Join me to see how four criminals (Blade Bai, Bowen Hu, Tairan Shi, and Yan Fu) spend elderly, romance, and other scam proceeds of $2.5m loaded on Target gift cards! This is eCrimeBytes Season 3, Episode 14 – Target Gift Card Grift: How Scammers Scored Big!
Chapters:
0:00 Intro
2:25 One Elderly Victim
7:30 Fu’s Shopping Spree
13:18 Fu Is Busted!
16:48 Bai’s Criminal Enterprise
23:52 Bai And Fu Shopping
27:20 Texts From My Wife
33:11 Court And Fu’s Plea
34:34 Bai Continues To Launder
36:52 The Trial
39:16 Sentencing
40:32 Final Thoughts
Sources:
- https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/los-angeles-trio-sentenced-laundering-gift-cards-purchased-victims-telephone-scams
- https://www.justice.gov/usao-cdca/pr/los-angeles-county-trio-found-guilty-laundering-target-gift-cards-purchased-victims
- https://www.justice.gov/usao-cdca/pr/federal-grand-jury-indicts-4-socal-defendants-scheme-launder-target-gift-cards
- https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/60495221/united-states-v-bai/
- https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/60495217/united-states-v-bai/
- https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/60495220/united-states-v-bai/
- https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/18751542/united-states-v-bai/
- https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/18650750/united-states-v-bai/
- https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/18356921/united-states-v-fu/
Transcript:
00:00:00:00 – 00:00:33:00
Keith
What’s up, you crazy bastards? Welcome to another episode of eCrimeBytes. This is where I research the court documentation and roast the criminals so you don’t have to. All right, so this week, I’m bringing you a Target gift card grift. I know that’s hard to say, right? I did that on purpose. This whole episode is going to be about those gift card scammers that you’ve either have experienced in your own life, or at least probably read about.
00:00:33:05 – 00:00:53:37
Keith
So I got to give you a little bit of background right before we could even get into the criminals here. Yeah, this is my band of criminals. You like them? I put them together myself. They’re going to be introducing this whole crime. They’re they’re going to act this out for you. Okay, so I do hope you stick with me all the way to the end, because I’m going to be.
00:00:53:38 – 00:01:18:50
Keith
These are my actors. All right? So get out of here here, guys. I’m still talking. All right, all right, get out of here. All right, so I need to give you a little bit of background first. Who are gift card scammers? Most people have experienced this in their life. But if you haven’t, let me tell you what this entails. Usually it’s somebody that calls you and they pretend that there’s some kind of problem with one of your financial accounts.
00:01:18:55 – 00:01:53:40
Keith
They’ll say there’s a charge in your bank statement that we think is fraudulent. You need to, help us dispute it or something along those lines. In other cases, it could be a company saying, hey, we’ve detected malware on your computer and we want you to pay us some sum and we’ll fictitious help you remove it. In all cases, the payment to the scammer to whatever scam that they’re trying to con you into, is a gift card.
00:01:53:45 – 00:02:18:43
Keith
Okay. Now, immediately when I see these scams, I start thinking, so what are the what are the scammers on the other side, what do they do when they have this gift card? How do they get money off of it? What is the process? So this whole episode that I’m presenting to you, this is going to be all about how these people get money off of these gift cards.
00:02:18:48 – 00:02:25:45
Keith
Okay. So follow along and I will literally walk you through how this works.
00:02:25:45 – 00:02:55:39
Keith
Okay, so our first stop in this episode is just one elderly victim from Illinois. So he was a 66 year old from Illinois, and he received an email, as he described it, from Amazon or quote unquote, Prime informing him of a charge incurred to his credit card for a really large item purchase. So in this email, it also said, if you want to dispute it, call us.
00:02:55:50 – 00:03:26:47
Keith
And here’s our phone number. So like any normal person, he probably saw this, got stressed and said I’m going to call this and dispute it. So he called the phone number in the email, and he believed he was speaking to a person from his credit card’s customer service. Now I’m going to put a picture of the person I think he probably thought he was talking to here, and I tried to pick the biggest tool I could find in the customer service library of pictures.
00:03:26:47 – 00:03:51:21
Keith
I hope you like him. Okay, because he’s going to be our customer service guy here. He’s a good guy. He’s a good guy customer service. And this is who our victim thinks he is talking to in the scenario. Now, spoiler alert the person he called was actually not his credit card company. It was a scammer. So I got to change this picture out right?
00:03:51:21 – 00:04:07:36
Keith
You don’t want this tool to be who you think is the scammer. So I had to come up with a good cartoon, and I thought a little bit about it, and I searched around and then I found this guy and I was like, why wouldn’t this little son of a bitch that looks like he popped straight out of Popeye?
00:04:07:41 – 00:04:40:12
Keith
Why could he not be our scammer? This is who I imagined scammed this poor victim. Okay. Just go with me on this one. So the victim was informed by this pretend customer service personnel that he would need to purchase target and Amazon gift cards and relay these card numbers with the access codes to them over the phone in order to give the ability to track down whoever it was that was fraudulently using this victim’s Amazon funds.
00:04:40:17 – 00:05:05:38
Keith
Okay, this should be a giant red goddamn flag. If it hasn’t before you watch this episode, it should be now. Okay. If you are paying somebody with gift cards, that is usually a scam. Okay. So immediately. And I don’t want to fault victim here for what they did, but they probably freaked out and they decided to follow the instructions.
00:05:05:38 – 00:05:35:22
Keith
And they went and they purchased physical gift cards at Target and Walgreens stores, scratched off that seal on the back to reveal the card numbers and the access codes. Then that victim went back to this fake personnel, which I imagine maybe the voice sounded the same. It didn’t say in the court paperwork, but I would wonder the the enterprise here isn’t all that big, so I wonder if it was the same person answering the phone call and if you’d actually be able to pick up on it?
00:05:35:35 – 00:05:37:11
Keith
I don’t know. I wonder that.
00:05:37:11 – 00:05:53:40
Keith
So the victim read these card numbers and the access codes over the phone to the scammers. So at this point, the scammers now have access to the money that the victim put on these gift cards. Theoretically.
00:05:53:40 – 00:06:00:34
Keith
So then after the victim spent the money, they probably sat back and was relaxed and thought,
00:06:00:34 – 00:06:18:29
Keith
you know what? Whew. That whole thing is over. I can relax. Wait a minute, wait a minute. You know, I called that phone number that was actually in the email. I didn’t call the phone number that was on the physical card.
00:06:18:31 – 00:06:25:10
Keith
On my card. Oh my gosh. Maybe I should call them and find out what they have to say.
00:06:25:10 – 00:06:43:33
Keith
So he gives them a call and they answer and they say, um no, there weren’t any charges at all, just that you just described that sounded large, like you just described to us. No charges at all. And I can imagine he said back at that moment, and was probably like,
00:06:43:33 – 00:06:45:57
Keith
oh shit, I was just scammed.
00:06:46:07 – 00:07:04:48
Keith
Now, the two gift cards that he purchased, each of them were $500. So he was scammed out of $1,000 using two gift cards that he sent to the scammers. Okay, so you can imagine at that point he’s probably like,
00:07:04:48 – 00:07:07:22
Keith
oh shit, I was scammed.
00:07:07:22 – 00:07:13:04
Keith
He goes back to his credit card company and, you know, starts to dispute the charge at this point.
00:07:13:09 – 00:07:30:49
Keith
But all that takes time, right? I mean, that’s not an instantaneous thing where you go, oh, shit, I was scammed, you call them and they shut it down. This is going to take hours and maybe days. And if you follow me now, I’m going to show you what happened during that time when he’s disputing these charges.
00:07:30:49 – 00:08:01:04
Keith
All right, here we are on our next stop. Now I want to introduce you to Yan Fu. She is 61 and she’s from Chino Hills, California. And you may wonder how she can commit crimes with her giant man hands with only four fingers. I will tell you, but you’re going to have to listen on. All right, so Fu, she was surveilled by agents as she left her house and went to a target in Chino, California.
00:08:01:08 – 00:08:36:17
Keith
And she didn’t just go there, buy some stuff and leave like any normal person might. She went there and just kind of hung out for two hours before purchasing any items that seemed suspicious. Right? All right. So then she decides she’s going to buy some items, and the security cameras caught her purchasing, an Apple tablet, an iPad in the electronics section for a cost of $861.99.
00:08:36:22 – 00:08:57:41
Keith
And she used the two gift cards that I just told you that the victim purchased earlier in Illinois to cover this iPad. But remember I said the gift cards, they were $1,000 total, right? So she’s got money left over. So what she did. Oh, before I get there, you’re probably wondering, how did she just walk in there and use gift cards?
00:08:57:43 – 00:09:31:41
Keith
Well, she had digital gift cards on her cell phone screen that the cashiers were were able to look at and scan and use. So that’s how she then used those gift cards that the victim purchase in a completely different state. So, like I said, there was money left over, right? So what she did is she went to other stores and she bought more items to cover the amount that’s left over on the gift cards, because she’s not going to leave money just standing out there, right?
00:09:31:46 – 00:10:03:13
Keith
No. No self-respecting criminal would ever do that. So she tried to use as much as she can. And she did this by going to other stores. Now, one of the things I said was she hung out at this store for two hours and then purchased. Right. So when you look at the timeline of when the victim purchased those cards, it was 13 minutes before she started purchasing her items.
00:10:03:18 – 00:10:29:53
Keith
So if you kind of put this story together, what’s happening is she’s hanging around at a target store, probably waiting for or this victim actually purchased the number and give it to her scammer friends, in which then she gets this code in order to go in to target buy these products with this fraudulently obtained credit, uh gift card and then run out.
00:10:29:58 – 00:10:47:36
Keith
Right. This whole term, this role to this scam process is called a runner. So Fu, she’s a runner. All right. So would I be saying runner from now on. That’s the role that Fu does where she buys products and then later on has to probably do something
00:10:47:36 – 00:10:47:58
Keith
with them.
00:10:50:03 – 00:11:09:38
Keith
So she is the runner, right? She runs in, buys the products very quickly before the victim figures out that this is a scam. Gets her products, and then is on her way with the physical products, which is actual money in this case. Now, you know, that’s that’s part of the reason why they call it a runner.
00:11:09:38 – 00:11:28:13
Keith
Now, I said she went to a bunch of different stores right? Now I don’t mean like 2 or 3 stores. She went to 16, at least 16 stores that they saw when they were surveilling her during that time period. And when she went there,
00:11:28:13 – 00:11:34:51
Keith
to these different stores. It wasn’t just purchases that she was making. It wasn’t like she was always going in and buying stuff.
00:11:34:55 – 00:12:04:51
Keith
She was buying stuff a lot of times. She was buying stuff on gift cards. But what she would do is she would take the merchandise she would buy at one place and then go back and refund it and get a gift card back in that purchase amount. Okay, so if you’re not reading between the lines, what happens here is she runs into the first target store, buys an Apple iPad and some other shit to basically be $1,000.
00:12:04:51 – 00:12:29:16
Keith
So what she’s doing is she’s running in and using the quote unquote, dirty gift cards that the victim purchased with their credit card or whatever payment method that they used. She’ll buy a whole bunch of physical products, then go to a different store, refund some of these products and get the the money back
00:12:29:20 – 00:12:51:11
Keith
on a gift card that has a different number than the original gift card. So if you’re reading between the lines here, what happened is she just laundered that money from a dirty gift card number over to a clean gift card number. When she does a return like that. Right? Or she could just keep the damn products and sell those, right.
00:12:51:16 – 00:12:55:42
Keith
We’re going to find out some of that was done here as well. So you can imagine
00:12:55:42 – 00:13:03:12
Keith
this is a pretty nifty scheme, right. You can imagine at some point though, they’re going to figure this out. They’re going to catch her and the bottom’s gonna to fall out, right.
00:13:03:12 – 00:13:18:26
Keith
There’s no way this could last. Somebody is going to catch on. That money is being transferred like this in big amounts, you know, thousands of dollars at a time. So follow me. Follow me now, and I will tell you how the bottom falls out on this crew.
00:13:18:26 – 00:13:51:57
Keith
All right. Our next stop is a Target electronics section, specifically in Brea, California. I know this because the police department officer saw an individual which later is identified as Fu. So let’s just put her in here. Right. Let’s not beat around the bush. Let’s just put her in here. She was returning at a Target store high value Apple products, things like iPads and iPhones and all the expensive stuff that everybody wants.
00:13:52:02 – 00:14:24:43
Keith
So like I said, this process is typically used to get a new gift card number that is clean or not, you know, associated with a victim. So in the end, they want a laundered gift card, right? So according to the Target personnel, the products had been purchased with gift cards the prior day using a Target account that had been recently active with numerous purchases and returns, all involving gift cards across southern California, which is where this is happening.
00:14:24:43 – 00:14:27:26
Keith
So now the officer is like,
00:14:27:26 – 00:14:30:36
Keith
well, shit, I got to go investigate this
00:14:30:36 – 00:14:30:56
Keith
person,
00:14:30:56 – 00:14:32:22
Keith
which ends up being Yan Fu.
00:14:32:22 – 00:14:44:07
Keith
So the officer follows Fu outside and when she opens her trunk, has a bunch of bags and Target bags in there, and the officer looks at it goes,
00:14:44:07 – 00:14:47:47
Keith
well, isn’t this interesting that she has so many Target bags already?
00:14:47:47 – 00:14:55:13
Keith
And I just already saw her doing other suspicious stuff of doing a bunch of returns. Why wouldn’t she just return all her stuff if she’s going to return
00:14:55:13 – 00:14:55:27
Keith
this?
00:14:55:27 – 00:14:59:40
Keith
So after Fu drove away, the officer conducted a traffic stop.
00:14:59:40 – 00:15:03:40
Keith
I guess they found some kind of vehicle code violation. Maybe there was a light out or
00:15:03:40 – 00:15:18:23
Keith
her license plate was expired, I don’t know. It was some traffic reason that they stopped her. And they take her back to the police station, and they start asking her a bunch of questions. Okay, this is where it gets really interesting because she starts saying things like,
00:15:18:23 – 00:15:30:33
Keith
ah I’ve got all this stuff in my car because I’ve got a job that requires me to go to Target stores throughout Southern California and buy Apple and other products using gift cards.
00:15:30:38 – 00:15:33:36
Keith
They are in a Target application on my
00:15:33:36 – 00:15:40:06
Keith
phone. That sounds really suspicious, right? I mean, who does that as a job?
00:15:40:06 – 00:15:44:30
Keith
She’s not describing your grocery store or your,
00:15:44:30 – 00:15:51:51
Keith
you know, Uber delivery driver. That’s not what she’s describing here. Right? Because she goes on to say
00:15:51:51 – 00:15:56:47
Keith
I receive a 2% commission on the total amount that I’m able to purchase in one day.
00:15:57:55 – 00:16:22:19
Keith
And then she meets with that person at night. This is a third party to deliver whatever it is that she purchased and receive her payment in cash. Okay, so this is not Uber, Uber Eats or Uber delivery or whatever delivery app people want to use to go get items, right? This is something completely different. So the police department, they’re like,
00:16:22:19 – 00:16:27:31
Keith
uh hey, Miss Fu, can we um, can we look at the contents of your cell phone?
00:16:27:32 – 00:16:28:35
Keith
And she’s like,
00:16:28:35 – 00:16:32:25
Keith
you know what? I’m sitting here and I’m in trouble, so why the hell not?
00:16:32:25 – 00:16:48:47
Keith
And then when the police officers, they take a look at her phone, they find, oh, boy, oh, boy, there’s some shit out there. Oh, follow me, follow me. And I will tell you all about this other criminal enterprise that her phone leads to.
00:16:48:47 – 00:17:25:44
Keith
Okay, our next stop. Oh, now I get to tell you about the criminal enterprise. So we have three more individuals here. We started with Yan Fu and she was the runner. But now we have Blade Bai, Bowen Hu, and Tairan Shi. Okay, so out of this enterprise Blade Bai, he was the ringleader. Okay, so basically this group, they would buy victim gift card numbers from a Chinese group named Magic Lamp.
00:17:25:49 – 00:17:50:26
Keith
And from there, they would purchase products like we just talked about earlier, with Fu being the runner for export by Bai’s just normal everyday real company. Okay, that was one way that he made money on this was to take those products and then export them and sell them somewhere else. Okay.
00:17:50:26 – 00:18:27:32
Keith
So Fu, like we said, was the runner. Bai was the ringleader. And Shi and Hu, they both started out as runners. Okay. And then later on they kind of moved up the chain and also kind of managed some of this other enterprise that we’ve been talking about. So with that, I want to tell you that on Fu’s cell phone, there were text messages that were exchanged with people that have the monikers of get dash LAX, and we’ll just call that the LAX account.
00:18:27:37 – 00:18:36:35
Keith
There’s this Hukeer account spelled h u k e e r. Now you see Hu’s in there, right? That’s Hu’s account.
00:18:36:35 – 00:18:41:35
Keith
I’m going to spoil that right now for you. And then the other one, just the numbers seven, eight, nine. I don’t know
00:18:41:35 – 00:18:50:14
Keith
what that means, but that’s the other person here. These people are the people that coordinated her Target transactions.
00:18:50:15 – 00:19:26:21
Keith
Now, specifically LAX was Bai. Hukeer was Hu. And seven eight nine was Shi. Now when they looked at her cell phone messages spanning from June to mid September of 2019, there were many messages in which Fu received over 1000 target gift card numbers, with corresponding access codes via the Chinese based messaging mobile application called WeChat. I keep saying text messaging, but this is a type of text messaging inside WeChat.
00:19:26:26 – 00:19:43:41
Keith
So there are just tons and tons of messages, and I flipped through tons of them, and most of them are in Chinese and I can’t read them. And even the even the translation that the FBI did later on is difficult to read, because translations aren’t a one to one type of thing for
00:19:43:41 – 00:19:47:27
Keith
English. There were just tons of them.
00:19:47:32 – 00:19:48:45
Keith
So I just want to tell you that
00:19:48:45 – 00:19:50:01
Keith
when you walk away from this,
00:19:50:01 – 00:20:09:31
Keith
these messages, there were ledgers, they had numbers, you know, monetary amounts detailing high value electronic merchandise purchased with gift cards that Fu received. And when they added these numbers up, they they resulted in over $1 million.
00:20:09:36 – 00:20:36:43
Keith
Over $1 million. If you gave me $1 million and said Keith, go spend $1 million in Target on a high value Apple stuff. I don’t know if I could I could charge that much between June and September of 2019. That’s an amazing amount of product. Okay, we’re not talking about just electronic funds trading hands here. We’re talking physical product representing these funds.
00:20:36:43 – 00:21:01:22
Keith
It’s just mind boggling to me. Now when this enterprise is going on, these three people here they… Bai, Hu and Shi, they instructed Fu to use roughly… Well. Well they say roughly 90 Target app accounts, meaning
00:21:01:22 – 00:21:10:32
Keith
Fu had to keep straight over 90 accounts to log in. Go to these places, buy product. Keep all that shit straight.
00:21:10:37 – 00:21:31:14
Keith
I can’t imagine how much of a job that was just by itself, let alone going in the store and buying these things and returning them. Now, the reason why they did this is because they believe that Target wouldn’t trace them if they had a bunch of accounts. They figured that Target wouldn’t pick up on this crime, that they’re doing. Well,
00:21:31:19 – 00:21:49:15
Keith
spoiler alert, they did. Target knew about this kind of stuff even while they were doing it, so they weren’t really hiding themselves at all. So Fu, you know, she became part of the enterprise later on, which I think moved these three up or actually moved Hu and
00:21:49:15 – 00:21:59:34
Keith
Shi up the whole criminal enterprise ladder to managers. Okay, so basically she came in and started becoming the runner when they caught the enterprise.
00:21:59:34 – 00:22:18:32
Keith
At this point. So when they hired her, they the government later on saw some messages in Fu’s text messages that said, these are your rules of being our employee. And I had to read these to you because they were just kind of very, they’re very specific. Okay. They say
00:22:18:32 – 00:22:27:27
Keith
you can only purchase up to two units of each product in each target store, and you must never purchase more than two.
00:22:27:57 – 00:22:42:52
Keith
And that’s where I earlier I was trying to tell you if I had to spend $1 million and I had these rules slapped on me, it’s going to be very difficult because now I only could purchase, what, two of an iPad? What else can I purchase now? Well, they go on and they say
00:22:42:52 – 00:22:47:06
Keith
you can only go to each Target store twice, twice at most.
00:22:47:11 – 00:22:53:18
Keith
And you must check out at a different cashier’s desk, never with the same cashier.
00:22:53:18 – 00:22:55:18
Keith
Okay, so now Fu’s got a lot
00:22:55:18 – 00:23:00:27
Keith
more shit to remember, right? No more than two of each product. And I can only go into a store
00:23:00:27 – 00:23:04:45
Keith
at most two times. And I always have to go to a different cashiers.
00:23:04:45 – 00:23:05:29
Keith
And they tell her
00:23:05:29 – 00:23:11:51
Keith
your gift cards, their value between 500 and $2000 and use those to pay for products.
00:23:11:56 – 00:23:30:07
Keith
Don’t use credit cards, don’t use any other means. Use these cards and you have to use them fast. This is why we’re calling you a runner, Miss Fu. You have to run in there and use up all the goddamn money as fast as you fucking can, and get out.
00:23:30:07 – 00:23:32:25
Keith
And then I guess she was like,
00:23:32:25 – 00:23:34:29
Keith
where do I sign, you silly son of a bitch.
00:23:34:29 – 00:23:36:05
Keith
That sounds great.
00:23:36:05 – 00:23:52:52
Keith
All right, so you got to imagine. And like I said, Target, they they figured out what’s going on, and they catch on to the scheme. So follow me, and I’m going to tell you about what happens when Target catches on and makes their job a lot harder than just running and buying some products and running out.
00:23:52:52 – 00:24:14:56
Keith
Okay, we’re back at Target here. And as you can imagine Target, they caught on to this scheme and they just they kind of just stop selling stuff to Fu. And we know this because Fu recorded audio and sent text messages to her coconspirators talking all about this stuff. So um we’re going to act a little bit of this out for you.
00:24:14:56 – 00:24:22:29
Keith
Are you ready for this? Okay. Hold on. Here we go. So Fu started, says
00:24:22:29 – 00:24:29:18
Keith
they said they didn’t have any of the Apple products I wanted. I think they have them. They just didn’t want to sell them to me.
00:24:29:18 – 00:24:32:14
Keith
So at a different store, Fu said
00:24:32:14 – 00:24:36:47
Keith
the store clerk here also said that there have been many people today buying the same things.
00:24:36:52 – 00:24:49:41
Keith
And then he said there is a purchase limit. At first he seemed to have no problem of getting the products for me. And then he heard me asking for this and for that. Then he knew and told me I can only get one of each product.
00:24:49:41 – 00:24:52:21
Keith
And then she made a sound of frustration.
00:24:52:21 – 00:24:53:55
Keith
Uhhhhh.
00:24:53:55 – 00:24:55:49
Keith
All right.
00:24:55:49 – 00:24:59:27
Keith
So at another place. She then sends her friends a message that says.
00:24:59:27 – 00:25:01:18
Keith
This place would not sell me anything.
00:25:01:32 – 00:25:20:23
Keith
I’m leaving now. There was this one person. He was very bad. I should have sneaked out behind his back. Maybe he saw I was holding too many products when I passed in front of him. He ran after me and called the manager and they said they would not sell me anything. They simply wouldn’t sell to me.
00:25:20:23 – 00:25:37:40
Keith
All right, so you can imagine. Now they’re getting really frustrated, right? All the criminals in their bunker over here on the right hand side. You got Fu and she’s upset because she can’t buy products. And I think somewhere along lines Bai was like,
00:25:37:40 – 00:25:44:17
Keith
you know what? If we can take these dirty gift cards and move them over to new clean gift cards,
00:25:44:17 – 00:25:51:09
Keith
we don’t we don’t have to worry so much about the time limit. So we can then go buy other stuff at our leisure right?
00:25:51:09 – 00:26:03:45
Keith
And they came up with the plan to take the dirty gift cards and go to a Target, and not just walk up to a cashier and say,
00:26:03:45 – 00:26:10:12
Keith
hey, cashier, I want to take this gift card and transfer over to a new gift card.
00:26:10:12 – 00:26:36:48
Keith
That would just be incredibly weird, right? So what they would do is they would go buy something small, like a pack of gum or a bottle of water, and then they would transfer the rest of that gift card to the new gift card. So that would be the second product that they would buy. So they would look like to everybody else that they were walking up with the water and then buying that water with a gift card and then buying a gift card with it.
00:26:36:53 – 00:27:01:37
Keith
But people wouldn’t see that maybe $999 of that transaction was going from one gift card to another gift card, right? We know if this all happened this way again, because the government, they had Fu’s phone, she let them search it. So they saw all this communication between the group on how
00:27:01:37 – 00:27:07:33
Keith
they were going to do this. So the communications it says Bai starts out and says
00:27:07:33 – 00:27:10:42
Keith
use the self-checkout machine close to the entrance.
00:27:10:47 – 00:27:32:09
Keith
Pick up a bottle of drink whatever, drink you like. There are Target gift cards in the self-checkout area. Pick up two Target gift cards and checkout them together with a bottle of drink, and put 900 for each gift card. Pay with the electronic cards in your cell phone. In this way, you will spend all the money in your electronic cards and convert it to physical cards.
00:27:32:14 – 00:27:40:33
Keith
Do it now. Go to the self-checkout area. Pick up a bottle of drink and two gift cards.
00:27:40:33 – 00:27:42:55
Keith
I think finally Fu caught on and she says,
00:27:42:55 – 00:27:50:52
Keith
I saw got your messages. I have left the store. I will do what you said in the next store.
00:27:50:58 – 00:28:12:03
Keith
Now, listen. Heh heh heh heh heh heh. I know I told you this is Fu, right? This is Fu. But this really. This sounds like the text messages that came from my wife. It really does. I hold on a second, I got a, I got a cartoon of my wife too. This is Andrea. This is my wife. This would come out of her mouth, I kid you not.
00:28:12:08 – 00:28:14:07
Keith
I would get a text message that says
00:28:14:07 – 00:28:22:32
Keith
I saw your messages. I have left the store. I will do what you said in the next store.
00:28:22:32 – 00:28:25:48
Keith
This is a clip right out of my life. No shit, no shit.
00:28:25:48 – 00:28:26:54
Keith
All right Andrea, get out of here.
00:28:26:54 – 00:28:34:56
Keith
I gotta finish talking about this story. Okay, so then Bai continues on and says
00:28:34:56 – 00:28:49:18
Keith
after shopping, if you still have balance left, go to the self-checkout area, buy a bottle of water and gift card, input the amount of balance and pay with the card in your cell phone. Convert the balance in your cell phone to a gift card and use it in the next store.
00:28:49:23 – 00:28:55:32
Keith
Scratch off the card. Take a photo of the and the receipt.
00:28:55:32 – 00:29:04:36
Keith
I think that was a mistake, on Bai’s part I think he meant the card. All right, so he continues on, says
00:29:04:36 – 00:29:06:46
Keith
don’t check out with the cashier.
00:29:06:46 – 00:29:26:28
Keith
So he’s specifically guiding her to the self-checkout area. And then there’s a series of text messages from Fu back to Bai showing him screenshots of target gift cards that she took on scene there, I guess that she made,
00:29:26:33 – 00:29:29:58
Keith
you know, that she made in these purchases that he instructed her to make.
00:29:29:58 – 00:29:33:00
Keith
So then I guess Bai liked that, he goes.
00:29:33:00 – 00:29:36:48
Keith
Mmmm. Go on. Correct.
00:29:36:48 – 00:29:45:43
Keith
I think he’s probably done yelling at her at this point. And I’m just yeah. I’m just I’m just saying all this from what I’m reading on the text messages. And he goes on, he says
00:29:45:43 – 00:29:51:52
Keith
now the balance of more than $200, you can go to a checkout machine and buy a gift card and spend it.
00:29:51:57 – 00:29:59:53
Keith
Buy a card of 240 or $250. You figure out the amount and spend it. The boss
00:29:59:53 – 00:30:03:10
Keith
and boss is capitalized by the way, it says
00:30:03:10 – 00:30:19:24
Keith
the boss said we should empty these small balances for more than $200. There will be not managers coming and asking you to input password passwords. I have checked only when the purchase with the card is over $500,
00:30:19:29 – 00:30:29:35
Keith
The self-checkout machine will prompt the request for a clerk to come and scan his or her code. If less than $500, the self-checkout machine will not prompt the request.
00:30:29:35 – 00:30:32:47
Keith
So what he just did was he told Fu,
00:30:32:47 – 00:30:43:54
Keith
go to this machine and buy things in about $200 increments, but definitely not over $500. Because if you do, then a clerk will come running with their code.
00:30:43:58 – 00:30:46:30
Keith
We don’t want to raise suspicion, right?
00:30:46:30 – 00:30:50:21
Keith
And then Fu is probably a little calm, a little more calm this time. And was like,
00:30:50:21 – 00:30:53:07
Keith
I will take care of this first when I arrive.
00:30:53:07 – 00:31:05:23
Keith
And then Fu like before, then took pictures of everything and sent these pictures to Bai over the text message to prove that she actually did it and had the codes. And here’s the access codes.
00:31:05:23 – 00:31:11:12
Keith
And here’s a $3 grocery item I purchased in the same transaction.
00:31:11:12 – 00:31:18:24
Keith
And in the court paperwork this is very specific. All right. Fu said to Bai,
00:31:18:24 – 00:31:20:18
Keith
I bought a bag of chips.
00:31:20:23 – 00:31:34:45
Keith
And taking this bag is like someone who’s shopping. Otherwise, what do you bring to checkout? It’s not possible to swipe with empty hands. They surely won’t let you swipe if you’re empty handed.
00:31:34:45 – 00:31:44:33
Keith
She thought ahead. Right? I mean, she she got a bag of chips to put in her hand to have a beep happen on the scanner so she could actually do something.
00:31:44:38 – 00:31:47:46
Keith
And she goes on to say about her bag of chips,
00:31:47:46 – 00:31:58:35
Keith
I never eat these things. I never eat snacks. But I feel it was too obvious. So I bought a bottle of water and then I went back to buy a another bottle of water
00:31:58:35 – 00:32:10:59
Keith
and I thought, what the fuck, Fu do you really think people are standing around going, hey, hey, that bitch Fu over there, she’s way too goddamn skinny to be buying, buying these chips, right?
00:32:11:04 – 00:32:38:56
Keith
This, that’s suspicious. So we got to watch her. No Fu. Nobody was watching you and your chips. What they were watching was probably the 200 to $1,000 transactions that you were making from one gift card to the next. That’s actually what they were watching. That was the obvious part. Not the fact that you were buying chips. The fact that you fixated on that and the fact that the government talked about it in the court paperwork I just found amazing.
00:32:38:56 – 00:32:58:17
Keith
So I was going, here we go. This is the tangent. All right. So I’m going to bring it back a little bit to the case here. You can imagine with all this shenanigans going on and transferring money they’re going to get dragged into court right. They’re caught. They’re going to get dragged into court. I mean, we know Fu is caught.
00:32:58:17 – 00:33:00:56
Keith
She’s sitting in a police station. She’s spilling the beans. She says,
00:33:00:56 – 00:33:05:33
Keith
here’s my cell phone that gave all this information that I just presented to you.
00:33:05:33 – 00:33:12:03
Keith
So now, now come with me and let’s find out what happens to a these yahoos in court.
00:33:12:03 – 00:33:34:22
Keith
Okay, so now we’re in court. Now you remember Fu was caught first. She was physically caught when she came out of that Target, and the police officer pulled her over and brought in the police station. So she was arrested and she had a chance to plea out, probably pretty quickly, in my opinion. She pled guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering, which is exactly what she was doing.
00:33:34:27 – 00:33:48:29
Keith
And in this process, she ended up getting 20 months in prison, which is just under two years. Ahhh that. Ahhh I don’t know. It seemed a little light to me, but I guess she plead out, so maybe that’s the reason why it’s light.
00:33:48:29 – 00:34:06:16
Keith
They also said her restitution was just over $48,000. Now, the rest of this crew, yeah, these guys, they were arrested around November 17th of 2020, and there was some time that went by. You know, if you follow me on these episodes, you know, this
00:34:06:16 – 00:34:10:08
Keith
takes a while. There’s motions that happen and all that kind of stuff.
00:34:10:13 – 00:34:29:29
Keith
And it the the rest of the group, they just decide to go to trial, which doesn’t happen very often. And you would think we’re nearing the end of this case, right? You would think, oh, they’re heading to trial. Keith’s going to tell me what’s going to happen. Nope, nope. Bai. He is not even finished yet. Not even finished.
00:34:29:34 – 00:34:34:21
Keith
Come with me to see what he does before his trial even starts.
00:34:34:21 – 00:35:02:08
Keith
All right. I bet you can guess by the background of a laundromat what’s happening next? So, like I said, Bai was arrested on November 17th of 2020 and between November 21st, so we’re talking, what, four days later, maybe less, because he probably spent a little time in jail. Right? So less than four days later, he tried to sell his remaining fraudulent gift cards to another, like, criminal customer.
00:35:02:15 – 00:35:13:43
Keith
Okay. He did this between November 21st and December 1st. So he did this for a while, even before his trial started. Now he went to this other criminal and says,
00:35:13:43 – 00:35:25:04
Keith
hey, the gift cards, they’ve got about 30 to $40,000 on them. Tell you what, I will unload them on you for a cool 90% of the value.
00:35:25:04 – 00:35:28:27
Keith
And I thought, Holy shit, really?
00:35:28:39 – 00:35:44:02
Keith
You’re going to send somebody dirty cards and you want them to pay you 90% of that? I would have thought maybe 50%. But, you know, I’m not a criminal. I don’t know what the going rate of this. Listen, if you know what it is, put it in the comments, because I don’t know what it is. And I’m curious what it is.
00:35:44:03 – 00:36:15:51
Keith
If you know what it is. I definitely want to hear it. But in this case, Bai was trying to get 90% of his value off of these fraudulent cards. And they did a little negotiating, and they ended up settling on a $32,000 payment for $36,300 worth of gift cards. And then the customer actually paid Bai. And then on December 1st, 2020, Bai then confirmed he would deliver the cards to the customer that day.
00:36:15:56 – 00:36:36:58
Keith
Oh my God, what a horrible, horrible deal for the customer. I mean, what happens if the day after Target figures out what all the account numbers are and says, oh fuck, those were turning all those off and that person just paid $32,000 for worthless card numbers. It just sounded like the worst deal ever. And somebody actually took it.
00:36:36:58 – 00:36:52:43
Keith
So I don’t know. I don’t know if this is normal or what it is. It’s it’s what happened in this case. So, hey, listen, follow me. Because now we’re going to actually get to the trial and figure out what happened to these, these sweet bastards I’ve been talking about.
00:36:52:43 – 00:37:05:25
Keith
Hey, hey, look at that. We’re back in court. Like I said, they went to trial. All three of them. The trial was ten days and ended on September 26th of 2023. So it wasn’t that long ago.
00:37:05:25 – 00:37:29:40
Keith
So they were charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering. Okay. And since Bai did that twice with his group and then after he was arrested, they actually charged him twice with it. Okay, so he has two counts. And then Hu and Shi, they were only charged once with it. So the jury comes back and they said, hey, we got a verdict.
00:37:29:45 – 00:37:44:58
Keith
And the judge looks at it goes, yeah, I can see that. And they read it out loud. They said, Bai, you’re guilty on both counts of conspiracy to commit money laundering. Hu and Shi, you were also guilty. And I imagine all of them were like,
00:37:44:58 – 00:37:46:28
Keith
ahhh fuck,
00:37:46:28 – 00:37:50:06
Keith
because I don’t I don’t know why. I mean, why did they go to trial?
00:37:50:06 – 00:37:53:12
Keith
And so, you know, they’re freaking out probably at this point going,
00:37:53:12 – 00:37:54:46
Keith
oh, we were just convicted.
00:37:54:46 – 00:38:13:29
Keith
We know that Fu, okay, Fu pled guilty and quote unquote only got 20 months. Now, 20 months is still a long time. It’s almost two years of your life. Okay. But in comparison to what’s coming, you’re going to see two years is actually small in this case.
00:38:13:34 – 00:38:53:05
Keith
So that’s going to be our baseline, I think when we deal with sentencing in a minute here. Now in the trial, something that came up was the summary of all the numbers that they put together for the crime. And they said the crime happened over a period of 17 months. And the four of them, they received more than 5000 Target gift cards worth approximately $500 each, for a total of over $2.5 million in laundered fraud proceeds.
00:38:53:10 – 00:39:06:29
Keith
So you have to let that sink in. That’s $2.5 million of stolen funds for victims, and then it’s also $2.5 million of funds laundered. Okay.
00:39:06:29 – 00:39:17:12
Keith
That’s an incredible, staggering amount of money. So please follow me and let’s hear what happens in the sentencing in this case.
00:39:17:12 – 00:39:37:27
Keith
I hope you had to agree that I had to change the background here to just set the mood of what’s about to come next, and that’s the sentencing for these four fuckers. All right, so we know that Fu here, she got 20 months in prison with the restitution of just over $48,000.
00:39:37:27 – 00:39:41:40
Keith
Shi he got eight years.
00:39:41:44 – 00:40:07:44
Keith
And he wasn’t at the ringleader. Right. I’m starting with the smaller numbers, Hu, who is a little more involved, he got ten years. What do you think Bai he got? Well, Bai, he walked away with 15 years in here. So the spread of prison sentences go from just under two years if you pled out to 15 years if you’re the ringleader.
00:40:07:49 – 00:40:22:01
Keith
So in Fu’s example, I think two years is a little too light for, you know, moving $1 million worth of product 15 years, on the other hand. Whoa, that really that sends a message?
00:40:22:01 – 00:40:32:56
Keith
That’s a lot of time. That’s a lot of time. All right, so with that, follow me. And I’m going to wrap up some final thoughts and get you out of here on a fun note.
00:40:32:56 – 00:40:55:32
Keith
All right, last stop final thoughts. Okay, before I do that, though, please. Please, just take the time. Just click like. Click subscribe. And if you know of anybody that might like an episode like this, please share it with them. Hopefully they can join us on every episode and we’ll have a little bit of fun. And with that out of the way, here are my final thoughts.
00:40:55:37 – 00:41:33:56
Keith
So my top thought is now you know what happens to these gift cards when victims are scammed. I never really knew. I kind of vaguely knew, but I never knew a real story like this one. And when you read it in the court documentation from the money going from the victim to the Chinese group of Magic Lantern to the ringleader of Bai to his coconspirators of Hu and Shi to the runner of Fu, you know, that’s, that’s a that’s a pretty complex.
00:41:33:57 – 00:41:36:07
Keith
Well, first of all, it’s a pretty complex scheme.
00:41:36:07 – 00:42:10:01
Keith
And second of all, when you see that all happen. I think it just drives home much more how how much of effect it’s going to have on victims. And I say this because the criminals in this case, yeah, these people, these guys, especially Hu, I read in the court documentation, basically made fun of the victims when they were chatting back and forth about, you know, these fools that parted with their money and they just didn’t really care that these victims actually lost money.
00:42:10:01 – 00:42:31:28
Keith
So when you put it in context like that, it colors the picture a lot differently than just saying, hey, somebody lost $500 here and $500 there. So I have to say, millions of dollars purchased by Fu and multiples of millions of dollars of gift cards being used by this group.
00:42:31:28 – 00:42:54:20
Keith
That is a tremendous amount of money. First of all, think of how long that would take to purchase the amount of product that it would take to fill $1 million in that short amount of time using the rules that they had to use for their criminal enterprise of don’t purchase more than two of the same item, don’t go in the store more than twice.
00:42:54:20 – 00:42:58:44
Keith
Don’t go to the same cashier. Like when you factor all that in that million dollars.
00:42:58:44 – 00:43:03:55
Keith
That would be a difficult challenge. I mean, I could probably do it. Don’t get me wrong, but it would not be easy.
00:43:03:55 – 00:43:11:07
Keith
Now, the last thing I want to point out here is Bai trying to sell off the rest of his gift cards at 90% value
00:43:11:07 – 00:43:13:03
Keith
that was something else. That was something special.
00:43:13:03 – 00:43:25:37
Keith
I couldn’t believe that someone actually bought 90% of fraud money because unless they’re really, really fast, they’re probably not going to get all their money out of it.
00:43:25:38 – 00:43:44:10
Keith
And I imagine they probably will lose money on that deal at some point. So with that, I’m glad you joined me, and I’m glad you stayed all the way to the end. I know sometimes the details could be difficult to stick through. I thought I tried to make them as entertaining as possible, right? I mean, look around. Look at this cartoon I put together.
00:43:44:15 – 00:43:47:01
Keith
This took me a lot of time. I hope it was exciting for you.
00:43:47:01 – 00:43:58:47
Keith
And I hope it’s enough that you will come back and watch the next episode where I will pick another bonkers case just like this and have a little bit of fun with the cartoons and I pssst.
00:43:58:52 – 00:44:20:26
Keith
I skipped over this audio people, if you have not watched the video, you really need to. You really need to. You missed a whole lot because I acted everything out in this. It was not just me reading to the camera, it was actual cartoons. So this will be the point in time where I would recommend you switch over to watching these videos rather than just listening.
00:44:20:31 – 00:44:29:55
Keith
And with that, I hope you join me back on the next episode. Thanks. Bye.
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