Ex-Kim Aide Convicted in Election Case

A federal jury on Thursday convicted Rep. Jay C. Kim’s former campaign treasurer of four counts of accepting and concealing illegal contributions.

After deliberating less than three days, the Los Angeles jury found Seokuk Ma, 51, guilty of hiding from the Federal Election Commission at least $23,000 in individual, corporate and cash donations. Ma was found not guilty of a fifth count, tampering with a federal grand jury witness.

The verdicts marked the first and so far only conviction of a person who worked directly for Kim, a Diamond Bar Republican whose campaigns have been the subject of an FBI probe for four years. Kim and his wife, June, who ran campaign operations day to day according to witness testimony, have not been charged with any wrongdoing. The Kims said in court papers that they would have taken the 5th Amendment if called to testify.

Kim’s lawyer, Ted Duffy, said his client was “disappointed” at the verdicts and still considers himself the ultimate target of the inquiry.

Chief Assistant U.S. Atty. Richard Drooyan, who prosecuted Ma, declined to comment on the possibility that Ma would be asked to cooperate with the ongoing probe in exchange for a lighter sentence.

“As a general matter, defendants often do cooperate,” Drooyan said.

Ma is scheduled to be sentenced July 7. He faces a maximum of 16 years in prison, but under court guidelines could receive a far lighter sentence.

A Korean immigrant who rose from a job as an avocado farm worker to run a telecommunications supply company, Ma bowed his head as if in prayer as U.S. District Judge Manuel L. Real unsealed the jury verdicts, then sat stone-faced as the clerk read them.

His attorney, Sherryl Michaelson, said that Ma was never offered a formal plea bargain agreement by the U.S. attorney’s office and that he will consider appealing the verdicts. Ma is free on $25,000 bail.

Whether Ma actually solicited and received illegal donations was not the major point of contention at the trial. Ma acknowledged on the witness stand that he illegally reimbursed individuals for even more than the $12,000 amount that prosecutors alleged. He also said he had illegally accepted cash at a 1993 Kim fund-raiser at the Royal Vista Golf Course in Walnut, then used it to pay the $4,853 cost of the event.

In addition, Ma said he carried an envelope containing $6,700 in illegal corporate checks and used it to cover the expenses of a 1994 fund-raiser at the Wilshire Radisson Hotel in Los Angeles, although he denied knowing what was in the envelope.

None of the transactions were reported to the Federal Election Commission.

With those facts essentially uncontested, the trial focused on Ma’s intent. Drooyan depicted him as a cool political operative who worked behind the scenes in Korean business circles and bypassed the law to raise quick cash for the campaign at a time when it was under scrutiny from the press and federal investigators.

Defense attorneys countered that Ma was a well-meaning volunteer whose broken English and loyalty to Korean cultural mores kept him from learning federal election rules or questioning Kim or his wife. Ma denied the charge that he pressured Lola Park, owner of a cosmetics firm, not to testify about her $2,500 contribution to Kim, which was made in the form of an auction bid for a framed note from the congressman.

Ma’s involvement with the Kim campaign began in earnest after the 1992 election, when Kim became the first Korean American elected to Congress.

Just as Ma took on the role as Kim’s liaison with the Korean American community, however, the campaign appeared to be crumbling internally. A July 1993 Times series found a raft of questionable practices in the campaign, including Kim’s use of more than $400,000 from his own engineering corporation to fund his bid. The series prompted the FBI probe. Kim hired Alexandria, Va.-based political consultants Huckaby & Associates to help sort through the allegations and correct problems.

Jane Chong, Ma’s predecessor as campaign treasurer and one of the government’s chief witnesses, said the political consultant had specifically advised campaign officials not to accept cash. But at the 1993 golf course fund-raiser, Chong testified, Ma said, “We’re not turning people away if they have cash.”

Chong, who admitted on the stand that she had taken $3,500 from the campaign and falsified some information about contributors on federal election documents, was not charged with wrongdoing.

Michaelson said the campaign was rife with “enormous sloppiness,” and that her client’s crimes were unintentional.

“Mr. Ma still contends he never did anything intentionally,” Michaelson said. “He made a mistake. He did not understand the full consequences of those actions.”