Inside a Gold Coin Scam Sting
The Perfect Scam
AARP
4.5 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 13 March 2026
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When Brian receives an email from "PayPal," he thinks it must be the refund he's been waiting for, but he is instead drawn into a scam that has him running all over town feeding money into crypto kiosks and exchanging cash for gold coins to hand off to a courier. Brian soon grows suspicious, but he resists the urge to confront the criminals and goes directly to the police. Brian helps detectives set up a sting operation to ensnare the courier and expose a crime ring.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This week on The Perfect Scam. |
| 0:04.0 | I do like to go fishing and this kind of felt like a really good catch. |
| 0:09.0 | And you had to have the right kind of bait, obviously. |
| 0:12.0 | $200,000 of gold. I think that's a pretty good bait right there. |
| 0:15.0 | Welcome back to the Perfect Scam. |
| 0:21.4 | I'm your host, Bob Sullivan. |
| 0:24.2 | We talk all the time on The Perfect Scam about how important it is to go to authorities the moment you think you might be the victim of a crime. |
| 0:32.0 | I have to confess, sometimes filling out a police report can feel hollow, at least at first. |
| 0:37.9 | But today, we have a great story which shows why it's so important to go to the cops without delay when something is wrong. |
| 0:45.8 | You just might catch a thief, or even help authorities crack open, a big crime ring. |
| 0:52.2 | Meet Brian Oliver, who now lives on land, but... |
| 0:57.0 | How long were you basically living on the water? |
| 1:01.4 | Once of 20 years. |
| 1:03.4 | Most of it was in West Palm Beach. |
| 1:05.6 | Wow. What is that? |
| 1:08.0 | I spent most of my life in West Palm Beach. |
| 1:12.6 | Yeah, I was where I primarily went. I bought the boat down in Puerto Rico in a little town called Farado and sailed |
| 1:18.6 | it back to West Palm Beach, all back in the 90s, early 90s, or late 80s, something like |
| 1:25.6 | that. |
| 1:26.6 | And it was a beautiful life. How old were you? early 90s or late 80s, something like that. |
| 1:29.9 | And it was a beautiful life. |
| 1:33.9 | How old were you when you started being on a boat full time? |
... |
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