A 70-year-old New York woman had already wired $919,200 after callers convinced her she was caught up in a crime in India. More than a month later, they came back with another demand: buy $300,000 in gold bars and coins.
That second request changed the story. The Hicksville woman realized she was being scammed and contacted Nassau County police on Sept. 1, according to an arrest release reproduced by LongIsland.com.
Police turned the planned handoff into a sting the following afternoon. News 12 reported that an undercover detective carried a bag of fake gold bars and waited in a Hicksville parking lot for the pickup.
Court documents cited by the station say the person collecting the bag used the agreed-upon code: the serial number from a dollar bill. Police arrested 32-year-old Tierigeli, whom the department listed as Fnu Tierigeli of Woodside, Queens, and charged her with attempted second-degree grand larceny.
One More Ask
Embedded media follows; please allow a moment to load.
The scam began weeks before the arrest. Nassau County police said the victim received a call telling her she was involved in a crime in India and needed to withdraw money to resolve the problem.
Between June 29 and July 27, she withdrew and wired $919,200.
Court documents cited by News 12 add more detail to the pitch. The woman contacting the victim allegedly presented herself as being with the Delhi Police Department in India.
The next demand arrived Sept. 1. This time, the victim was told to obtain another $300,000 in gold bars and coins so a supposed CIA agent could collect and examine them as part of the purported investigation.
Instead, she called police.
The Pickup
The planned exchange took place Sept. 2 at 280 North Broadway in Hicksville.
News 12 reported that police prepared fake gold bars that would have been worth $284,650 if genuine. An undercover detective took the victim’s place.
The handoff included a verification step. Court documents say the collector was expected to provide a code matching the serial number of a dollar bill.
Police allege Tierigeli supplied that code and accepted the bag. She was arrested at about 5 p.m.
The announced charge is attempted grand larceny in the second degree, arising from the attempted gold pickup. Publicly announced charges have not tied Tierigeli to personally receiving the earlier $919,200 in wire transfers.
A Familiar Currency
The demand for physical gold has appeared in other fraud investigations around New York.
In August, ABC7 New York reported that the NYPD Financial Crimes Task Force was investigating schemes in which scammers impersonated government officials and persuaded older victims to convert savings into gold for couriers to collect.
NYPD officials said those cases sometimes used code names or numbers during the handoff, a detail similar to the dollar-bill serial number described in the Hicksville court records. Police estimated hundreds of victims had lost more than $100 million in the broader investigations.
The Case
Tierigeli pleaded not guilty to the attempted grand larceny charge at her Sept. 3 arraignment, according to News 12.
Nassau County police have asked anyone who believes they may have been targeted by a similar scam to contact the department’s Fraud and Forgery Section at 516-573-2815.