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Crime

EPS is highlighting the risks of finding love online

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6 minute read

The victim of an online romance scam is sharing his story in hopes of preventing more people from being taken advantage of by scammers. Online romance scams are a lucrative business- in 2018, the Edmonton Police Service investigated 11 incidents of romance scams totaling an overall reported loss of $1,115,219.74.

Con was in the hospital when he received a message from a woman who said she had seen his dating profile. He was happy to have the company while he was confined to the hospital bed – even if it was just over the phone.

  

       Sample of images sent to portray the woman’s online profile

She said she was a United States citizen on an overseas contract as a computer civil engineer. She was a single mom; her son was nine-years-old. Eventually, she would say that she “fell in love with a guy from the internet”.

Months into their chats, the requests for money began; she said the camera on her phone was broken but she couldn’t afford to fix it, so she needed $600 to replace it. Con denied her request so she stopped contacting him, but months passed and they started talking again. She asked him for money once again, telling him she was relying on him to get her and her son to the States. So he gave what he could towards a new phone- $100. It wasn’t enough, so she stopped talking to him.

Nearly a year later, she asked him if he still loved her; the continued to talk for a couple of weeks and then she told him she was laid off and needed help. He told her to go to the U.S. Embassy for help, but she admitted that it was an illegal work contract. She needed to get home, but she didn’t have enough; she was a mere $1500 short.

The next day, ticket prices went up. He paid the difference. And then her son was diagnosed with malaria. Shortly after, they were in a collision and had hospital bills – she even sent x-rays. But she had money back home; she just needed help paying the hospital bills in order to be released from the hospital. Once she got home she would be able to pay him back. She even “proved” her financial state by sending a picture of her bank accounts in the U.S.A; she just couldn’t access them while overseas.

Sadly, Con’s dream of having a family was used against him by fraudsters. When one of his banks interfered and the Edmonton Police Service investigated his case, this romance scam came to $143,000.

When asked why he sent the money, he pauses… “Hope that it would be real. Having her and her kid. Money isn’t important. This is; having someone else in the house besides me.”

 

Protect Yourself 

It is important to remember that romance scammers do this for a living – it’s their job and it can be very profitable.

“It’s absolutely heartbreaking that these scammers are taking someone’s desire for happiness and using it against them,” Detective Linda Herczeg stated. “They commit all of their time into these scams because it’s their job and it’s lucrative.”

Websites and apps are constantly used for matchmaking, friendship building, and networking, but users should be aware of the potential risks.

Signs that a social media or dating profile user is a scammer

  • They ask you for money.
  • They profile you and tell you everything you want to hear.
  • They will find out what you are looking for in a relationship and create events that will play on your emotional to get you to send money – sick children, airline tickets to come be with you/marry you so you can be a family.
  • They groom you for as long as it takes (days, months, years) to get your money by being very attentive, lavishing you with attention, compliments and tell you that they love you. Usually they profess their love early in the relationship.
  • They are always available because it is usually a group of individuals that are sending you messages, working off a script.
  • The images of your “loved one” will be stolen off the internet.
  • Your “loved one” will rarely have a voice conversation with you or have a live conversation via FaceTime or Skype.
  • Your “loved one” will always have an excuse why they cannot meet you.
  • They will always find a reason for you to send them more money.

 

You can find more information on online scams and online dating safety tips on the EPS website.

The EPS reminds citizens that fraud prevention is continuous – we need to recognize it through continual education, report it, and stop it. We ask that you share this information with those in your life who may be a target for romance scams.

If you are a victim of any fraud, please contact the EPS at 780-423-4567 or #377 from a mobile device.

Crime

Sweeping Boston Indictment Points to Vast Chinese Narco-Smuggling and Illegal Alien Labor Plot via Mexican Border

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Sam Cooper's avatar Sam Cooper

Case details a pipeline from China through Mexico, trapping trafficked illegal migrants as indentured workers in a sweeping drug network.

In a sweeping indictment that tears into an underworld of Chinese narco infiltration of North American cities — including the smuggling of impoverished Chinese nationals across the Mexican border to work as drug debt slaves in illegal drug houses — seven Chinese nationals living in Massachusetts stand accused of running a sprawling, multimillion-dollar marijuana trafficking and money laundering network across New England.

The backdrop of the human smuggling allegations stretches back to 2020, as an unprecedented wave of illegal Chinese migrants surged across the U.S. border with Mexico — a surge that peaked in 2024 under the Biden administration before the White House reversed course. This explosive migration trend became a flashpoint in heated U.S. election debates, fueling concerns over border security and transnational organized crime.

Six of the accused, including alleged ringleader Jianxiong Chen of Braintree, were arrested this week in coordinated FBI raids across Massachusetts. The border exploitation schemes match exactly with decades-long human smuggling and Chinese Triad criminal pipelines into America reported by The Bureau last summer, based on leaked intelligence documents filed by a Canadian immigration official in 1993. A seventh suspect in the new U.S. indictment, Yanrong Zhu, remains a fugitive and is believed to be moving between Greenfield, Massachusetts, and Brooklyn, New York.

The case paints a striking portrait of China-based criminal organizations operating behind the quiet facades of upscale American suburban properties. Prosecutors allege the defendants owned or partnered with a network of sophisticated indoor grow houses hidden inside single-family residences in Massachusetts, Maine, and beyond, producing kilogram-scale shipments of marijuana. According to court documents, the marijuana was sold in bulk to distributors across the Northeast, and the profits — amounting to millions — were funneled into luxury real estate, cars, jewelry, and further expansion of their illicit operations.

“During a search of [ringleader Chen’s] home in October 2024, over $270,000 in cash was allegedly recovered from the house and from a Porsche in the driveway,” the indictment alleges, “as well as several Chinese passports and other identification documents inside a safe.”

According to the indictment, Chen’s cell phone data confirmed his personal role in orchestrating smuggling logistics and controlling workers. Additional searches of homes where co-defendants lived yielded over 109 kilograms of marijuana, nearly $200,000 in cash, and luxury items including a $65,000 gold Rolex with the price tag still attached.

A photo from the indictment, humorously but damningly, shows alleged ring member Hongbin Wu, 35, wearing a green “money laundering” T-shirt printed with an image of a hot iron pressing U.S. dollar bills on an ironing board — a snapshot that encapsulates the brazenness of the alleged scheme.

Key to FBI allegations of stunning sophistication tying together Chinese narcos along the U.S. East Coast with bases in mainland China is a document allegedly shared among the conspirators.

“The grow house operators maintained contact with each other through a list of marijuana cultivators and distributors from or with ties to China in the region called the ‘East Coast Contact List,’” the indictment alleges.

Investigators say the conspiracy reveals a human smuggling component directly tied to China’s underground migration and debt bondage networks, mirroring exactly the historic intelligence from Canadian and U.S. Homeland Security documents reported by The Bureau last summer.

The alleged leader, 39-year-old Jianxiong Chen, is charged with paying to smuggle Chinese nationals across the Mexican border, then forcing them to work in grow houses while withholding their passports until they repaid enormous smuggling debts.

“Data extracted from Chen’s cell phone allegedly revealed that he helped smuggle Chinese nationals into the United States — putting the aliens to work at one of the grow houses he controlled,” U.S. filings say.

“This case pulls back the curtain on a sprawling criminal enterprise that exploited our immigration system and our communities for personal gain,” said U.S. Attorney Leah Foley. “These defendants allegedly turned quiet homes across the Northeast into hubs for a criminal enterprise — building a multi-million-dollar black-market operation off the backs of an illegal workforce and using our neighborhoods as cover.”

The arrests come amid a surge of Chinese migrants entering the U.S. through Mexico, part of a pattern previously exposed in Canadian diplomatic and intelligence reporting. In 1993, a confidential Canadian government study, “Passports of Convenience,” warned that Chinese government officials, in collusion with Triads and corrupt Latin American partners, were driving a multi-billion-dollar human smuggling business. That report predicted that tens of thousands of migrants from coastal Fujian province would flood North America, empowered by Beijing’s tacit support and organized crime’s global reach.

It also warned that mass migration from China in the 1990s came during a time of political upheaval, a trend that has apparently re-emerged while President Xi Jinping’s economic and political guidance has been increasingly questioned among mainland citizens, particularly since the Covid-19 pandemic crisis and lockdowns inside China.

The 1993 report, obtained and analyzed exclusively by The Bureau, described how the Triads — particularly those connected with Chinese Communist networks in Fujian — would leverage human smuggling to extend their influence into American cities. The migrants, often saddled with debts of $50,000 or more, became trapped in forced labor, prostitution, or drug networks, coerced to repay their passage fees.

“Alien smuggling is closely linked to narcotics smuggling; many of the persons smuggled in have to resort to prostitution or drug dealing to pay the smugglers,” the 1993 Canadian immigration report says.

Citing legal filings in one U.S. Homeland Security case, it says a Triad member who reportedly smuggled 150 Fujianese migrants into New York stated that if fees aren’t paid “the victims are often tortured until the money is paid.”

Supporting these early warnings, a 1995 U.S. Department of Justice report echoed the Canadian findings, stating that “up to 100,000 Chinese aliens are smuggled into the United States each year,” with 85 percent originating from Fujian. The DOJ report also cited allegations of “negotiations between the Sun Yee On Triad and the Mainland Chinese Government,” suggesting that smuggling and criminal infiltration were tolerated — if not orchestrated — to extend China’s economic and political influence abroad.

That report added American investigators and immigration officials concluded it was nearly impossible to counter waves of illegal immigration from China with deportation orders, and the government should focus on “the larger menace working its way into U.S. cities: Chinese transnational criminal organizations.”

“To combat the growing threat of Asian organized crime in the West,” it says, “law enforcement officials must tackle this new global problem through an understanding of the Triad system and the nature of its threat to Western countries.”

In New England, the Braintree indictment shows how those old predictions have not only materialized but scaled up.

These networks operate by embedding Chinese nationals into illicit industries in North America, from black-market cannabis cultivation to high-end money laundering. Once inside, they channel profits back through complex underground banking channels that tie the North American drug economy to China’s export-driven cash flows and, ultimately, to powerful actors in Beijing.

In recent years, Maine has emerged as a strategic hotspot for illicit Chinese-controlled marijuana operations. As The Bureau has reported, the state’s vast rural areas, lax local oversight, and proximity to East Coast urban markets have made it a favored location for covert grow houses.

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Crime

Tucker Carlson: US intelligence is shielding Epstein network, not President Trump

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From LifeSiteNews

By Robert Jones

Pam Bondi’s shifting story and Trump’s dismissal of Epstein questions have reignited scrutiny over the sealed files.

Tucker Carlson is raising new concerns about a possible intelligence cover-up in the Jeffrey Epstein case—this time implicating U.S. and Israeli agencies, as well as Trump ally and former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi.

During a recent broadcast, Carlson discussed U.S. Attorney General Bondi’s refusal to release sealed Epstein files, along with the FBI and DOJ announcement that Epstein did not have a client list and did indeed kill himself.

Carlson offered two theories for Bondi’s words. The first: “Trump is involved—that Trump is on the list, that they’ve got a tape of Trump doing something awful.”

But Carlson quickly dismissed that idea, noting he’s spoken to Trump about Epstein and believes he wasn’t part of “creepy” activities. He also pointed out that the Biden administration holds the evidence and would likely have acted if there were grounds.

Carlson’s second theory: the intelligence services are “at the very center of this story” and are being protected. His guest, Saagar Enjeti, agreed. “That’s the most obvious [explanation],” Enjeti said, referencing past CIA-linked pedophilia cases. He noted the agency had avoided prosecutions for fear suspects would reveal “sources and methods” in court.

The exchange aired as critics accused Bondi of shifting her account of what’s in the files. She previously referenced “tens of thousands of videos of Epstein with children,” but later claimed they were videos of child pornography downloaded by Epstein. Observers say that revision changes the legal and narrative stakes—and raises questions about credibility.

Donald Trump also appeared impatient with the matter. “Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? That is unbelievable,” he said in a video beside Bondi. This clip sparked backlash from longtime Trump supporters, including former Trump advisor Elon Musk, who reposted critical commentary on Trump and Bondi’s comments on X:

Musk previously alleged that Trump was himself implicated in the Epstein files. Although he retracted and apologized for this, he recently suggested that Steve Bannon was also implicated.

However, Carlson’s guest suggested that Bondi’s comments had another purpose. “The lie is a signal to everybody else involved,” he said. “The lie is not for you and me. The lie is for those implicated to say, ‘No matter what, we will protect you.’”

The files in question remain sealed. It is unclear whether further revelations about Epstein will come to light, but Trump’s comments are not going to make the issue go away.

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