Over 200 US seniors hand over fortunes in $250M gold scheme — 40+ indicted after bullion melted down in Florida

More than 200 older adults were talked into withdrawing their savings and handing it to couriers sent to collect it.

Tarrant County, Texas, prosecutors put the total allegedly fleeced at more than $250 million . A call would come in warning that the victim's money wasn't safe where it was. The instruction was to get it out of the bank and into gold, bitcoin or cash.

And they say the gold rarely stayed gold for long. It moved through shell companies to a refinery in Florida, where gold bars became molten puddles.

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Muzamil Ahmed, 35, of New Jersey, was arrested Sept. 3 at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York and was in the Tarrant County Jail as of Sept. 4, when the district attorney's office announced the arrest. District Attorney Phil Sorrells said Ahmed was waiting to board a flight to Jeddah , Saudi Arabia.

"Instead, he caught a flight to Tarrant County and landed in our jail," Sorrells said after the arrest .

Ahmed was arrested on Tarrant County warrants charging him with financial abuse of the elderly, money laundering and engaging in organized crime for theft. A grand jury indicted him Aug. 28 on two counts of financial abuse of the elderly, according to court records. The indictment accuses him of swindling one Tarrant County resident out of between $30,000 and $150,000, and of taking money or gold from more than 35 other people.

Court records show he was being held on bonds totaling $3.15 million. Ahmed has not been convicted, and prosecutors must prove the counts against him in court.

Prosecutors say Ahmed operated out of New Jersey and created shell corporations to launder money stolen from older victims and funnel it to the Florida refinery. Investigators describe him as a central figure in the operation, according to CBS News Texas.

Two more people were arrested the same day, in Chicago and Newark, New Jersey, as they allegedly tried to flee to Canada, and prosecutors said they were working to extradite both to Tarrant County. Investigators told NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth that more arrests are likely.

The investigation had produced more than 40 indictments by early September, 18 of them handed down in April, FOX 4 reported . It began with a February raid on a Richardson jewelry store, and Sorrells has since tied the case to raids in Irving and Frisco as well.