Man sentenced after arrest in Lexington in potential $1 million gift card scam
A Chinese man arrested in Lexington in a gift card fraud scheme that could have cost consumers $1 million has been sentenced to two years and three months in prison.
Younjian You, 41, was in the U.S. illegally and will be deported after he finishes his prison sentence, according to the court record.
You was involved in what authorities call organized retail crime.
It typically involves stealing gift cards, often from large retailers; tampering with them so criminals can access them after someone pays to load money on them; putting altered cards back on racks in stores; then draining the cash after a buyer activates a card, according to court records.
Police arrested You on July 8, 2024, after he was seen stealing gift cards at several Kroger supermarkets in the Lexington area and putting tampered cards back on the shelves, according to this plea agreement.
Employees found 17 compromised Amazon and Apple cards at the Kroger on Tates Creek Centre Drive, for instance.
Police arrested You later that day at the Kroger on Bryan Station Road.
He was carrying 54 gift cards that had been taken from Kroger stores but hadn’t yet been tampered with, and there were five Amazon cards on the shelf that had been altered, according to his guilty plea.
Police found more than 2,600 gift cards in You’s car and in packages he had sent from Ohio and Lexington to California to be altered.
If people had bought all the cards and put the maximum amount on all of them, the total value would have been $1,047,900, his plea said.
You’s attorney, Noel E. Caldwell, argued in a sentencing memorandum that it was unlikely consumers would have put the maximum amount on each card.
That mattered because the intended loss amount was a factor in the advisory sentence range for You of 21 to 27 months.
Caldwell sought a sentence of 12 months and one day.
U.S. District Judge Danny C. Reeves denied the motion to go below the range and sentenced You to the maximum 27 months on May 2.
There is another large gift card tampering case pending in Kentucky.
Zhiqiang Huang, Chaoming Lin, Huixing Yu and Tianlong Chen are charged in federal court in Louisville with possession of altered gift cards.
The four were arrested after security officers saw Lin and Chen placing cards on racks at Kroger stores, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Huang and Lin had about 5,000 gift cards with them and Yu and Chen had about 650 cards, according to a release.
The Federal Trade Commission advises advises that consumers should check for signs of tampering before buying a gift card.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which says gift card fraud is a growing problem, offers tips on how to spot altered cards.
