A house of cards and more

A house of cards

When Andrew Smith rented a house in Cambridge, U.K., he immediately set about trying to sell the three-bedroom property through a fake online real estate company. In November, Smith received a 2 1/2-year jail sentence for his fraudulent scheme.

Police nabbed Smith after neighbors alerted a prospective buyer that the house was rented. The buyer contacted the letting agents who in turn reported the fraud to law enforcement.

To decorate the house, Smith had rented furniture from a company that provides furniture for showrooms. The unsuspecting buyer almost parted with 400,000 pounds in what one police constable described as an “almost unbelievable and truly brazen crime.” (See “Man jailed for trying to sell someone else’s house,” by Debbie Luxon, Independent, Nov. 9, 2022.)

Victims scamming victims

While many fall victim to fraud scams, it’s rare that the scammers themselves are victims. But that’s what’s been happening in Southeast Asia, where tech workers are being conned into working for cybercrime rings.

Lured by fake high-paying job offers, thousands of young Asian tech workers have arrived on job sites only to find crime syndicates confiscating their phones and passports, demanding ransom fees and threatening violence. Criminals hold tech workers captive in converted casinos in Cambodia, and economic zones in Myanmar and Laos, and train them in the art of online cryptocurrency scams.

A favorite scam is “pig butchering,” which involves building trust with victims over social media apps and developing fake romantic relationships to get them to invest in crypto and trading scams.

In August last year, 40 Vietnamese workers narrowly escaped a casino in Cambodia’s Kandal province, and in September, the Indian government issued an advisory against the fake job offers targeting young IT workers. (See “Cyber criminals hold Asian tech workers captive in scam factories,” by Anuradha Nagaraj and Nanchanok Wongsamuth, Reuters, Nov. 1, 2022; “Inside The Crypto Human Trafficking Rings In Myanmar, Cambodia & Laos,” by Suprita Anupam, Inc 42, Oct. 24, 2022; and “‘I was a slave’: Up to 100,000 held captive by Chinese cybercriminals in Cambodia,” by David Pierson, Los Angeles Times, Nov. 1, 2022.)

DOJ closes book on one of U.S.’s biggest-ever marriage scams

A 58-year-old woman received a 10-year prison sentence in October for masterminding what a Homeland Security agent called one of the biggest marriage fraud conspiracies in U.S. history — a scam that brought in a total of $15 million for the fraudsters, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Ashley Yen Nguyen was the ringleader of a group that charged Vietnamese nationals $50,000 to $70,000 to find a spouse in the U.S. and fraudulently obtain permanent resident status in the country. Operating out of the Southwest Houston area, the group organized over 500 sham marriages, using fake wedding albums and fabricated details about the couples’ relationships to appear legitimate during interviews with immigration officials.

Nguyen regularly offered U.S. citizens $15,000 and $20,000 in installments to act as spouses but rarely paid them the full amount. She also used mass marketing to reach her audience, advertising the scheme through recruiters and Facebook. (See “Ringleader sentenced in immigration scam that offered fake marriages for $70,000,” DOJ, Oct. 27, 2022.)