Over 200 US seniors hand over fortunes in $250M gold scheme — 40+ indicted after bullion melted down in Florida. Scam-proof your nest egg now

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.

A key suspect stopped at JFK

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.

How $250 million in gold disappears

It starts with a phone call from an overseas call center, most of them in India, according to FOX 4. Someone claiming to be from the victim's bank — or a federal agency — says the account, Social Security number or other personal information has been compromised. The fix, the caller says, is to get the money out: withdraw the savings and buy gold bars, buy bitcoin or simply hold it in cash.

Then a courier arrives, sometimes posing as a federal agent, and collects the gold or the cash, promising to keep it somewhere safe. From there, prosecutors say, it moved through shell companies to the refinery, and the gold and cash were converted into cryptocurrency and sent out of the country.

Sorrells described a division of labor to NBC 5: couriers who make the pickups, call-center staff who place the calls and jewelry businesses that smelt the gold down into bangles that can be carried overseas. Those already indicted include couriers accused of collecting from older victims and jewelers accused of melting the gold into jewelry, the Star-Telegram reported.