MARTIN COUNTY \u2013 A local senior citizen nearly lost $600,000 in a \u201cgold bar scam,\u201d but was able to get his money returned through the efforts of a Martin County Sheriff\u2019s Office deputy.<\/p>\n
According to a sheriff\u2019s office Facebook posting, the victim was told by someone claiming to represent the victim\u2019s financial institution that that victim\u2019s bank account was compromised and the safest way to protect his money was to \u201cback it up\u201d with gold.<\/p>\n
The victim was instructed to send $600,000 \u2013 his life\u2019s savings \u2013 to a legitimate gold vendor, where the gold would then be picked up by a third-party driver and supposedly be delivered to the bank, according the Facebook posting.<\/p>\n
When Deputy Sgt. Jasmaine McKinney arrived, she spoke directly to the gold vendor and worked with victim and the business to stop the transaction. The gold had not yet been picked up or shipped out, according to the Facebook posting.<\/p>\n
The vendor cooperated with law enforcement, canceled the transaction and helped ensure the victim\u2019s money was returned, according to the posting. This week, the victim confirmed that he had received a full refund of his $600,000.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MARTIN COUNTY \u2013 A local senior citizen nearly lost $600,000 in a \u201cgold bar scam,\u201d but was able…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":378589,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[326,171,173,172],"class_list":["post-378588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-port-st-lucie","tag-martin","tag-port-st-lucie","tag-port-st-lucie-headlines","tag-port-st-lucie-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378588\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}