A federal jury in Austin has convicted Bhavesh Kumar Thakkar, 45, an Indian national living in the United States on a spousal visa, on two counts related to wire fraud and money laundering. U.S. Attorney Justin R. Simmons announced the verdict on October 5. Prosecutors say Thakkar was the U.S.-based coordinator who received and laundered cash and gold taken from older Americans by call-center scammers in India, and that he was directly connected to more than $150 million in fraud proceeds. He is the fourth defendant convicted in the case, and no sentencing date has been announced.
A coordinator for cash and gold
According to court documents and trial evidence summarized in the Justice Department release, the scheme worked in a chain. Scammers in India contacted older people across the country, and victims ended up handing cash and gold to couriers. Thakkar sat in the middle of that chain. He received some of the funds himself from couriers, and the money was then shipped to Los Angeles and New York before it was laundered overseas.
Prosecutors place his role from September 2022 through September 17, 2025. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas says the FBI and the Granite Shoals Police Department investigated, and Assistant U.S. Attorneys Keith Henneke and Brandy Gann are handling the prosecution. Simmons said in the Justice Department announcement that foreign actors, “both abroad and here in the United States, cannot be allowed to target Americans, especially our most vulnerable citizens.”
The people most at risk in a case like this are retirees who get a call, text or pop-up claiming that an account has been compromised and that money must be moved or handed over to protect it. The courier is the tell. A real bank, a real federal agency and a real fraud department do not send a person to a front door to collect cash or gold, so any request of that kind is a reason to hang up and call the institution on a number found independently.
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The couriers who were sentenced first
The two men who carried the cash and gold were dealt with first. Dhruv Rajeshbhai Mangukiya, 21, pleaded guilty on June 16, 2025, to conspiracy to commit money laundering and was sentenced to 97 months in federal prison, plus $2,515,780 in restitution, according to the earlier Justice Department release on his sentencing. Kishan Rajeshkumar Patel pleaded guilty on March 18, 2025, and was sentenced on June 17 to 63 months. A third co-defendant, Rakesh Barot, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering and is awaiting sentencing.
That earlier release shows how the pickups were framed to victims. Conspirators posed as representatives of the U.S. Treasury Department or other agencies and told people that their identities were stolen or their accounts compromised. Victims were pressured to deposit cash or gold with couriers for a supposed investigation. One victim in Granite Shoals, Texas, was manipulated into withdrawing $180,000 across three separate transfers, and a Fort Worth woman lost $30,000 after a caller claimed to be with the Amazon fraud department.
Mangukiya earned about 2 percent of the fraud proceeds he handled and recruited Patel as a courier, the release says. When agents arrested him at his New Jersey home on December 5, 2024, they found $73,422.96 in cash and a printer used to make fake identification. The percentage suggests how thin the courier layer was, since the people at street level kept a small slice of money that moved on to organizers overseas.
Gold couriers in the FBI’s 2025 numbers
The Texas case sits inside a much larger pattern. The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, known as IC3, received 201,266 complaints from people 60 and older in 2025, up 37 percent from 2024, according to its 2025 annual report. Reported losses in that age group reached $7.748 billion, a 59 percent increase, with an average loss of $38,500 per complainant. A total of 12,444 older victims lost more than $100,000 each.
Investment fraud caused the largest losses for older people at $3.52 billion, followed by tech and customer support scams at $1.04 billion and confidence and romance fraud at $584 million. Government impersonation, the tactic Mangukiya’s crew used when posing as Treasury, accounted for $413 million among people 60 and older. Business email compromise ranked fourth at $568 million.
The report singles out the method that the Austin trial described. Gold courier scams, in which criminals send someone to collect cash and precious metals from a victim, drew about 725 complaints and $311.8 million in losses. The $38,500 average loss for all older complainants is a fraction of what the courier cases cost per complaint on those totals.
The same report credits one overseas takedown. In December 2025, the FBI and India’s Central Bureau of Investigation dismantled a call center that had defrauded more than 600 U.S. citizens through tech-support and impersonation schemes, with victims reporting $48.7 million in losses. FBI San Antonio Special Agent in Charge Daniel Faith credited help from “Indian authorities via our Legat New Delhi,” the FBI’s legal attache office, in the Thakkar case.
Reporting a scam to the national elder fraud hotline
People 60 and older who have lost money to a scam can call the National Elder Fraud Hotline, run by the Justice Department’s Office for Victims of Crime, at 833-372-8311, also written 833-FRAUD-11. The hotline’s page lists hours of Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Eastern. Trained case managers help callers report the crime at the federal, state and local level and connect them with other resources, and the service is free. The page also warns that impostors have used the hotline’s name and number to get personal information or money.
The IC3 report urges victims to file at IC3.gov, and that is where the FBI’s complaint totals come from. Each report is a data point investigators can match against others, which is how cases like the Texas one tie a courier in New Jersey to a call center in India. Reports that include dates, amounts, phone numbers and the names callers used are the most useful to match.
Simmons said many victims “lose a significant portion of their life savings to these scammers.” Faith said the FBI regards protecting elderly citizens from fraud as a high priority. Thakkar’s sentence, and Barot’s, are the next steps in the Texas case, and neither has a date in the Justice Department announcement.
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This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by The Money Overview’s editorial team.
