Posing as a musician and a collector, a California man persuaded a violin shop in Virginia to send him a number of valuable instruments on a trial basis, federal law-enforcement officials said. The shop shipped him an 1823 violin valued at $175,000, another from 1903 worth $55,000 and three bows worth $5,000, the officials said.
The man, Mark Meng, 58, of Irvine, Calif., was supposed to either buy the instruments or return them after a brief trial period, the authorities said. Instead he sent the shop a check for $235,234 that bounced, according to an indictment, and sold one of the violins for a fraction of what it is worth. He also took violins from several other music stores and robbed a bank near his home, the indictment said.
Mr. Meng, who pleaded guilty in September to one count of wire fraud and one count of bank robbery, was sentenced Wednesday to 46 months in federal prison.
A lawyer for Mr. Meng, Anthony M. Solis, said Wednesday that his client, who does in fact play the violin, appeared to have struggled after being released from prison for a prior conviction. He had “lapsed into some drugs and gambling,” Mr. Solis, said, “and things kind of got out of hand.”
In a defendant sentencing memorandum, Mr. Solis wrote that on the day of his arrest in the spring of 2024, Mr. Meng had a heart attack.
The indictment said that from 2020 to 2023 Mr. Meng, posing as a collector of musical instruments, contacted several violin shops across the country seeking to try out high-end violins that he claimed to be interested in buying. In some cases, officials said, he bought bows before asking for the violins for a brief trial period.
Prosecutors said that Mr. Meng resold some of the violins he had illegally obtained for thousands of dollars to unwitting buyers. In the meantime, they said, Mr. Meng lied to the violin shops that he had stolen from, making up excuses for why the instruments had not been returned. According to the indictment, Mr. Meng told an employee at one music store that he had inadvertently shipped its Gand & Bernardel violin, dated 1870 and valued at $60,000, to Amazon.
A restitution hearing in the case has been scheduled for June 24.
Prosecutors said that in addition to targeting violin stores, Mr. Meng also tried his hand as a bank robber. In April 2024, prosecutors said, Mr. Meng entered a bank in Irvine wearing a hat, sunglasses and a bandanna, which covered his face. Mr. Meng gave a bank teller a note stating: “$18,000. Withdraw. Please. Stay Cool. No harm. Thx,” according to court documents.
When the bank teller said she did not have access to that amount of money, Mr. Meng responded: “Give me whatever you have,” according to the documents.
The teller handed over $446 and Mr. Meng fled, according to the legal filings.
“Pure desperation,” his lawyer, Mr. Solis, said of the robbery. He said that Mr. Meng had undertaken that crime after he had already met with the government and was trying to resolve the fraud case.
“The fraud scheme was kind of sophisticated,” Mr. Solis said. “The bank robbery was kind of cartoonish.”
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