Las Vegas Woman Married Multiple Men to Fund Gambling Addiction, Faces Up to 24 Years in Prison
Marry a stranger, collect the money, disappear, repeat. That’s roughly the scheme a Las Vegas woman is now pleading guilty to — and the numbers behind it are strange enough to make the plot itself almost beside the point: 15 marriage applications, one fake identity, and something like $300,000 gone at a single casino.
Jiaying Chen, 33, pleaded guilty this month to fraud charges tied to a string of marriages investigators say she used to bankroll a gambling addiction.
How big this actually was
Chen married five men between April and June this year alone. That’s not where the pattern started, though — Clark County records show 15 marriage applications going back to March 2019, and she’d already been arrested on bigamy once before, in 2024.
She wasn’t always using her real name, either. Authorities say she carried forged documents — a Nevada driver’s license and a US passport — under the alias Vicky Liang.
What she pleaded to
At Clark County District Court on Thursday, July 9, Chen pleaded guilty to one count of bigamy and one count of obtaining money under false pretenses. Originally, prosecutors had her on six felony bigamy counts and two counts each of forgery and theft.
Not every application became a marriage eight of the 15 resulted in certificates. Chen reportedly told investigators the deciding factor was money: no payment, no wedding. What she said to get the ones who did pay to marry her is still an open question.
Under the Vicky Liang alias, county records show a near-identical pattern running on its own timeline: eight more applications between April 2025 and June, seven of which became marriages.
Where it all went
By Chen’s own account to investigators, one marriage could net as much as $20,000. Las Vegas, she reportedly said, made the marrying part fast and left plenty of room for the gambling.
She found the men on social media and pulled roughly $138,000 from at least three of them, telling them, investigators say, that sick relatives needed the money. It went to Wynn’s casino floor instead, where she’s said to have lost around $300,000 over the past year. She’s now looking at up to 24 years in prison.