Alabama Police: Chinese Migrant on Student Visa Posed as Federal Marshal to Scam Elderly Victim of $400K



by Warner Todd Huston 17 Jun 2025

A Chinese national in the country illegally has been arrested in Alabama over a scheme aimed at defrauding a vulnerable elderly American of her life savings, a crime that has been on the increase in the U.S.

Xiahezhati Xiaokelaiti, 23, who has illegally overstayed a student visa, was arrested Friday and accused of defrauding an elderly woman out of around $400,000 over a three-week period, WEAR-TV reported.



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Meet Xiahezhati Xiaokelaiti, a Chinese national, who was arrested in Alabama for allegedly scamming a 70-year-old woman out of $400,000 of her life savings.

Xiaokelaiti reportedly came into the United States on a student visa that has since expired. He then posed as a US marshal

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11:39 AM · Jun 17, 2025

“It’s life-changing when it happens to somebody like that,” Spanish Fort, Alabama, Police Chief John Barber told the press. “Somebody that’s in their retirement years and did so well to save this money. And here in just a matter of weeks, somebody has changed their life.”

“We have enough home-grown criminals here, and we don’t need other people coming into our country and victimizing our residents that shouldn’t even be here,” the chief added.

Investigators say the illegal alien conned the woman into thinking he was a federal marshal working with the U.S. Treasury Department and convinced her to turn her cash into gold and give it to him. The woman, investigators say, thought she was following orders from federal law enforcement.

Eventually she became suspicious and involved police whereupon an investigation was begun.

Federal agents have been reporting a wide network of similar scammers targeting elderly Americans, many of them run by Indian and Chinese nationals, most here illegally. Perpetrators often call these scams “hog butchering,” because the elderly and easily fooled Americans often have a fat bank account.

In May, for instance, eight Chinese migrants were arrested in Rhode Island and charged with defrauding elderly victims. The scheme was of a similar nature as that in Alabama, where the fraudsters contacted the victims by phone posing as members of federal law enforcement.

That same month, three other Chinese nationals in the U.S. illegally were arrested in New York and New Hampshire and investigators charged them with a scheme defrauding elderly victims involving gift cards.

In other news, members of a transnational crime syndicate were sentenced to federal prison for defrauding elderly Americans through schemes including online romance scams, business email compromise and investor fraud, and unemployment insurance fraud.

“For some individuals, this was their life savings, and they were unable to financially recover,” said FBI Dallas Special Agent in Charge R. Joseph Rothroc. “We hope these sentences give them a sense of comfort and sends a clear message that the FBI is committed to pursuing justice for victims.”

https://www.breitbart.com/crime/2025...ictim-of-400k/