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The Los Angeles Twin Towers Jail is supplying lodging to Mei-Ling Huang, described by some of her victims as the “house guest from heaven.”
Huang would cook, she’d clean, she’d play with the children and initially she endeared herself to each of the immigrant Chinese families she stayed with.
But the host families would soon find that things were hardly as good as they seemed. Suddenly, Huang would be gone—and so would money, goods, check books, credit cards and identification papers.
Southern California police had been tracking Huang over her purchase of a new Acura on a Saturday in May. She walked into a dealership, pointed to the car she wanted, and wrote a check for $30,000 to pay for the vehicle in full—a bad check on a closed account. Then, while the dealer is scurrying around looking for Huang and the car, she drives into an Alhambra used car dealer and agrees to sell him the car for $20,000 and takes off with the $6,000 deposit he handed her.
According to one Arcadia victim who met Huang through a mutual friend, Huang showed up on her doorstep one morning in tears explaining that she’d had a fight with her landlady and was thrown out of her rented room. The victim allowed her to spend the night and arranged for another friend to rent a room to Huang starting the next day. When Huang left, she took the victim’s credit card and drivers license, promptly signing up for credit cards at Macy’s, Sears, The Limited and Ikea and making $5,000 in purchases.
At least 20 victims have been identified so far and the stories are all the same. Authorities were not fast-acting enough for some of the victims, so they went to the Chinese newspaper to tell their tale. One reader thought she recognized Huang as “Emily,” a boarder she had just taken in, and notified police. Later than afternoon, as Huang pulled her Acura into the driveway, police were there to arrest her.
Alhambra and Citrus Municipal courts get first dibs on Huang with 14 criminal charges including grand theft and receiving stolen property. When all is said and done in those two jurisdictions, five other police departments have announced their intent to file charges.
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