
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The investigation is ongoing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A fraud investigation in Payson, Arizona, led to the arrest of two Fresno residents after police say they…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":185179,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[112,114,113],"class_list":{"0":"post-185178","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fresno","8":"tag-fresno","9":"tag-fresno-headlines","10":"tag-fresno-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185178\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/185179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}