Texas man swindled northern Minnesota woman out of $100K in gold bars, $36K in cash, charges say

MARSHALL COUNTY, Minn. — A 23-year-old Texas man faces charges for his role in swindling $36,000 in cash and $100,000 in gold bars from a northern Minnesota woman.

Charges filed in Marshall County say that a 66-year-old woman said she sent the money to a man in Texas because he had told her he had access to her Social Security number. She said she’d sent the cash in $100 bills and tucked the money into books, which she sent to two different CVS stores in Texas.

She added that he had also bought $100,000 worth of gold bars online in August of last year. The man told her he would pick the gold bars up outside her home on Sept. 1, charges say.

That day, she received a phone call and the man told her to bring the gold bars outside and put them in the backseat of a white car sitting outside her home. Once she did so, the car drove off and she couldn’t see who was driving.

Documents say the suspect was apprehended in McKinney, Texas. He was seen on video footage picking up the packages from the CVS stores. 

He admitted to collecting the packages and delivering them to an unknown individual, charges say. He said he knew what was in the pacakges, and had picked up roughly 40 of them between August and September of 2023. 

He said he had been coerced into picking up the packages, and he was being compensated for his work, according to documents.

The suspect was charged with two counts of theft. The theft charge carries a maximum sentence of 20 years imprisonment.