Tech Support Fraudsters Targeting Elderly Busted
Prosecutors say Sun Tong Lin and Xueliang Chen conspired to commit wire fraud in a $288,000 tech support scheme.
According to prosecutors, beginning around April 2024, Lin and Chen posed as employees from government agencies and major corporations like PayPal and Amazon, according to the indictment. Lin and Chen then allegedly contacted people, many of them elderly, and told them that their personal information was compromised.
Lin’s arraignment is scheduled for Jan. 6, according to court documents. The maximum sentence for these offenses is 40 years in prison.
Pretended to be Customer Service and Security
Lin and Chen reportedly pretended to be a part of the customer service or security teams at these large, well-known corporations, leading their targets to believe that their accounts were compromised, according to the indictment. Some of the targets were led to believe that purchases were being made through their accounts without their knowledge and authorization. Some targets were also allegedly made to think that a large payment from their account was pending transfer.
Lin and Chen allegedly made phone calls or sent emails to their targets, providing phone numbers in the emails with instructions to call them back to solve the issues, according to the indictment. If the target called the number from the email, another co-conspirator would answer, reportedly offering to help relieve the target of the threat stated in the email.
The co-conspirator would allegedly gain the target’s trust and then send the target to another “employee” of the company who could solve the issue for the target, according to the indictment. The employee would reportedly be from a government entity or the target’s bank.
Convinced People to Withdraw Money and Send it to Them
During the scheme, the “employee” allegedly told the targets that, to protect their money until the threat had passed, they needed to withdraw it from their bank accounts and wire it to a safe location or send large sums through a courier, who would keep it safe for them until they alleviated the threat, according to the indictment. The “trusted” co-conspirator allegedly stayed on the line with them, walking them through the process until the transaction was done. The co-conspirators reportedly convinced one target to wire transfer $26,000 into a “secure PayPal account” for “safekeeping.”
In some cases, the targets decided to pose as couriers to pick up money from their victims, say prosecutors. After Lin allegedly sent the personal information gathered from the target to Chen, Chen would meet with the targets, often providing them with a pre-issued passcode they had obtained from a co-conspirator to gain further trust, according to the indictment. The target, who had withdrawn the funds from their accounts, would give the cash to Chen.
Chen allegedly sent pictures of himself with the target’s money and sent them to Lin as proof that he completed the transaction before reportedly delivering the cash to Lin, according to the indictment. Between June 2024 and July 2024, Lin and Chen allegedly received $288,000 from this scam.
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