USA Unsolved 17

**Jessica** (0:00)
Welcome back to USA Unsolved, where we visit unsolved cases from the Asian community here in the United States. Today, we are discussing another case out of California, and it is extremely recent, only from about a year ago.
Hopefully, that just means it's a question of when and not if. So today's case involves a senior. And in today's world, specifically when it comes to technology, the elderly are even more vulnerable. Not all, but we see it happen from time to time. Phone scams, text scams, email scams, you name it. We've all experienced something along those lines, like those scammy texts, asking you to pay something or whatnot. While this case is not entirely about being scammed, there are signs, and more than that, it involves the possible kidnapping of a senior citizen. His name is Hou Naiping, and the last day anyone ever made contact with Hou was around mid-March of 2025 There's more to this, so let's get to it.
Mr. Hou Naiping is an immigrant originally from Shanxi Province in China. He took his entire family and moved to the United States where he hoped to explore new opportunities for himself and for his kids. I'm not sure how many kids he has, but I know for a fact that he has at least one son who is still actively speaking out and searching for his father. An important piece of information that will come up later is the fact that Wen, his son, is a very successful cryptocurrency investor.
An article from 2021 stated that he purchased a $9.7 million home, so I guess he is or at least was pretty successful in his trade. As of 2025, Hou was 74 years old, semi-retired, and living with his wife in Rancho Cucamonga, a city a little west of San Bernardino. In March of 2025, Hou's son Wen had gone to visit his parents and the entire family had gone on a family fishing trip at the San Pedro Pier. After his son returned home, things began to change. Per news reports, it appeared that Wen had kept in touch with his father, but only via text. The once-involved and warm father he recognized became aloof and unusually detached.
Wen had tried to convince his father to come visit him and his family, as it was more difficult for him to travel as he had young kids. His father, though, would respond in ways that seemed strange, or at least unlike him. Basically, he found excuses to not get on the phone, excuses to not visit his son. This went on from mid-March to around early May, when his son's initial worries became something that constantly nagged at him. Early May happened to be Hou's birthday, and because he had declined via text to visit Wen and his family, Wen decided to send a present to his father.
It was handmade Chinese noodles. On the day of his father's birthday, Wen tried calling and his calls all went unanswered. When he texted to ask if his father had received the gift, all he got was a quote, yes, I receive it, unquote. Not even a thank you. At this point, alarm bells were going off, so Wen called the local police on May 4th and explained the situation. His father was alone at the moment, as his mother was traveling in China visiting relatives. He was worried as his father had not been acting like himself in recent weeks. So the police understood what he was saying and made a trip over to the Hou family home. Just a quick welfare check. If Hou was around, hopefully he could answer some questions. But Hou was not home. In fact, the house was nearly empty. Personal items, furniture, even the kitchen utensil drawers had been emptied out. The property was almost entirely cleaned out. Someone had left paint buckets and parts of the walls had random sloppy paint jobs, as if done in a hurry. This is obviously super bizarre as the house was not on the market, Hou had no intentions to move or go anywhere. And though sporadic, he had somewhat kept in touch with his family in their family group chat.
Once Wen discovered what the police had found during their welfare check, he wondered if the person that had been texting him was even his father to begin with. Was it possible that he was wrought clean and someone took his phone, pretending to be his father, to delay Wen from looking too closely?
Soon enough, the police were all over this. Hou was missing, possibly kidnapped. Could the kidnappers have wanted more from his family, knowing that his son is basically rich? Like I mentioned, his son is huge in the crypto world, but he also serves as the Chief Investment Officer at Coincident Capital based in Las Vegas. But the odd thing is that Wen never received any suspicious phone calls, no ransom demands. That would have been a huge indication of kidnapping, but the police dug further into Hou's digital footprint and realized that someone had most likely used his phone not just to impersonate him via text messages, but also to make extensive fraudulent transactions, essentially draining his entire retirement and savings account. Mara Rodriguez, a spokesperson for the Sheriff's Office, had stated, quote, there's been a significant amount of unauthorized activity in his bank account, unquote. I am not rich enough to understand this, but apparently you can also purchase gold bars online from your savings account. And that's what the police found. That Hou, or whoever was using his phone, had purchased cryptocurrency and gold bars worth over a million dollars. According to Wen, quote, he has never bought gold in his life. He's not an online savvy person, unquote.