Five Chinese nationals arrested by feds for 'massive' elder fraud scheme

Five Chinese nationals allegedly involved in a “massive” multinational scheme with ties to India that defrauded more than 2,000 seniors have been arrested in Southern California and Nevada. 

According to the Department of Justice, the men and unnamed co-conspirators operated a ring that successfully bilked elderly Americans out of more than $27 million from 2021 to 2023. 

Four of the defendants — Zhao Wang of Henderson, Nevada, and California residents Jiandong Chen, Jun Li and Xin Wang — were arrested on Wednesday in an operation involving 60 officials from federal, state and local agencies. Youfei Gong, the fifth defendant, was arrested in April at his home in San Gabriel, California. 

According to court documents, the operation targeted victims with emails, phone calls and pop-up ads in order to get them to contact scam call centers in India. 

“After building trust with a victim based on fraudulent pretenses, the conspirators used technical support, government impersonation, bank impersonation and/or refund scams to induce victims to send money to other members of the conspiracy, including the five defendants charged in the indictment,” the DOJ said in a release. 

Victims allegedly sent both wire transfers and packages with cash to the defendants. In one text that was discovered by investigators, the defendant Xin Wang allegedly wrote: “What I do is picking up packages from CVS with a fake ID. [The packages] contain cash. Laundering money for Indian scam syndicate(s)... My bosses launder over one million US dollars in a week.”

The men are charged with mail and wire fraud and money laundering. 

The U.S. Attorney's Office of the Southern District of California has been active in trying to curb elder fraud, which according to the FBI resulted in $3.4 billion in losses last year. 

In June, it announced that so far in 2024 it had seized more than $3.3 million connected to cyber fraud targeting the elderly. 

In May, an investigation by the San Diego Elder Justice Task Force resulted in the indictment of a man for allegedly stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from victims, primarily through tech support scams.