A federal judge has ordered the 28-year-old suspect in a broad-ranging fraud scheme to remain detained at Santa Rita Jail after he reportedly tried to flee the country and return to China.
Daly City resident Mingtao Chen arrived in the US on a tourist visa in 2017 and never left, according to federal prosecutors. And in the past seven years, Chen appears to have made all or most of his money through fraudulent schemes, including extorting money from the elderly and vulnerable.
It seems like the scope and variety of Chen's schemes is just being fleshed out by federal investigators. And as Bay Area News Group reports, investigators believe Chen amassed "at least" $2 million through scams, depositing money in a web of bank accounts that he opened under multiple names. And, they believe, Chen has "dozens if not hundreds" of victims in the US who were conned into wiring money into one of his accounts.
And the charges against Chen are currently fairly minor — using a fake passport and making false statements to a bank — but they are expected to expand.
Chen appeared before US Magistrate Judge Lisa J. Cisneros on August 2 for a detention hearing, at which Cisneros ruled he should remain in custody without bail. Cisneros, in her ruling, noted that releasing Chen with a GPS monitoring device likely risked him cutting it off and trying to flee the country again.
Prosecutors noted that Chen tried to use a "friend" as surety that he would remain in the country, and noted that he only had lived in his current Daly City residence for two months. And Judge Cisneros further noted that remanding him to a halfway house would not be secure enough either, as he could easily "walk out without anyone stopping him."
Chen was arrested after trying to open a bank account with a fake passport, using a fake name, and after he had booked a flight to Beijing out of Mexico — he had planned to cross the border into Mexico and flee from there, to avoid law enforcement detection, according to court papers.
In court documents, federal prosecutors noted that Chen "appears to have no children, family, or legitimate, steady job in this District, nor is he attending school here."
"Rather, Chen appears to spend the bulk of his time on fraudulent activity," prosecutors say.
The only example of Chen's schemes to come to light so far came from an interview by investigators with a Seattle woman who said she received a call saying that she would be thrown in jail if she didn't wire $98,000 to a particular bank account. She was described as "lucid" but suffering from dementia, and she apparently wired the money to Chen.
Investigators say they only recovered about $27,000 from Chen's residence, and they are hoping to gain access to his accounts by getting into his cellphone. They plan to then "follow the money" in order to uncover more victims. And investigators believe Chen has "moved" at least $2 million in the last several years.
News of this case follows another high-profile case from earlier this year involving a Chinese national in the Bay Area who was brought up on federal charges. In that case, former Google employee Linwei "Leon" Ding, 38, was charged with stealing AI trade secrets and sharing them with a Beijing-based company.
Previously: Scammers Are Spoofing SF Sheriff’s Phone Number, Demanding Bogus Fines Be Paid
Photo via FBI
