A woman from China, Jiaying Chen, has been charged in Las Vegas for allegedly marrying 14 men to fund her gambling habit. Since 2019, she has obtained 14 marriage certificates from Clark County and subsequently asked these men for financial help, only to gamble away the money and vanish soon after.
During a court appearance on Tuesday, Chen's attorney, Thomas Wells, stated that she intends to plead guilty to bigamy and to charges of obtaining over $100,000 under false pretenses.
In her own words, Chen claimed to law enforcement that she could earn up to $20,000 from each marriage, explaining her choice to operate in Las Vegas by saying, "it's so easy to get married" in the city. Authorities first apprehended her in 2024, at which point she had filed 14 marriage applications which resulted in seven marriage certificates. Following her release on bond, she disappeared.
Last month, police captured Chen once again. This time, she was applying for marriages using the alias Vicky Liang. In this round, she submitted eight applications and received seven additional marriage certificates.
After her initial arrest in 2024, Chen revealed that not all the marriages were finalized because 2not everyone pays."
Her marriages consistently unfolded in a specific manner: she met potential spouses through social media and quickly proposed marriage. Chen spun various tales to siphon money from them, including fabricated narratives about her family’s medical emergencies back in China. "Once she received the money, she would break all communications with them," police reported. Some men eventually sought annulments, while others indicated they still believed they were married to her.
Among the victims were men who gave her substantial amounts, including $40,000, $23,000, $20,000, and another $30,000, which she claimed was for purchasing a home together. A woman also fell prey to her scheme, losing $40,000 when Chen wrote bad checks using funds from a former spouse's account.
Over the past year alone at the Wynn Casino in Las Vegas, police estimate Chen gambled away as much as $300,000. The total amount lost since 2019 remains unspecified.
In a related case, a UK man named Nigel Baker was sentenced to 17 years in prison last year for running a similar scam. Baker met victims online, convinced them to invest money promising no-risk returns, and then gambled away more than $5 million.
For the bigamy charge, Chen faces a prison sentence of 1 to 4 years and could face up to 20 years for obtaining money under false pretenses. Given her history of evading law enforcement, judges may impose a lengthy sentence, although her guilty plea may mitigate it somewhat.
