Admitted serial conman released from theft charges

“You’re free to go,” was the word from 252nd District Court Judge Raquel West as she watched a man, who admitted to defrauding roughly $1 million from his gold customers, walk away free from prosecution in Jefferson County at the request of the district attorney’s office. Jefferson County prosecutor Bobby Ortego reported earlier this year that the federal government was picking up the White prosecution henceforth, adding it to other similar allegations against the defendant already under their auspices.

Michael James White, whose nationwide theft was detailed in the pages of The Examiner through extensive investigation, perpetrated what he admitted was a nearly million-dollar con from the online presence of his Vidor-based business, as revealed in the factual stipulation admitting guilt to a single count of wire fraud. White was allowed to plead guilty to the single case of wire fraud in U.S. Eastern District of Texas federal court on Aug. 1. The sole charge belies the charging instrument, however, which required White to admit to defrauding 18 separate victims.

As part of The Examiner’s continuing investigation, White was revealed to have been named in more than a dozen allegations of fraud and theft from victim reports nationwide in the last two years. White was arrested – and charged – time and time again as the pages of this newsprint offered up evidence that White allegedly continued to defraud and steal from victims, unabashed, even while he was under indictment for prior fraud allegations.

White’s signed stipulation of facts reveal The Examiner investigations were, indeed, right on the money.

As recent as March of this year, victims of “Gold Pro” owner “Mike” White were reaching out this newspaper, alleging the coin conman’s bad acts continued, despite Jefferson County indictments for fraud that were lingering in the justice system.

An attorney for a Racine, Wisconsin, resident notified The Examiner that his client was scammed out of $208,000. The $208,000 theft was part of the factual stipulation White admitted to when he signed paperwork for the Department of Justice federal agents at the end of July. The theft, as admitted by White, took place in June of 2022.

The theft of funds from the Wisconsin client was just one of more than a dozen separate victims White admitted to conning in a one-and-a-half year period that spans a time after White was under indictment in Jefferson County for similar behavior.

Felony flashback

The BBB’s file for Gold Pro LLC contains a pattern of complaints in which consumers alleged delivery, refund, customer service and service issues, culminating in an “F” rating that dates back pre-COVID.

“Specifically, consumers allege they paid in full for products that have not been received at all or delivered in a timely manner, failure of the business to provide promised package tracking numbers and failure to honor promised refunds,” reads a statement from the BBB regarding Gold Pro. “Additionally, customers allege failure of the business to respond to their calls, removal of the business website and discovery of a new business name and website with the same business phone number.

“BBB contacted the company in May 2020 requesting that they address the pattern of complaints and propose a method to eliminate the pattern from continuing. To date, BBB has not received a response from the company.”

According to the BBB, complaints on White date back to 2019. Even as White was subjected to criminal probes and indictments, customers alleged White never ceased the con game. Complainants further allege that White delivered a combination of excuses, silence and, in one case, two 40-pound dumbbells instead of the $90,000 in coins ordered. White’s years of alleged misdeeds came to a head in 2021, when rumblings from Gold Pro clients first began inciting indictments.

Previous reporting by The Examiner revealed a Jefferson County grand jury indicted White in September 2021 for allegedly stealing $247,822 from three sources over six months. According to White’s attorney, Dustin Galmor, the defendant paid two of the complainants back before either case could make it to trial. However, repayment came only after a September 2021 arrest, when Beaumont police officers detained White on three counts of felony theft.

After White’s release from the Jefferson County Jail, according to his own signed statement of facts, the gold conman defrauded another 16 victims and stole another nearly $1 million.

Recounted in the pages of this newsprint, a concentration of complaints came from Florida, one from Jacksonville resident Pam Robbins, 74, who holds a Ph.D. in education. Robbins filed a complaint with the Texas Attorney General after she gave White’s company $200,000 of her retirement fund to invest in gold she never received.

“After wire-transferring the money, I didn’t hear anything from them for a week,” Robbins wrote. “I kept in touch (and) requested a receipt, which took three weeks to finally receive. I had a downturn in my husband’s health. I knew I needed the cash back to take care of his medical needs. I explained all this to all three people at Gold Pro. They assured me that they would wire transfer the money back, but never followed through.

“I have had many sleepless nights and have to stay healthy to take care of my husband.”

Robbins said White, Gold Pro coowner Mason Fuller and employee Emily Ledoux offered promises they never fulfilled.

Fellow Floridian Charles Coleman contacted The Examiner after reading about White in this publication in 2022.

“They’ve obviously ripped off a lot of people, and I’ve been ripped off, too,” said Coleman, who lives in Tallahassee. “How in the world can a man that’s been ripping people off for two years keep an office open? How does that happen?”

In White’s signed statement of facts admitting wire fraud this past week, the gold conman admits that he accepted $24,341.94 from a victim ascribed as “C.C.” and never delivered the promised goods.

“He never sent nothing; he’s just giving me the song, dance and lies,” Coleman stated in 2022. “He had a nice story about being Christian and all that stuff; it was all lies to just make it easy to rip people off.”

An alleged Gold Pro victim known only as “Will” stated that White lied to him, as well, the conman saying that his wife was killed in a car crash in April 2021 – the same month White shipped barbells in place of $90,000 in gold that was ordered and paid for. After repeated unanswered phone calls, Will stated that he opened a delivery from White on April 9, 2021, finding a 40-pound dumbbell in the package. Will opened another dumbbell from White’s company in place of gold on April 12, 2021; he then called BPD to file charges.

“Imagine my surprise when I opened the box to find a 40-pound barbell,” Will said. “They currently owe us $90,870, (and) he keeps lying to us about our refund.”

Passing off prosecution

Even though a review of the federal filing system did not reveal an indictment for White up until a week before a plea agreement was reached, investigators suspected an “extensive” federal case was forthcoming when Jefferson County deferred prosecution to the federal Department of Justice. Former Beaumont Police Department detective and current BBB Southeast Texas investigator Lisa Jardine reported knowledge of 43 complaining victims at the local nonprofit BBB alone; allegedly, the federal investigators were in receipt of others.

In the admission of facts signed by White, his attorney and U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Texas Damian Diggs, the now admitted fraudster stipulated that prosecutors would have “beyond a reasonable doubt” proved 20 instances of White taking money or silver, and not providing the goods agreed to in return.

“Starting in 2021, White in multiple cases never delivered the precious metals to the buyer, delivered a product of lesser value, or delivered fake precious metals,” White affirmed. “In some instances, White would create fake shipping labels with a shipping company to assure the victim that the precious metals were shipped.”

Five pages of victims are then described, in small detail, with large losses: $16,000; $100,000; $85,000… the total sum of loss, over $900,000. As part of White’s plea agreement in the federal court, the defendant has agreed not to fight forfeiture of the victim’s property – if he has it. A pre-sentence report detailing White’s ability to make his victims whole should be admitted at a future court hearing as yet unscheduled.