Four suspects in a retail crime ring were arrested in Sacramento County with thousands of tampered gift cards.
On November 14 the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office’s Organized Retail Crimes Task Force, in conjunction with the Elk Grove Police Department, Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office, and United States Department of Homeland Security, investigated another gift card tampering case. During this investigation, four suspects were discovered to have victimized more than 100 retail locations across more than eight northern California counties and stores in Washington, Oregon and Nevada. The suspects predominantly targeted grocery stores and hardware stores where gift cards were openly displayed.
In addition to collecting more than the 7,000 tampered gift cards, detectives impounded two vehicles, arrested four people, and were able to locate a hotel room that had been converted into a gift card tampering & shipping facility. With this investigation and set of arrests, detectives were able to save citizens of Sacramento and the surrounding counties more than $3 million in potential loss.
As with the previous cases in Sacramento County involving gift card tampering (December 2023 & August 2024), all four suspects, Jian Chen, Qiang Xue, Chunliang Fang, Xuewei Yu, are citizens of the People’s Republic of China who traveled to Central America and entered the United States of America illegally by crossing the southern border with Mexico within the last 18 months. Jian Chen was arrested and is pending sentencing for gift card tampering in August 2024 in the City of Campbell, Santa Clara County. All four suspects are being held at the Sacramento County Main Jail on $500,000 bail. In the last 12 months, SSO ORC detectives have recovered approximately 20,000 tampered gift cards with a potential loss value of $10 million.
Chinese Nationals Busted for Retail Crime Theft was last modified: November 29th, 2024 by
