Sacramento, November 6, 2018 — The U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of California sentenced Vivian Wang of Alpharetta to two years in prison after pleading guilty to scamming casinos and credit companies across the country for $1.1 million. She and Frank Luo of Las Vegas were indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice.
Wang who owns residences in Alpharetta and Lilburn pleaded guilty to wire fraud and identity theft in February. The verdict was a product of joint investigation of FBI and California’s Bureau of Gambling Control.
Both individuals used fraudulent names and social security numbers of migrant workers to apply for casino credits to open credit card accounts. Casino credit is a cash advance provided by casino to a patron and is often secured by a person’s bank account.
Wang, working in concert with her co-defendant, Frank Luo, 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. Wang and Luo recruited “clients” to the scheme to induce the casinos and credit card companies to part with even more money under fraudulent pretenses.
Wang and her co-schemers 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.
At the end of the scheme, Wang and her co-schemers did not repay the casino markers or the significant outstanding credit card balances accrued in a short amount of time once creditworthiness had been established. The combined fraud led to over $1.1 million in losses to casinos and credit card companies.
Wang used an Illinois state identity card in the name of a particular migrant worker to achieve various parts of the scheme, including presentation of that identification at a Placerville-area casino in August 2013 to obtain a $30,000 marker.
Luo was sentenced to three years in prison.
