San Leandro woman busted for alleged role in ‘international fraud network,’ as cops seize ketamine, cash, and IDs

SAN LEANDRO — A local resident is facing federal charges that she helped scam a 79-year-old woman out of $50,500, which prosecutors say was part of an “international fraud network  that targets elderly Americans in sophisticated campaigns to steal their life savings.”

Qingyun Chen, 30, was already facing charges in Marin County over the alleged fraud, but last month federal prosecutors stepped in to file a case against her. Chen is alleged to have worked with others to defraud a Greenbrae woman, who handed over the cash to a courier who arrived at her front door.

In a failed bid to keep Chen in custody while the case is pending, prosecutors argued there was ample evidence that Chen had been working with multiple cohorts to target numerous victims. Most of their evidence centered on a raid of Chen’s San Leandro home back in November, where six people were living.

“In one room (not Chen’s), deputies found some 30 SIM cards, each with a different phone number written on the top, possibly to allow for easy changes or porting of numbers,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Tartakovsky wrote in a detention motion. “Elsewhere they stumbled on some 75 identification cards belonging to people other than those in the house.”

Chen’s room contained ketamine, $5,000 in cash, a receipt for $19,000, all weighed against Chen’s claim that she worked at a local Karaoke bar and made up to $500 per night there. In another room was a “collection of drugs,” to include “pills in the form of blue triangles, blue squares, brown skulls, or yellow circles; baggies and vials with white powders; a gallonsized bag with white crystalline substance; and a “kimchi” container with yet another white powder,” Tartakovsky wrote.

Prosecutors also described Chen as a “serious” flight risk, arguing she came to the United States from China in 2021 but has no deep ties here. In Marin County, Chen was released on $100,000 bail but then re-arrested after a judge determined he hadn’t yet verified that the bail money was legally acquired.

In the federal case, a magistrate approved Chen’s release on a $50,000 but ordered GPS monitoring while she’s out of custody, records show.

The charging documents allege that the victim came across a popup ad on the internet which claimed her laptop had been locked and she needed to call a phone number to deal with the technical problem. She later reported that when she called the number she was told her computer was “red-flagged” due to a hacking attempt from a pornography site, and that the person tricked her into making two separate cash withdrawals totaling $50,500 and handing them over to a courier who arrived at her home.

Chen is alleged to have been the courier, and authorities say a yet-to-be-identified man talked the victim out of her money.