Javed Ashiq did not make the phone calls, according to federal prosecutors. They say the 52-year-old, who lives in Decatur, Georgia, was the courier who collected an elderly victim’s gold bars and cash and handed them to the people running the scam. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Georgia announced on October 7, 2026 that a federal judge sentenced him to 168 months, which is 14 years, and ordered him to pay $886,799.84 in restitution.
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What the courier did
The release says the scheme ran from July to August 2024. Co-conspirators, whom the release does not name, told the victim that their identity had been stolen and used for fraud. They posed as agents of the Federal Trade Commission and persuaded the victim to buy cryptocurrency and gold “to protect their assets.” Ashiq’s job was the handoff. He picked up the gold bars and cash and took them to the co-conspirators, leaving the victim, in the release’s words, “empty handed.”…