Yet another gold mining scam: Abandoned mines, money and hope
Always on the lookout for mining scams, I came across the news report repeated below. This Californian scammed an elderly couple of $5 million promising to extract gold from abandoned mines. I can never quite understand how somebody who is smart enough to accrue so much money, can be so stupid as to part with it on the flimsiest of evidence – or no evidence at all.
Is it the all too human greed when confronted with the prospect of gold? Is it senility that becomes a factor at 80? Is it maybe the guy was charming and believable?
A federal judge Monday sentenced Walthall to nearly fourteen years in prison on several counts of wire fraud and failure to appear in court.
Walthall, 56, told a couple in their 80s that he had experience in gold extraction and that he would use their $5.5 million investment to extract gold from abandoned mines.
But instead, Walthall spent the money to pay off part of a $250,000 loan he received from a former fiance, as well as his son’s $10,000 film school tuition and even buying a hyperbaric oxygen chamber estimated to be worth $60,000, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigations.
He jumped bail last year, but was arrested by the FBI in Nevada while carrying a gun and a book titled “How To Be Invisible”.
In a bizarre sentencing hearing, Walthall tried to fire his attorney, lashed out at the victims, and was turned down when he asked to read a 607-page statement.
