Asian Criminals Prey on Fearful but Silent Victims

The scheme was simple but clever. Two Chinese immigrants, seeing a lucrative opportunity in a growing Asian community, opened a car sales and leasing firm in Alhambra in July, 1985.

Word quickly spread that Tony Lam and Peter Wong were offering Mercedes-Benzes at $1,000 to $1,500 less than competitors. On the strength of a booming trade, Lam and Wong soon found themselves courted by Chinese community leaders and Chinese bankers eager for their business.

Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation say the two men relished the attention. They wore diamond rings and heavy gold chains and began dating employees of some of the eight banks where they opened business accounts.

Their reputations firmly established after six months of operation, Lam and Wong decided to cash in. They told bank managers they were attempting to buy the Jim Marino Mercedes dealership in Alhambra and needed large sums of cash.

Checks for $1.6 Million

On a Thursday and Friday in late January, 1986, the two men wrote checks totaling $1.6 million at eight banks in Monterey Park and Chinatown in Los Angeles. Bank managers, who had no reason to distrust them, honored the checks.

By the following Monday, the checks had bounced and incredulous bankers searching for Lam and Wong found only a vacant business office and a bare Rosemead condominium where they had been living. Both had been emptied over the weekend.

The two fugitives, who entered the country illegally on forged Thai passports and whose names are aliases, are wanted by federal authorities on suspicion of using a three-day “float” period to embezzle the $1.6 million and another $1.4 million from a ninth area bank.

But the ensuing investigation into their crimes and whereabouts has been hampered by a reluctance on the part of the victimized banks to cooperate with law enforcement agencies. Investigators from the FBI’s West Covina office and the Monterey Park Police Department say the bankers would rather forget the monetary loss than risk a public court case that could result in a loss of face.

Silent Victims

The case highlights one of the chief problems facing local and federal police agencies investigating crimes in the Asian community: Asian newcomers often choose to be silent victims.

The failure to report crimes, law enforcement authorities say, results from fear of reprisal, traditional distrust of police and a belief carried over from their native countries that bribery, extortion and other similar practices are merely a cost of doing business.

“Asian criminals are successful because they prey upon their own people, they prey upon the culture and the fact that extortion and other crimes are a way of life back home,” said Jones Moi, a Monterey Park police detective who specializes in crimes involving Asians. “It makes our job that much tougher.”

Even more elusive, police say, are crimes committed against Chinese newcomers who are in this country illegally. Unlike the Mexican national who crosses the border poor and without documentation, the Taiwan native often arrives in the United States with a temporary visa and lots of money, immigration experts say.

When the documentation expires, police say, the newcomer becomes illegal and is vulnerable to criminals who view him and his money as a “safe mark.”

“It’s one of our biggest problems,” said Monterey Park Police Chief Jon Elder. “We can’t break the grip of these criminals because their victims many times are illegal aliens who remain silent for fear of being deported.”

In the past few years, responding to the continuing flow of Asian newcomers, local police agencies have taken a number of steps to counter such problems. They have hired Chinese and Vietnamese-speaking officers, established a network of Asian volunteers to assist in translation and formed Asian-gang task forces.

While more Asian businessmen are now reporting extortions and attempted extortions, police acknowledge that their efforts have fallen short in both reaching out to a new community of immigrants and combating a growing threat from Chinese and Vietnamese gangs.

In Monterey Park, for instance, which has a 40% Asian population, the Police Department has hired a Chinese-speaking community service officer whose sole job is to perform home-security inspections and to enlist Asians in the Neighborhood Watch crime prevention program.

‘Cultural Barriers’

But Capt. Joseph Santoro said Asian participation in Neighborhood Watch remains low. “I don’t think it’s because they’re unwilling as much as it’s a matter of overcoming cultural barriers,” he said.

In addition, Santoro said, the city often finds itself ill-equipped to uproot local gambling, extortion and prostitution rackets that appear tied to Chinese and Vietnamese crime groups nationwide and overseas.

“This is a 72-man police department. We simply don’t have the manpower to deal with criminals who can network from Los Angeles to Houston to New York to Toronto and then overseas,” he said.

Alhambra Police Chief Joseph Molloy, whose department has hired four Asian officers in the past three years, echoed those feelings.

“Problems in Taiwan and other Asian countries are causing me problems in Alhambra,” he said. “But we have to look at the small picture. We can’t go chasing criminals who are international in scope.”

Most Are Law-Abiding

Police agree that the vast majority of Asian newcomers are law-abiding and exemplary citizens. For the most part, crimes in the Asian community are indistinguishable from crimes in other communities, with the typical range of burglaries, thefts and assaults.

Yet several recent cases, all successfully prosecuted, stand as telling examples of some unique aspects of Asian crime, how it sometimes extends beyond local borders and can involve large sums of money:

- Last year, a local member of the powerful Taiwan-based Four Seas Gang pleaded guilty to the kidnaping for ransom of a wealthy 26-year-old Chinese woman. Two other gang members charged in the October, 1984, case are in jail awaiting trial.

The woman and her mother were in the United States illegally and had contacted friends of the gang members in an attempt to secure fraudulent U.S. residency documents. Posing as agents of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the gang members forced the daughter at gunpoint from her Monterey Park home and took her to a Pasadena residence they had rented.

They demanded $1-million ransom, to be delivered at a hotel in Tokyo where other gang members were stationed. But the victim’s father, a Taiwan banker, refused to pay. Just as the victim was to be shot, court records show, one of suspects helped her escape in the hope that he would ingratiate himself with the father and receive a payment.

- Over the past several months, Monterey Park and Alhambra police have raided two Asian-run brothels with possible links to nationwide and overseas gangs. In the first case, police said, the women were recruited through a bar in Taiwan and given U.S. visas. In return, they were required to work as prostitutes for three to six months, after which they were free to leave.

Three women arrested in the raid have pleaded guilty to prostitution charges. Police said phone records indicate a link between the local operation and brothels in New York, Denver and San Francisco run by Chinese gangs.

In the second case, police raided a Monterey Park home used as a front for prostitution and arrested six Korean women. The women, five of whom await trial, were all married to American servicemen in what appeared to be phony “paper marriages.” Two businessmen, a Chinese and a Korean, suspected of running the operation have pleaded guilty to enticing females for the purposes of prostitution and await sentencing next month.

- In January, a Chinese man pleaded guilty to bribery charges for participating in a scheme that took hundreds of thousands of dollars from Taiwan nationals in exchange for fraudulently granting them U.S. residency status.

Alfred Lin, 50, of Northridge, pleaded guilty to conspiring with an INS employee and her husband to secure permanent residency status or green cards for 36 Taiwanese aliens posing as Buddhist monks and nuns.

The Taiwanese, who lived in Monterey Park and Chinatown, paid bribes of up to $40,000 each to qualify under a federal law granting permanent residency to foreign clergy.

Lin worked as a contact inside the Chinese community and helped prepare the necessary documents while Dorothy Anaya, an INS examiner, actually conferred the immigration status, court records show. Anaya and her husband, Robert, who received at least $700,000 during the yearlong scheme, were sentenced last October to four years in prison.

The Taiwan nationals, mostly professional people, arrived in the country on temporary visas, some of which had expired. The INS has asked an administrative law judge to deport several of them and is reviewing the cases of others for possible deportation. The agency has agreed not to act against three others who cooperated in the investigation.

The case came on the heels of the discovery of an even larger immigration fraud ring that led to the indictments of a Monterey Park Chinese banker, five Chinese businessmen and four INS employees in October, 1985.

The principal organizer of the ring, David Chen, is a fugitive believed to be living in China. The others all have either pleaded guilty or been found guilty of various crimes in the scheme and have been given probation or light sentences.

U.S. Atty. Robert Bonner, head of the Los Angeles office that handled the case, said 19 Chinese illegals paid $55,000 each for permanent residency and citizenship status. One woman here illegally paid $100,000 for papers showing that she was a naturalized citizen. All 19 are in the process of being denaturalized, after which they will be deported.

“What’s so shocking is the incredibly large amounts of money Chinese aliens are willing to throw around to obtain status,” Bonner said. “That, coupled with a few INS employees susceptible to bribes, makes for an intolerable situation.”

- An attempt by the Taiwan-based gang United Bamboo to establish a foothold in Monterey Park and other Chinese communities nationwide was dealt a severe blow when eight of the group’s leaders recently were convicted in New York on federal racketeering and drug conspiracy charges.

One leader, Chang An-lo, known as “White Wolf,” owned and operated a Monterey Park Chinese restaurant before his arrest. Local police believe Chang was selected by gang leaders in Taiwan to organize branches of United Bamboo in New York, Houston, Seattle and San Francisco under a headquarters in Monterey Park.

“They were just in the growing stages when things fell apart for them,” said Monterey Park police detective Moi. “At one time, they formed an alliance with the Wah Ching (a Chinese street gang) and did some extortions here.”

United Bamboo, which boasts 25,000 members in Taiwan alone, including a number of popular singers, senior government officials and military officers, came to the attention of federal authorities after the 1984 murder of Chinese-American journalist and author Henry Liu.

Liu was killed at his home outside San Francisco by three gang members who had traveled from Taiwan, including Chen Chi-li, the group’s top leader. According to Chen’s own accounts, he was recruited for the job by the head of Taiwan’s Defense Intelligence Agency, Adm. Weng Hsi-ling.

Chen, who is serving a life sentence in Taiwan for the murder, said the admiral ordered Liu killed because of his critical and embarrassing accounts of Taiwan’s ruling Chiang family. The admiral, who was removed from his post, also is serving a life sentence for his role in the murder.

Taped Confession

Only one of the gang members convicted on racketeering charges in New York was a principal in Liu’s killing. In fact, Chang helped federal authorities investigate the murder by turning over a taped confession from his leader Chen, who remorsefully detailed the plot.

Chang, who is now serving 15 years for conspiracy to distribute narcotics, has contended in numerous interviews with The Times that local and federal authorities exaggerate the gang’s prowess in America.

“Some of us came here to open legitimate businesses and some of us came for education,” he said in an interview last year. “We didn’t come here to organize our gang.”

Law enforcement officers readily admit that they lack firm evidence directly tying local Asian gangs to groups in Taiwan or Hong Kong or even to groups in other U.S. cities.

“We’re still on the ground floor of this problem,” said Jack Truax, head of the FBI’s West Covina office. “We really don’t know a lot of what they’re doing.”

‘Not Traditional Crime’

“It’s not the traditional type of organized crime that we associate with the Mafia,” Moi said. “The crime rackets may be the same but the organization isn’t as tightly knit.”

Moi estimates that 60% of his workday is taken up by Chinese-Vietnamese youth gangs involved in a variety of street crimes, including auto theft, extortion and residential and commercial robberies.

He cited the recent arrest of two San Gabriel Valley Chinese-Vietnamese youths in connection with the robbery of a jewelry store outside Boston as sign of unusual mobility and possible organization.

“How many kids in the Crips (a black gang) will do a local robbery and then fly out to the East Coast and do one there?” he asked. “That’s not your usual street gang activity.”

Intelligence Sharing

Moi hopes his department’s participation in a series of meetings in Sacramento with several other police agencies throughout the state will lead to a program of sharing intelligence about Asian criminals and Asian crime.

The group, organized by the state attorney general’s Bureau of Organized Crime and Criminal Intelligence, is looking into possible connections between Asian gangs and the lucrative Pai Gow Chinese poker games at Los Angeles-area card clubs.

In addition, the group is interested in whether Asian gangs control a growing number of Chinese “hostess” bars in the San Gabriel Valley and elsewhere. Businessmen who frequent the bars often spend $500 a night for Remy Martin cognac that sells for $100 a bottle ($80 above retail), and the company of a female dancing partner.

“We’ve got to track where the crimes are committed and who’s involved,” said Bill Sanderson, of the state attorney general’s organized crime bureau. “Once we do that, maybe we can piece together if there’s some organization to all of it.”