San Diego woman accused of stealing $8.5 million from Chinese boss in bank scheme

A San Diego woman working part-time for a Chinese businessman attempted to steal $23 million from her boss by draining four bank accounts linked to his U.S. companies, according to a recently unsealed federal indictment.

Prosecutors allege that Ping “Jenny” Gao was able to successfully embezzle $8.5 million to accounts that she owned and immediately went on a spending spree, purchasing a $160,000 Porsche and $2.9 million home near Point Loma with a sweeping view of the San Diego Bay and downtown skyline.

Gao pleaded not guilty Monday to an eight-count indictment charging her with two counts of wire fraud, four counts of money laundering and two counts of aggravated identity theft. Her attorney declined to comment, saying he could not yet do so because he had yet to receive reports or evidence from the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Federal authorities arrested Gao last month while she was awaiting a San Diego Superior Court judge’s verdict following a civil bench trial dealing with the same accusations. Earlier this month, Judge Eddie Sturgeon ruled against Gao in the civil case, ordering her to pay more than $23 million in compensatory damages and $8 million in punitive damages to her former boss and his companies.

Prosecutors allege Gao not only scammed her former boss but also fabricated evidence in the civil case by faking a letter from a Chinese attorney and falsifying the notarization of the correspondence. The letter purported to prove that the plaintiff in the civil lawsuit was an impostor and that she was authorized by the real businessman to make the transactions she did.

According to prosecutors, the Chinese businessman established three U.S. businesses in 2020 and 2021 in order to purchase U.S. aviation assets, with a plan to “improve upon their concepts and bring a commercially viable aircraft to market in the United States.” As part of that plan, he purchased $23 million of distressed assets from a U.S. aircraft company in late 2020 with the help of a longtime business associate who lived in San Diego.

In 2020, the two business associates needed someone to work as a bank account representative, so they turned to the woman who was working as a nanny to the San Diego man’s infant children. Prosecutors said that in China, it’s a common business practice to have a relatively low-level administrative employee serve as an accounts payable clerk with signatory authority over a company’s bank accounts.

After a few months, the nanny informed her boss she could no longer perform the bank account representative duties, but she recommended that he hire her daughter, Gao, instead, according to the charging documents. Gao was hired on a part-time basis and given the same signatory authority as her mother had been given. But after just a few months, she was replaced.

About a year later, after Gao’s replacement quit, the Chinese businessman and his San Diego associate rehired Gao — again at the suggestion of her mother — and once again gave her signatory authority over the companies’ bank accounts, according to the indictment. A second employee also had secondary signatory authority as a security measure.

In April 2022, Gao requested a pay raise from $2,000 per month to $8,000, according to prosecutors. Her request was denied.

Early the next month, Gao allegedly submitted documents to two banks to remove her co-signatory from accounts at those banks, according to the indictment. When the co-signatory learned she’d been removed from the accounts, she called Gao, who did not answer.

Prosecutors allege that a short time later, Gao opened four new bank accounts in the names of her boss’s businesses, but she listed herself as the managing member and sole owner of the accounts. Then she closed the authentic accounts and attempted to transfer more than $23 million into her newly created, fictitious accounts.

Prosecutors allege that Gao “began to rapidly spend, transfer, and conceal” the funds. Those transactions included writing two checks worth a total of $800,000 to a company owned by her ex-husband; sending more than $1.5 million to two different law firms; wiring $2.9 million to an escrow company to purchase the Point Loma home; and wiring more than $3.2 million to the account of a company she created in 2017.

Realizing that his bank accounts had been drained, the Chinese businessman quickly filed the lawsuit in San Diego Superior Court, and within a day a judge issued a temporary restraining order barring Gao from moving the money. By the next month, the judge converted the restraining order into an injunction against Gao.

Throughout the civil case, including at the hearings for both the restraining order and injunction, Gao defended her actions “by claiming that (her boss) was an (impostor),” prosecutors wrote. “She also claimed that she was in contact with, and acting pursuant to the instruction of” the real owner of the companies.

Despite the restraining order and injunction, prosecutors allege Gao continued accessing, moving and spending money even as the civil case made its way through court. She allegedly transferred more than $1 million to her personal bank accounts to fund the purchase of a 2022 Porsche Panamera and luxury purchases at high-end fashion stores. She also allegedly moved $1.6 million to a Hong Kong bank account.

Gao remains in federal custody without bail after a judge ruled she was a flight risk.