It’s not just the bait and switch scams you have to watch out for; scams can be even scummier than you can imagine. This particular scam cost individuals tens of thousands as Global Bullion Exchange owner Jamie Campany mislead his over 1400 clients to invest in gold “accounts” that would never actually hold the bullion.

Jamie’s company was functioning out of a boiler room in Florida that was converted into a call center. His sales team would find leads, connect the phone number to addresses on Google Earth to see what kind of property the potential buyer owned. The salesperson would then carefully select a potentially profitable lead by finding the largest houses. When the home owner answered, the salesperson would proceed to use every tactic in the book to eventually scam the person into buying gold that the company didn’t own and never would convincing the customer that an account would hold the purchase until the client decided to cash in. They even talked people who had no free-flowing cash into investing! Listen to his confession here:

The most fascinating part of the story is his ability to manipulate the 30-50 year old age bracket, a demographic you would assume could easily sniff out the deceit in the air. Campany did, however, highlight that his most difficult leads were the “little old ladies” who remained skeptical of someone they didn’t know asking them for thousands of dollars over the phone.

Unlike some of the scams you’ve heard about here and in Peter’s report, this scammer is coming clean, pleading guilty, and facing up to 25 years in prison. Be weary of direct phone calls by bullion salespeople and be sure to look up the in’s and out’s of their business if you do consider a offer. Perhaps the moral of this story should be: behave like a “little old lady” and do research into any company who contacts you before buying.