Federal prosecutors say a San Diego barber helped build a lucrative international fraud empire that preyed on the elderly and recruited and trained Americans to trick seniors out of their life savings because, as investigators put it, native American English speakers “had a higher conversion rate in defrauding elderly Americans.”
In a motion to detain filed this month in San Diego, federal prosecutors accused 43-year-old Victor Lee Marion Jr. of being the U.S. leader of a global organization based in India that has stolen at least $40 million from more than 500 older victims since 2021. They describe Marion, known as “Vic” or “Peyami,” as a key organizer who used his San Diego barbershop to recruit and manage a network of money launderers.
The organization operated what the FBI calls a “multi-phase elder fraud scheme” that began with pop-up computer warnings claiming a victim’s device was infected with a virus. The victims, often retirees with limited technical knowledge, were directed to call bogus “support” lines run by foreign scammers pretending to work for Microsoft or other well-known tech companies.
Once victims paid a small fee for fake tech services, the operations contacted them again, claiming they had been over-refunded and now owed the company thousands of dollars.
In this phase of the ruse, scammers known as “closers” used remote access software to manipulate victims’ computer screens and make it appear as if their bank accounts contained too much money. Believing they needed to return the excess, the victims sent cash, checks, or wire transfers to U.S.-based intermediaries like Marion’s group in San Diego, prosecutors allege.
Those “money transmitters” kept a cut and sent the rest of the stolen money to overseas accounts controlled by the ring’s foreign leaders. The operation was so extensive that the FBI obtained recordings of more than 100,000 calls between scammers and their mostly elderly victims.
According to prosecutors, Marion and several recruits traveled to Thailand in 2024 for what investigators describe as a lavish “training camp.”
Marion’s party “began their trip on stage at a Thai nightclub with foreign-based leaders of the scheme, where they danced with Thai club dancers and threw stacks of money—money made by defrauding elderly Americans—into the air and out into the crowd,” the detention filing said.
Later, the ring leaders allegedly took the Americans on “high-end Thai tourist activities” like petting tigers.
During the trips, which include complimentary first-class flights and other accommodations, the ring leaders “described the nature of the scheme in detail, had money transmitters shadow a Closer, brought them to a villa, and then—if the money transmitters agreed—trained them for weeks on how to be Closers.”
When the group returned to San Diego, they allegedly continued coordinating payments through fake companies tied to Marion’s barbershop, which prosecutors say doubled as a meeting place and recruitment hub for the scheme.
Prosecutors described Marion as both a flight risk and an “economic danger to the community,” noting that many of the elderly victims have no way to recover what they lost.
“Many of the victims suffered irreparable economic injury and the loss of their life savings at a critical juncture,” prosecutors wrote. “Many are so old they cannot return to the workforce and will live with the impact of the loss for the rest of their lives.”
Marion faces federal charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering. Because of the scale of the operation, the sophistication of the scheme, and what prosecutors called the “substantial hardship” inflicted on hundreds of “vulnerable” victims, sentencing guidelines place his potential punishment in the range of 30 years to life in prison, according to federal officials.
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