Kidnappings Spur Joint International Effort

Law enforcement officials in Taiwan, China and the United States say two recent kidnapping cases involving San Gabriel Valley residents spawned a breakthrough in international cooperation that could help combat criminals who prey on the suburban area’s large ethnic Chinese population, particularly Taiwanese businesspeople and their families.

The first case--the Dec. 15 kidnapping of a San Marino High School student who is the son of a wealthy Taiwanese real estate developer--ended with the teenager’s rescue Jan. 4 after more than two weeks of intricate police work that often required simultaneous split-second decisions on two continents an ocean apart.

At one point in the multilateral investigation, FBI agents serving as legal attaches in overseas U.S. missions acted as advisors in mainland China and Taiwan.

“This case took place almost simultaneously in three different countries,” said Clark Frogley, the FBI agent who worked the case in Taiwan. “The boy was abducted in Los Angeles, and then the ransom demands were immediately made to the father in Taiwan by a subject in China. So all of a sudden a simple investigation becomes internationally significant, because it is crossing the international borders of . . . three countries.”

Officials say the case represents a new genre of crimes in which borders are increasingly irrelevant. These offenses, they say, demand a new level of cooperation among national police agencies.

In the second San Gabriel Valley case, a Taiwanese American who owns a business in Arcadia was kidnapped Jan. 4 and held for ransom in Hangzhou, China, according to FBI and Taiwanese police officials. The kidnappers, who police say were Taiwanese and mainland Chinese business partners of the abducted man, demanded $200,000 from the victim’s brother in Arcadia, to be paid from a Taiwan bank account.

Although Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China have no official diplomatic relations, police officials from the two lands communicated about the case on a new hotline established during recently renewed political discussions.

The kidnapping victim--identified by the FBI and Taiwanese police as Tony Hsiao, whose Chinese name is Hsiao Ming-teh--was freed the next day by officers of China’s Public Security Bureau after Taiwanese officers and FBI agents pinpointed his location using wiretaps and sophisticated electronic surveillance.

By acting in concert in the two cases, national police agencies representing very different political systems had to overcome a situation in which criminals based in China take advantage of weak communications and political differences between countries to thwart investigations into crimes initiated in Taiwan or the U.S.

“Typically they need someone to identify the victim, usually in Taiwan or the United States, someone to do the job, and someone to collect the money, usually in China,” said Wong Rong-jung, chief criminal investigator in Taipei. “Until this point, a criminal who gets to the mainland could usually feel pretty secure.”

As part of its five-decade feud with the People’s Republic, Taiwan accuses China of providing safe haven to more than 200 hard-core Taiwanese criminals. Taiwan says the criminals live in luxury in Xiamen, a city in Fujian province.

Ronald Iden, an FBI special agent who coordinated the U.S. investigation into the San Marino kidnapping, praised Taiwanese and mainland Chinese police work. “This sends the message,” he said in Los Angeles, “that neither Taiwan nor the People’s Republic of China are places to hide if you are contemplating this type of crime.”

Although the FBI has worked hand in hand with Chinese and Taiwanese police before on long-term cases involving counterfeiting, drug smuggling and other organized crime, the Chen kidnapping “was the very first real-time investigation,” Iden said, “and it went very smoothly.”

Yang Tzu-ching, director of Taiwan’s Criminal Investigation Bureau, said two quasi-official bodies handling relations between Taiwan and the mainland are negotiating an agreement that would allow Taiwanese and Chinese police to enter each other’s territories to follow leads.

U.S. law enforcement officials are hoping that the cases will encourage more kidnapping victims and their families to report the crimes to police.

In the past, many abductions in Chinese communities of the U.S. and other countries went unreported. Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing refused to report the 1996 kidnapping of his son, Victor Li, to Hong Kong police. The elder Li reportedly paid $130 million for his son’s release, widely said to be the highest ransom ever paid in an abduction.

The alleged kidnapper, Hong Kong resident Cheung Tze-keung, known popularly as “Big Spender,” was arrested in China and executed there in December.

By contrast, the families in both San Gabriel Valley cases promptly reported the abductions to police, who in turn contacted the FBI.

In another recent San Gabriel Valley case in which police were called, a 9-year-old South Pasadena girl was kidnapped Dec. 22 by three masked gunmen who demanded $800,000 in ransom from her Chinese American father. The girl was released after the father paid $200,000. The FBI arrested six Chinese nationals, who were arraigned in Pasadena on Jan. 4 and held in lieu of $1-million bail.

In the San Marino case, the father, Chen Fu-shun, not only reported the abduction to police but also cooperated with the FBI and Taiwanese and Chinese police in the investigation.

He did not learn that his 17-year-old son--Johnny Chen, whose Chinese name is Chen Kuan-nan--was still alive until the last moment of an 18-day ordeal, when he demanded to speak to the boy by phone before turning over the ransom to members of the kidnapping gang in China. That call was critical in helping the FBI isolate the kidnappers’ lair because all prior phone communication had been between Taiwan and the mainland.

“The father demonstrated cooperation and bravery through the whole ordeal,” said FBI Agent Frogley, a legal attache assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo. “It was very difficult for him. I don’t know if I could have held up as well, not knowing whether or not my son had been killed.”

The ordeal ended when FBI agents, acting on a tip from a San Marino resident who spotted a suspicious vehicle and employing surveillance equipment that allowed them to trace the location of a mobile hone used by the kidnappers, freed the boy. He had been held in a Temple City home but was unhurt.

Meanwhile, Chinese police swept into a hotel in Fuzhou, the capital of Fujian province, and arrested two suspects, who were trying to cash $500,000 in traveler’s checks given as ransom by the boy’s father.

Times correspondent Richard Winton in Los Angeles contributed to this story.