A federal grand jury returned a nine-count indictment last week against two people suspected of a nationwide credit fraud scheme that affected casinos nationwide, including Cache Creek Casino in Yolo County.
Vivian Wang, 53, of Lilburn, Ga.; and Frank Luo, 48, of Las Vegas, Nev.; are charged with wire fraud, while Wang faces an additional count of aggravated identity theft, Acting United States Attorney Phillip A. Talbert announced.
The defendants were arrested Friday at their residences.
According to court documents, between Aug. 5, 2008, and August 2014, Wang and Luo participated in a scheme to defraud casinos and credit-card companies across the country. The scheme involved using false identities in the names and Social Security numbers of migrant workers to apply for casino credit called “markers” and to open credit-card accounts.
A marker is a cash advance provided by a casino to a patron, and it is often secured by a check from the patron’s bank account. The defendants initially timely repaid several markers at different casinos and several credit cards in order to give the impression of creditworthiness to future casinos and credit-card companies.
Moreover, the defendants coordinated their gambling activity in order to give the appearance of losing money (and thereby encouraging the casinos to issue future markers) when, in fact, one schemer would “lose” money while another would gain the same. In other instances, one schemer would surreptitiously deliver the issued gambling chips to another in order to give the appearance of having spent them.
According to the indictment, the defendants expended the fraudulently obtained credit on jewelry, precious metals, home appliances, international flights, luxury goods and clothing. The defendants closed and depleted the bank accounts provided to the casinos in their marker applications to prevent the casinos from recovering the money secured by the checks they had written against those accounts, and they did not pay back the credit-card balances.
The combined fraud led to more than $1.2 million in losses to casinos and credit-card companies, authorities said. In addition to Cache Creek, Red Hawk Casino in El Dorado County and Thunder Valley Casino in Placer County also were targeted in the alleged scheme.
This case is the product of an investigation by the FBI and the California Department of Justice’s Bureau of Gambling Control. Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew M. Yelovich is prosecuting the case.
If convicted, Wang and Luo face a maximum statutory penalty of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for each count of wire fraud. If convicted of aggravated identity theft, Wang faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 24 months in prison consecutive to any other sentence imposed.