Coral Gables fraud arrest links gold bars scam to $2 million theft

Coral Gables police arrested Sumit Bahadur Pandey, 24, and linked him to a gold scheme that allegedly siphoned off nearly $2 million in bars and coins, a case that turns bullion’s safe-haven reputation into the scammer’s favorite disguise.

Pandey faces charges including grand theft, organized scheme to defraud, unlawful use of a two-way communication device, and falsely impersonating an officer during the commission of a felony. Investigators said he had already been arrested during a fraud probe in Carroll County, Arkansas, before a forensic search of a phone found on him surfaced WhatsApp messages tied to the Coral Gables case.

Those messages allegedly mapped out a victim’s vehicle, her location at a CVS on South Dixie Highway, and photographs and videos of gold bars, gold coins and cash. One confirmation image sent on January 21, investigators said, showed the recognizable archway at the Coral Gables CVS, a detail that helped anchor the exchange in a real-world place rather than a paper trail.

The victim, whom Coral Gables police identified and interviewed on March 19, told investigators she had been contacted in mid-2025 by someone posing as a federal agent named “Lucas.” Using unregistered phone numbers, the caller allegedly warned her that her accounts were compromised and pushed her to buy physical gold so her assets could be placed into “federal protection.” That pitch is the scam’s core seduction: it borrows the authority of government, then weaponizes gold’s prestige as a supposedly untouchable store of value.

Instead of a verified bank or dealer custody arrangement, the woman wired funds to a local dealer and later handed over the metal in parking lots at the CVS or a nearby Shake Shack. On January 21, she gave Pandey gold valued at nearly $180,000. By the time detectives traced the operation, the alleged theft had grown into a near-$2 million loss.

The Coral Gables case sits inside a much larger fraud pattern that has moved steadily toward precious metals. The FBI warned in January 2024 that courier scams involving cash and precious metals had generated more than $55 million in losses from May to December 2023. ABC News reported in February 2025 that victims of gold-bar courier scams had reported $126 million in losses in 2024, and FBI Boston warned in September 2025 that criminals were increasingly using couriers to collect bulk cash or gold bars, often from elderly victims.

A February 2026 raid on jewelry stores in Georgia, Texas and Florida, in what authorities described as a more than $50 million gold-bar scam affecting hundreds of people, showed how fast the playbook has spread. The lesson is plain: real gold should come with real verification. No legitimate purchase ends in a parking lot, no federal protection arrives through an unregistered number, and no serious dealer asks buyers to surrender bars and coins to strangers in a strip-mall shadow.