Two couriers who allegedly transported gold bars swindled from elderly victims will be at the federal courthouse in St. Louis today, where they will become the latest to be arraigned on charges related to a conspiracy that cost people across the country millions of dollars.
Elie Longueli and D’Mauriea Rogers are both facing charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. They were two of the U.S.-based couriers in a scheme run by a call center located outside of the country.
The call center’s M.O. was to contact elderly victims and alert them that their accounts had been compromised and that they needed to hand over their money for safe keeping. The call center operators often held themselves out to be representatives of the government. They instructed their victims that a safe way to transfer their money was to liquidate their savings, convert their money into gold, and then hand the gold over to a courier. The call center operators gave the elderly victims a password that they could use to ensure the couriers were on the up and up—which, it goes without saying, they were not. Those couriers were then told where to transport the gold and were paid a fraction of the take after its delivery…