ALEXANDRIA, Va.
A Chinese man will be sentenced in April for his role in a $1.1 million fraud conspiracy involving gift cards, according to officials.
According to court documents, Jin Hong, 38, who lives in Richmond, was part of a wire fraud conspiracy in which members of the conspiracy contacted victims by telephone or through social media and assumed fictitious identities.
Hong is scheduled to be sentenced on April 7.
He faces up to 20 years in prison.
The conspirators falsely claimed to be from the Internal Revenue Service or an employee of a financial institution and falsely told victims they were entitled to money or under some form of immediate financial threat, such as having their personal identification information compromised by known criminals.
Hong and his co-conspirators used these ruses and others to trick the victims into purchasing gift cards and then sending the gift cards’ redemption codes to them.
The redemption codes allow the gift cards to be redeemed without being in possession of the physical card, according to authorities.
Hong, along with co-conspirators Shouming Sun, He Li, Yuchen Zhang, and others, then used the fraudulently obtained redemption codes to purchase goods totaling approximately $1.1 million.