The Defendant perpetrated a gift card tampering scheme to scam unknowing consumers out of money loaded onto them.
LEXINGTON, KY – A Chinese National, Yongjian You, 41, was sentenced on Friday to 27 months in prison by U.S. District Judge Danny C. Reeves for mail fraud he committed as part of a gift card tampering scheme.
In a gift card tampering scheme, individuals steal gift card packages from retail stores, discreetly access the card numbers or security access codes, reseal the compromised gift card packages, and then place them back into retail stores to be sold to unsuspecting customers. Once the tampered gift cards are loaded with cash value at the store’s point of sale by customers, the fraudsters steal the funds from the card. According to his plea agreement, You stole gift cards from multiple Kroger stores in the Lexington area, mailed them to co-conspirators using the United States Postal Service to be compromised, received them back in the mail, and returned the tampered cards to retailer shelves to be sold to unwary customers. On July 8, 2024, You was caught stealing untampered gift cards from a Kroger in Lexington, and placing tampered cards back on the gift card racks. A law enforcement search of his vehicle that same day yielded 871 tampered gift cards and 998 untampered gift cards, representing potential consumer loss of $419,975. Two packages that You recently mailed to California were then intercepted, and found to contain an additional 2,651 untampered gift cards, representing another $627,925 in potential consumer loss. Ultimately, the total potential loss from the gift cards in You’s scheme was more than $1.1 million.
Under federal law, You must serve 85 percent of his prison sentence. Upon his release from prison, he will be under the supervision of the U.S. Probation Office for three years.
Paul McCaffrey, Acting United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky; Rana Saoud, Special Agent in Charge, Department of Homeland Security, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI); and Chief Lawrence Weathers, Lexington Police Department, jointly announced the sentence.
The investigation was conducted by HSI and Lexington Police Department. Assistant U.S. Attorney James T. Chapman is prosecuting the case on behalf of the United States.
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