ALLENTOWN, Pa. — A man is headed to trial after allegedly scamming an elderly woman into giving them hundreds of thousands of dollars in gold bars.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Jiwan Chen, 57, was charged with felony counts of financial exploitation of an older adult or care-dependent person, criminal use of a communication facility, theft by unlawful taking, theft by deception, receiving stolen property, conspiracy to criminal use of a communication facility, and conspiracy to commit financial exploitation of an older adult.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On June 30, a South Whitehall Township police officer was called to EverTrue Luther Crest Senior Living on Haufman Road for a possible fraud incident involving a resident, the DA’s office said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The officer met with a relative of the victim, a 78-year-old woman who told investigators that several weeks before talking with police, she was contacted by unknown people who claimed to represent “American Bank,” officials said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The scammers told the victim that her identity and Social Security number had been compromised and that she needed to transfer her assets into a newly acquired account, according to a news release.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The victim says she attempted several times to make wire transfers to the new account, but her financial institution rejected most of those attempts after determining the newly acquired account was invalid, authorities said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Officials say the scammers then directed the victim to instead purchase gold bullion. After she purchased the gold, the scammers instructed the victim to package it in a specific manner and meet at specific locations once an “officer” was close to the Allentown area, the DA’s office said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The victim said she made four separate deliveries following the directions of the scammers and surrendered $550,000 in gold to various couriers, authorities said.<\/p>\n
Police learned the victim was scheduled to purchase and deliver $133,000 in gold on July 1.<\/p>\n
While under surveillance by South Whitehall Township Police officers, they watched the victim deliver the gold to a man later identified as Chen outside the senior living facility, according to officials.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A total of $683,000 in gold bars was obtained by Chen, officials said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Chen is in Lehigh County Jail under $500,000 bail. He waived his rights to a preliminary hearing Wednesday, and the next court date for both is a formal arraignment at 8:30 a.m. Oct. 16.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALLENTOWN, Pa. — A man is headed to trial after allegedly scamming an elderly woman into giving them…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":277717,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,21008,10716,116299,116302,433,19351,4042,28,116300,112129,57271,116301],"class_list":["post-277716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-confidence-tricks","tag-fraud","tag-internet-vigilantism","tag-jiwan-chen","tag-lehigh-county","tag-lehigh-county-jail","tag-officer","tag-pennsylvania","tag-scam-baiting","tag-social-engineering","tag-south-whitehall-township-police","tag-tianhang-zhou"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277716\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}