Grocer, Wife Accused of Having Market Torched : Riots: Case is second instance of merchants charged with using the unrest as a cover for destroying their business.

A grocer and his wife were arrested Wednesday on charges that they had their South-Central Los Angeles market torched during last spring’s riots, then applied for insurance and government assistance.

Kyu Shup Lee, 43, and his wife, Kyung Sin Lee, 39, of Cerritos removed non-perishable goods from the market and then invited nearby residents to “take whatever’s left and burn the place down,” the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office alleged.

Their business, Joe’s Market at 6632 S. Hoover St., was in fact destroyed by a fire apparently started by a Molotov cocktail after the inventory was removed on April 30, prosecutors said.

The Lees were being held in lieu of $500,000 bail each on arson and fraud charges that carry a potential sentence of nearly 14 years in prison.

The case is the second in which merchants are charged with using the riots as a cover for destroying their businesses--but it also will likely be the last such prosecution, officials said.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael J. Cabral, who is handling the Lee case along with one brought last May against the owners of a Long Beach liquor store, said the prosecutions conclude lengthy investigations by a Los Angeles Fire Department task force and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

After the riots, arson investigators suspected that scores of businesses might have been burned by their owners, but they also warned about the difficulty of investigating such cases.

“This about does it,” said Cabral, adding that it was “a fair assumption that there are other people out there who did this who were not able to be investigated.”

Making such a case requires “eyewitnesses willing to come forward, mainly neighbors and even customers,” he said.

Canvassing of the area around Joe’s Market produced such witnesses, authorities said, and cases of beer and canned goods later were discovered in the Lees’ garage during a search of their home in July.

The Lees allegedly told their insurance company they had lost more than $120,000 in inventory and also applied for a $237,000 loan from the Small Business Administration. Officials said the federal agency has given them more than $25,000 to date.

The couple also applied for assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency; prosecutors said FEMA has paid their $1,500 monthly home mortgage since May.

The first riot-related arson charges stemmed from the burning of an Eddie’s Jr. Market in Long Beach. In the still-pending case, the father and son owners of the store are accused of conspiring with a retired Seal Beach policeman to set a fire that caused more than $1 million in damage.