A federal jury in Alexandria, Virginia, has convicted a Chantilly man on charges of wire fraud and bankruptcy fraud after prosecutors said he swindled more than $2.5 million from acquaintances he persuaded to let him invest their savings, then hid the stolen assets from a bankruptcy court to avoid repaying his victims.
Jihoon Park, 52, was found guilty on three counts of wire fraud and two counts of bankruptcy fraud following a trial in the Eastern District of Virginia. According to the Justice Department, Park used his personal relationships within his community, along with a past affiliation with a major national financial institution, to build trust with victims and convince them to hand over money for investment on their behalf.
Prosecutors said Park promised safe investments with high, guaranteed returns, but instead diverted the funds for his own use, including purchasing a house and buying cryptocurrency. When one victim filed a lawsuit against him seeking repayment, Park allegedly transferred assets to his wife and concealed millions of dollars in cryptocurrency holdings before filing for personal bankruptcy protection. In that bankruptcy filing, he claimed to possess just 34 cents in financial assets and denied owning any cryptocurrency, statements prosecutors said were knowingly false and intended to shield him from paying back the people he defrauded.
“Jihoon Park claimed he would invest his community members’ life savings, retirement, and money and promised a high-yield return. Instead, he stole the millions of dollars entrusted to him to enrich himself,” said Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. Duva added that unsuspecting families suffered devastating financial hardship as a result of Park’s conduct and that the department’s White Collar Section would continue pursuing cases that threaten people’s livelihoods and retirements.
Park is scheduled to be sentenced on Dec. 10, 2026. He faces a statutory maximum of 20 years in prison on each wire fraud count and up to five years on each bankruptcy fraud count. A federal judge will determine the actual sentence after weighing the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors, meaning the final punishment could fall well short of the maximum exposure outlined by prosecutors.
Cases involving affinity fraud, in which perpetrators exploit shared community, religious, or professional ties to gain victims’ trust, remain a persistent challenge for federal investigators. Such schemes often target close-knit populations where personal relationships lower people’s guard against financial red flags, and losses frequently wipe out retirement savings that victims cannot recover even after a conviction.
The case also highlights growing scrutiny of how bankruptcy filings intersect with fraud enforcement, particularly when defendants attempt to use the bankruptcy process to escape restitution obligations. Federal authorities have increasingly paired wire fraud charges with bankruptcy fraud counts in recent years, reflecting concern that debtors may exploit court protections to shield ill-gotten assets, including harder-to-trace holdings like cryptocurrency, from creditors and victims.
The FBI’s Washington Field Office investigated the case. Trial attorneys from the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and National Fraud Enforcement Division are prosecuting Park, with assistance from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, according to a Justice Department press release.
