A Chinese man featured in a viral YouTube video confronting scam operators has pleaded guilty to charges stemming from his role in a sprawling, yearslong fraud scheme that targeted thousands of elderly victims across the United States, federal prosecutors said.
He is the second defendant to be charged out of five in an indictment that was unsealed in 2024. Federal agents arrested him in the Los Angeles area following a nationwide enforcement operation in August of that year, prosecutors said. Chen is scheduled to be sentenced June 26. He faces up to 40 years in prison for conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and up to 20 years for money laundering conspiracy, according to prosecutors.
The scheme ran roughly from 2021 to 2023 and defrauded more than 2,000 victims in their 70s and 80s, through a mix of “technical support, bank impersonation, government impersonation and refund scams.”
In one instance highlighted by investigators, Chen traveled to a residence in the Los Angeles area believing he was going to pick up cash from an elderly victim. The encounter was captured in a YouTube video titled “CONFRONTING SCAMMERS WITH A FAKE FUNERAL (EPIC REACTIONS),” in which he was confronted by content creators about his alleged role in the operation. The video currently has over 1.3 million views.
Victims were typically contacted through unsolicited calls, emails or pop-up ads and directed to phone numbers linked to call centers in India, prosecutors said. Once engaged with, scammers “used social engineering techniques to build trust,” sometimes persuading victims to install remote desktop software that allowed access to their computers.
One common tactic involved what are called refund scams. Victims were told they were owed money but were then falsely led to believe they had been “over-refunded.” The victims, who hadn’t actually received money, were instructed to “return” the supposedly excess funds by wiring money or sending cash through express mail, prosecutors said.
After gaining victims’ trust, members of the conspiracy directed them to send money to locations across the United States, including Southern California and Nevada. In some cases money was picked up in person.
Chen also admitted that he and others laundered fraudulently gained money via cryptocurrency, using it to pay co-conspirators, transfer money overseas and finance travel related to the scheme.
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