{"id":53393,"date":"2025-01-14T23:02:50","date_gmt":"2025-01-15T04:02:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=53393"},"modified":"2025-01-14T23:03:40","modified_gmt":"2025-01-15T04:03:40","slug":"four-suspects-arrested-in-polk-county-racketeering-scheme-impacting-target-stores","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2025\/01\/14\/four-suspects-arrested-in-polk-county-racketeering-scheme-impacting-target-stores\/","title":{"rendered":"Four suspects arrested in Polk County racketeering scheme impacting Target stores"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

An alleged racketeering scheme, involving hundreds of thousands of dollars, has been uncovered in Polk County.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Four suspects are accused of scamming innocent victims, fraudulently buying discounted merchandise and returning counterfeit merchandise at Target stores around the Tampa Bay area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It\u2019s brilliant, it\u2019s illegal and these folks are facing 30 years in prison,” Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“And when I say deep discounts, we\u2019re talking 90%, 66%, 80%,” Judd said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to an affidavit, the suspects bribed the two employees at Target with Apple watches and Starbucks drinks. The paper trail of transactions and store surveillance video over the course of last year led to the four suspects \u2013 Yun Zheng, Lin Chen, Haoyi Ren and Hang Yang.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Investigators said the suspects were fraudulently using Target employee discount codes and Target gift cards to make the purchases. According to an affidavit, the suspects obtained the Target gift cards through different phone scams carried out on about a dozen victims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“They\u2019re taking stolen cards, buying merchandise and getting a big discount,” Judd said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The sheriff\u2019s office said it doesn\u2019t believe the four suspects were conducting the scam calls. Investigators believe there were other people involved in the scheme who were obtaining the gift cards and transferring them to Zheng, Chen, Ren and Yang. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We believe that there is an organized system, even behind them,” Judd said. “They\u2019re too good at this.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Court documents said the suspects were buying high-end electronics like Apple iPads and Bose headphones.<\/p>\n\n\n

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“They apparently are sending this back to China, and they have a contact in China that is sending them knockoff stuff,” Judd said. “So, then they take the knockoff stuff, they put it back in the package and rip Target off again when they return it.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Judd said the suspects were ripping off FedEx numbers to ship packages to locations in China. Investigators said the suspects tried to return counterfeit merchandise to Target stores across the Tampa Bay area, but some of the returns were denied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to an affidavit, Target lost a total of more than $177,000 from this scheme. Judd said this scheme was illegal on every level, and they\u2019re still investigating for additional suspects, victims and businesses that were targeted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We know that there are at least eight west coast Florida counties that have been affected by just this one team,” he said. “We think there\u2019s as much as a multi-million dollar event going on here.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yang was most recently arrested in Texas. Zheng, Chen and Ren were arrested in December in Pasco County.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yang appeared in court in Polk County on Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zheng, Chen, Ren and Yang are each facing charges of racketeering and conspiracy to commit racketeering. The Polk County Sheriff\u2019s Office investigated this case with the help of the Pasco County Sheriff\u2019s Office, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and other agencies in the Tampa Bay area.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An alleged racketeering scheme, involving hundreds of thousands of dollars, has been uncovered in Polk County. Four suspects are accused of scamming innocent victims, fraudulently buying discounted merchandise and returning counterfeit merchandise… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":53394,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"12","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":true,"token":"eyJpbWciOiJodHRwczpcL1wvaTAud3AuY29tXC9sYWtlbGFuZGdhemV0dGUuaW5mb1wvbmV3c1wvd3AtY29udGVudFwvdXBsb2Fkc1wvMjAyNVwvMDFcL1NjcmVlbnNob3QtNzUtMTQtcG5nLndlYnA_Zml0PTY1NyUyQzIxMSZzc2w9MSIsInR4dCI6IkZvdXIgc3VzcGVjdHMgYXJyZXN0ZWQgaW4gUG9sayBDb3VudHkgcmFja2V0ZWVyaW5nIHNjaGVtZSBpbXBhY3RpbmcgVGFyZ2V0IHN0b3JlcyIsInRlbXBsYXRlIjoiaGlnaHdheSIsImJsb2dfaWQiOjE2MzA0MDY2MX0.REA7FMBl6lOOom06keCHtJqoKuE9Q19Qdg7I9wzdjMYMQ"},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[12,14],"tags":[10767],"class_list":["post-53393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","category-news","tag-four-suspects-arrested-in-polk-county-racketeering-scheme-impacting-target-stores"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53393"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53393\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53395,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53393\/revisions\/53395"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}