A 34-year-old Houston man is behind bars after Ascension Parish detectives say he posed as a law enforcement officer and extorted roughly $275,000 from an elderly local victim, threatening violence and a fake arrest warrant to keep the money flowing between May and August. Zulkar Nain was booked into the Ascension Parish Jail and now faces a stack of felony charges that could send him away for decades.
According to the WBRZ report on the arrest, the scam began with electronic communications that targeted the victim over several months, with the caller claiming to be a law enforcement officer and telling the victim there was an active warrant out for their arrest. The scammer also made threats of violence against the victim, and kept demanding more money as the scheme dragged on, per the same account. Ascension Parish Sheriff Bobby Webre said detectives arrested Nain in connection with the scheme targeting the elderly victim.
Cash, Crypto and Fear Drove the Payouts
What makes this case stand out from a typical phone scam is how the money moved. The scammer instructed the victim to send funds through cryptocurrency ATMs, gift cards and FedEx shipments, the WBRZ report states, before escalating to face-to-face meetings. Out of fear, the victim met Nain in person on three separate occasions, completing cash transactions that totaled $90,000.
That combination of remote digital pressure followed by physical cash pickups mirrors a pattern Hoodline has tracked in other cases nationwide, including a Jersey City case involving federal agent impersonation and courier pickups of cash and gold from elderly victims. It also echoes a scam ring detailed in Hoodline's coverage of government impersonation calls paired with physical courier pickups.
Felony Charges Carry Decades of Exposure
Nain faces charges including extortion, false personation of a peace officer, theft over $25,000, exploitation of the elderly and illegal transmission of monetary funds. Under Louisiana Revised Statute 14:66, extortion is a felony punishable by 1 to 15 years in prison at hard labor, according to the Barkemeyer Law Firm. The theft charge alone, given the scale of the alleged loss, carries 5 to 20 years in prison and fines up to $50,000, per the Louisiana State Legislature.
The false personation charge could also prove easier to prosecute following a June 2025 Louisiana Supreme Court ruling. In State v. Reginald Ruffins, the court determined that prosecutors need only prove a suspect falsely assumed police authority to seek any special privilege or advantage, rather than a benefit unique to law enforcement, according to CaseMine. Separately, House Bill 363 addresses Louisiana's elder-exploitation law, per BillTrack50.
Investigators Probing Whether Others Were Involved
Detectives with the Ascension Parish Sheriff's Office are still working to determine whether anyone else was involved in the scheme, and the investigation remains ongoing. The investigation has not established whether Nain acted alone. The sheriff's office, led by Sheriff Bobby Webre since 2019, employs over 345 full-time personnel serving more than 132,000 residents across the parish, which sits between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, according to the Ascension Parish Sheriff's Office.
Part of a Nationwide Surge Targeting Seniors
The scam echoes tactics seen elsewhere, including in related Hoodline coverage.
The Ascension Parish case fits into a much larger and rapidly growing national problem. The Federal Trade Commission reported in June that consumers lost $3.5 billion to imposter scams in 2025. In this case, scammers used cryptocurrency and physical cash handoffs.
Older Americans bear a disproportionate share of that burden. FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center data cited in August showed Americans aged 60 and over lost roughly $7.75 billion to cyber-enabled fraud in 2025 across more than 201,000 complaints, a 59% jump from the prior year. The extent of online scam losses in the United States remains difficult to quantify.
