A Chinese national who helped defraud roughly 2,000 elderly Americans out of $27 million—and was caught in a viral YouTube sting—has been sentenced to more than six years in federal prison.
Jiandong Chen, a Los Angeles resident known by the nickname “Little Tiger,” pleaded guilty in April to participating in a money-laundering operation alongside several accomplices.
According to the US Attorney’s Office, the five-person operation ran from 2021 through 2023. The group posed as bank representatives, government officials and tech-support workers, while also using fake refund offers to target older victims, most of them in their 70s and 80s.
Victims were contacted through emails, phone calls and pop-up messages that instructed them to dial a number connected to a fraudulent call center in India.
Callers then manipulated the victims into sending money to members of the criminal network, primarily in Southern California and Nevada.
Payments were delivered to Chen and his associates through mailed packages and wire transfers. In some cases, the conspirators went directly to the victims’ homes to collect cash in person.
In July 2023, scam-fighting YouTubers from Trilogy Media organized an elaborate sting during one of those collections. Video from the operation shows Chen arriving to pick up money from what he believed was an elderly victim before the creators confronted him.
“This is illegal. Illegal,” YouTuber Ashton Bingham told Chen. “You know that?”
Chen claimed a language barrier prevented him from fully understanding the confrontation before he got into a car with an accomplice.
Bingham and fellow anti-scam activist Art Kulik attended Chen’s sentencing, according to the US Attorney’s Office.
Prosecutors said Chen entered the United States in November 2022 and joined the scheme in February 2023. Multiple videos captured him collecting packages from victims and counting the cash inside.
Although police arrested him in June 2023, prosecutors said Chen continued collecting money through the end of that year.
Under his plea agreement, Chen acknowledged taking $9.5 million from victims, using counterfeit identification documents and repeatedly changing locations to evade law enforcement.
“These victims weren’t foolish. They were lied to and exploited by a sophisticated criminal network,” US Attorney Adam Gordon said in a statement. “Stopping fraud takes an online village. We’ll keep prosecuting aggressively, but with friends to our cause like Ash and Art, we can do even more.”
US District Judge Robert S. Huie sharply criticized Chen at sentencing for preying on vulnerable victims.
The money stolen from elderly people represented “more than just money,” Huie said. It also took away “people’s self-respect, their dignity, trust with their family members.”