SMITH COUNTY, Texas (KLTV) – A man was arrested Tuesday after he was found to have $120,000 in cash and gold he had gotten from a Longview woman as part of a scam, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety.
An arrest affidavit said Anuj Ashishbhai Modi, 24, of Arlington was driving on Interstate 20 when a DPS trooper pulled him over for following too closely behind a semi-truck.
The affidavit said the trooper noticed Modi was acting nervously, so the trooper asked Modi to exit his vehicle and sit in the front passenger seat of his patrol car while the he wrote up a warning.
According to the affidavit, the trooper asked where Modi was coming from, and Modi said he had been visiting his uncle in Longview and had been there since that morning. Using a license plate reader, the trooper found that Modi had arrived near Longview around 3 p.m.
The trooper then told Modi that he was showing signs of nervousness which led him to believe something else was going on. The trooper asked Modi if there were any narcotics or large amounts of U.S. currency in his vehicle, which Modi denied. The trooper then asked Modi for consent to search his vehicle but Modi hesitated before saying no when asked a second time, according to the affidavit.
Anuj Ashishbhai Modi, 24, of Arlington(Smith County Jail)
A K-9 officer was called to the scene, and the dog alerted to Modi’s vehicle. The trooper said the dog’s alert gave him probable cause to search Modi’s vehicle. During the search, he found a black box filled with large amounts of currency and gold items under the front passenger seat, estimated to be worth about $120,000.
The affidavit said Modi was detained and taken to the Tyler DPS office for further questioning. The affidavit said Modi told investigators he had picked up the box from an elderly woman in Longview and gave investigators her address. An investigator went to the address to make contact with the woman and obtain more details about the money, according to the affidavit.
Modi said a friend living in India told him to pick up the package from Longview and take it to Dallas where somebody else would pick it up from Modi. After Modi consented to having his phone searched, investigators found a picture on the phone of another $30,000. Modi said his friend in India also told him to pick up that package from someone in Big Spring.
According to the affidavit, investigators determined that the organization Modi worked for lied to the Longview woman, stating he worked for a federal company and was collecting money that she owed.
Modi was arrested for engaging in organized criminal activity, financial abuse of the elderly, and booked into the Smith County Jail.
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