A California man who stole more than $800,000 from a Leisure World resident in an alleged gold bar scheme pleaded guilty Friday to theft charges, according to the county’s state’s attorney’s office.
Wenhui Sun, 34, of Lake Arbor, California pleaded guilty in Montgomery County Circuit Court in Rockville to charges of a theft scheme over $100,000, theft over $100,000, attempted theft over $100,000 and conspiracy to commit theft over $100,000, the state’s attorney’s office said in a statement.
Sun faces a maximum of 80 years in prison, according to the state’s attorney’s office. He is being held at the Montgomery County Correctional Facility in Boyds where he awaits a Dec. 9 sentencing hearing.
Sun’s attorney, Andrew Jezic, did not immediately respond to MoCo360’s request for comment Friday evening.
Friday’s conviction is the first for such a scam in the county, which saw about 20 local victims bilked out of millions of dollars since July 2023 due to gold bar scams. Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy said at a news conference in August that the scam is part of an international organized crime ring with links to China and India.
“We are pleased that the first gold bar scam case to enter the courts in Montgomery County has resulted in a conviction,” McCarthy said in Friday’s statement. “As in this case, the scam often targets vulnerable victims who lose their life savings at a time when they are most dependent upon those funds to sustain themselves.”
How the scam unfolded
In March, Sun was arrested after county police officers stopped him during a pick-up he organized with the Leisure World resident, according to charging documents. Leisure World is a Silver Spring gated community for adults aged 55 and older. The documents did not state the woman’s age.
According to the charging documents, the woman said she received a call in late February from someone claiming to be “Mark Cooper” from the Federal Trade Commission’s Office of the Inspector General. Cooper told her that “she was the victim of identity theft which led to a federal investigation involving drugs and money laundering,” charging documents stated.
The woman was then contacted by someone who claimed to be “Officer David Freeman,” who told her that he would help her get a new Social Security number and provide her with witness protection, but only if she “fully cooperated,” charging documents said.
She was instructed to purchase gold bars from JM Bullion, an online retailer of gold, silver, platinum and copper products, according to charging documents, and was told the bars would be “turned over to FBI agents who would get the bars and place them into the U.S. Department of Treasury.”
The victim then wired more than $331,000 to JM Bullion on Feb. 21 to purchase the gold bars, and on March 5, she was told to meet a courier in a Walgreens parking lot in Silver Spring to hand over the bars. The courier, later identified as Sun, then drove away with the gold bars, according to charging documents.
On March 6, the woman was told to purchase more gold bars and she wired more than $457,000 to JM Bullion, according to charging documents. Two days later, she met the courier in a parking lot on Gleneagles Drive, within Leisure World. The courier once again drove away with the gold after the exchange.
After her second interaction with the courier, the victim “realized she was being scammed,” and that the gold had been stolen, charging documents said. She informed Montgomery County police about the thefts and started working with the department’s financial crime detectives in the investigation, charging documents said.
The detectives helped her fabricate documents to send to the scammers to make them believe she purchased more than $300,000 worth of gold bars for them to pick up, according to charging documents.
On March 18, a detective posed as the victim and put a box containing packing paper into the back seat of the courier’s vehicle in the Leisure World parking lot, charging documents said.
After leaving the parking lot, Sun was stopped, arrested and transported to police headquarters in Gaithersburg for questioning, according to charging documents.
According to the documents, Sun was born in China and told police that a friend in China “directed him to drive to Maryland from New York, pick up the package and return to New York” and he admitted to picking up the package but claimed that he did not know what was in the box.
Since January, Sun said he had traveled to Tennessee, Montana, New York and Maryland, but claimed that he had only picked up packages in Maryland, charging documents stated.
Assistant State’s Attorney Hannah Gleason said in court that there had been a dozen similar cases reported in the county in the past six months before March, but Sun’s case was the first one in which police made an arrest.
“We are grateful to the Montgomery County Police Fraud Division, in particular Detective Sean Petty for his tremendous work on this case,” McCarthy said Friday. “This is significant organized crime on an international level, and we will be seeking a sentence that reflects the seriousness of the impact on this victim.”
How to avoid being scammed
In August, McCarthy hosted a news conference with county police, the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations to inform the public about the scams.
“Please do not ever, ever, click on a pop-up ad. … Don’t answer the phone if you don’t recognize the phone number,” McCarthy said at the press conference, referring to two main ways that scammers target individuals. He also said while the majority of the victims in the county have been older residents, anyone of any age or demographic can be targeted.
At the August press conference, Petty said county police had identified seven cases involving residents who lost more than a total of $6.3 million in gold bar schemes. Petty also said some victims also lost money through cryptocurrency conversions and cash pickups as well.
Authorities said it was important to report the crimes to the FBI, which has an internet crime complaint center at ic3.gov. Through the site, the FBI had received more than 250 complaints related to gold bars scams over the last few months up to August – involving about $84 million that will likely never be returned, Bill DelBagno, a special agent in the FBI Baltimore Field Office said in August.
In addition, people who think they are being scammed can report the issue to local law enforcement, authorities said. County police have a website designated for reporting fraud and scams as well.
Authorities also stressed that law enforcement agencies and government officials will never contact people by phone with threats of arrest or to talk about compromised money. One of the ways scammers have been able to convince victims to participate is by posing as government agents, they said.
“Government agencies will never ask you to collect gold or cash or pay fines to safeguard your money, we will not demand immediate payment,” DelBagno said. “They will not ask for payment in very unusual ways, such as drop-offs of gift cards or cryptocurrency or wire transfers.
“Please, resist the pressure to act quickly. These scammers try to isolate their victims and convey this sense of urgency. Don’t let them. Hang up the phone, call a friend that you trust or a family member, and talk it through,” he said.
Former MoCo360 reporter Courtney Cohn contributed to this report.
