Chinese man arrested for creating fake Army unit in immigration scam

He called himself the “supreme commander.”

From a storefront in Temple City decorated to look like a military recruiting center, David Deng raised an army of more than 100 Chinese nationals and claimed they were members of an elite U.S. special forces unit, authorities said.

Together, they marched in local Chinese New Year parades and even received a special military tour in uniform at the USS Midway museum in San Diego. Chinese-language newspapers ran photos of the troops with prominent community leaders.

But prosecutors on Tuesday charged that Deng’s “U.S. Army/Military Special Forces Reserve” was actually a huge immigration scam that preyed on Chinese immigrants in the San Gabriel Valley desperate to become citizens.more LA Times
Yupeng Deng, 51, allegedly gave his “recruits” military uniforms, had them parade in a Los Angeles suburb and took them to the decommissioned USS Midway aircraft carrier, which is a museum in San Diego.

Deng charged more than 100 fellow Chinese nationals a fee of between $300 and $450 to join the fake Army unit, according to the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office.

He called his bogus squad the U.S. Army/Military Special Forces Reserve unit, or MSFR for short, and he gave himself the lofty title of “supreme commander,” prosecutors said.

Aside from telling recruits that belonging to the unit was a path to U.S. citizenship, Deng also urged them to pay him cash for higher military rank, according to prosecutors.

He also allegedly provided them with fake documents and phony military identification cards.
Deng, a resident of the Los Angeles suburb of El Monte, was arrested on Tuesday by sheriff’s deputies.
He was charged with theft by false pretenses, manufacturing deceptive government documents and counterfeit of an official government seal.

Deng faces up to eight years in prison if convicted. He is scheduled to be arraigned on Wednesday, and is being held on $500,000 bail.

Jane Robison, a spokeswoman for the District Attorney’s Office, declined to comment on how Deng was caught.more
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