Washington, Apr 3 A Chinese national has pleaded guilty in a US federal court to a USD 27 million fraud and money laundering scheme targeting nearly 2,000 victims, involving call centres based in India.
Jiandong Chen, also known as "Little Tiger," a Chinese national, is the second defendant charged in an indictment involving five defendants, which was unsealed in 2024, according to a statement by the US Attorney's Office in Southern California on Thursday.
According to public documents, members of the conspiracy operated a series of technical support, bank impersonation, and government impersonation scams, targeting elderly victims.
Victims received unsolicited phone calls, emails, and pop-up ads directing them to call a phone number. Unbeknownst to the victims, those phone numbers belonged to call centres based in India, the statement said.
Once a victim called the call centre, members of the conspiracy used social engineering techniques to build trust.
In many instances, the conspirators had victims download commercially available remote desktop software, which they used to access victims' computers and carry out the scams.
After building trust, the conspirators induced victims to send money to members of the conspiracy in the United States, in locations throughout Southern California, Nevada, and elsewhere, the statement said.
The money was sent to members of the conspiracy, including Chen, most often as bulk cash via express mail packages, but also as wire transfers. Certain members of the conspiracy also picked up money directly from victims.
In most instances, however, victims were tricked into sending bulk cash by mail.
When that happened, members of the conspiracy would provide India-based co-conspirators a fictitious name and an address of a retail location that could accept express mail packages.
Those names and addresses were then relayed to the victims, who were instructed to send the bulk cash via express mail.
Then, once a victim had sent the cash, Chen and his co-conspirators would use fake IDs to retrieve the packages of cash sent by the elderly victims.
In his plea agreement, Chen admitted that he used fraudulent driver's licenses or IDs matching the fictitious recipient names to retrieve the victim packages containing bulk cash.
Investigators identified over 2,000 elderly victims from throughout the country, including victims in San Diego, who were defrauded and who suffered more than USD 27 million in losses over an approximately two-year period between 2021-2023.
Chen and four co-defendants were charged by indictment in June 2024. In August 2024, federal agents conducted a nationwide takedown of this investigation, which led to Chen's arrest in the greater Los Angeles area.
Chen faces a maximum of 40 years in prison for the conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, and an additional 20 years for money laundering.