Sugar Land man pleads guilty to $500K identity theft scam

A Sugar Land man who last year was indicted and accused of laundering hundreds of thousands of dollars in a cryptocurrency scheme pleaded guilty last week to aggravated identity theft.

Xiaofei Chen, 37, will be sentenced early next year, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas. He faces at least two years in prison under mandatory sentencing rules, according to a news release. He could be sentenced to a third year in prison by U.S. District Court Judge Alfred H. Bennett.

Chen, who also goes by the name Anthony Chen, was indicted in December on 10 charges over accusations he accessed a person’s checking account and wired $520,000 to himself in 2018, officials said. He then converted the money into bitcoin, laundered it across multiple cryptocurrency exchanges and then used the money to make luxury purchases, including a $59,000 Jeep Wrangler and a $78,000 Audi RS5.

Charging documents called Chen’s scheme “complex.” Posing as his victim, he used a job website to hire another person to act as a legal fiduciary. The unwitting accomplice was presented with forged documents that gave him power of attorney over the victim’s bank account. The accomplice then used that access to transfer money to Chen, according to charging documents.

If he had been convicted on all the charges, Chen could have faced up to 30 years in prison. The plea agreement waives the other charges, according to court documents.

Chen will remain free until his sentencing, according to prosecutors.