Like in Hollywood: the gang creatively laundered millions of dollars all over New York

Edition New York Post shared an exposure of the criminal gang of Asians in the spirit of the best Hollywood blockbusters.

Movie chase

The sight of the police car's flashing lights was enough to send Shaui Sun into a panic. The man raced from Queens along the Georgia highway in a rented SUV. Sun and his passenger, Darren Hing Lee, were nearly 800 miles from their New York homes and were transporting more than a quarter of a million dollars in drug cash. The policeman stopped the car and ordered them to get out.

“Mr. Sun was very nervous talking to me. He couldn't stand still. I saw how fast the carotid artery in his neck was pulsing, ”the policeman later wrote in a police report.

The officer searched the men's SUV and found a suitcase and backpack stuffed with 33 bundles of $20 bills, two bundles of $100 bills, and a money counting machine. A police officer seized cash — $350 in total — during a stop in August 000. The authorities then released the men to freedom. According to police and federal officials, it was a planned move to spread a wider net for more suspects.

This skirmish helped federal agents eventually uncover a multi-million dollar laundering scheme. It was run by a group of Asians in New York.

For years, at the behest of drug dealers from the South and Midwest, the gang moved and laundered money in such areas of the Big Apple as Flushing, Queens, Sunset Park and Bensonhurst in Brooklyn.

Since that stoppage in 2018, the investigation has trapped five men: Li, Song, a Queens cab driver in the livery of Jian Feng Wu, and two other money laundering suspects, Xian de Jiang and Xiao Yu Wang.

Network

Before Lee and Sun were pulled over on I-85 northeast of Atlanta, federal drug enforcement agents spent the day spying on the couple. The men met drug dealers in a Walmart parking lot and a nearby apartment building about 30 miles north of the Georgia state capital.

Agents tapped the phone of a well-known drug dealer, José "Chikis" Herrera - Guzmán. And watched as he and his group handed over a quarter of a million dollars in cash to two New Yorkers.

Lee and Sun's trip to Georgia was one of several out-of-state trips the couple made during 2017 and 2018 as part of their money laundering operation, according to court documents.

During this period, the 30-year-old men flew to Georgia and also made several trips to Detroit, Michigan. There they collected cash, which they later transferred to warehouses in New York or laundered themselves. Crew members also received cash in Chicago, the feds said.

To launder the money, Sun opened two accounts with TD Bank in the name of the alleged Flushing-headquartered business, authorities said.

From 2017 to 2018, he deposited multiple checks totaling $100. The feds discovered that the checks were written by someone else. That man was later convicted of tax evasion for writing bad checks in exchange for cash.

Sun also laundered the cash, spending it on a number of luxury items at a jewelry exchange in Baltimore, according to federal prosecutors. This includes a $10 Vacheron Constantin wristwatch and a $520 Bulgari ring.

A confrontation with a Georgia state cop didn't stop Lee, a XNUMX-lingual Baruch College graduate who attended Brooklyn Technical High School.

During 2018, the federal agents who kept him under surveillance seized more than $500 from him during various landings. After which he was eventually released, continuing surveillance.

The cash seizure included more than $20 seized from the parking lot of a mall on Willis Avenue in Roslyn, Long Island. And more than $000 seized at the New York-Presbyterian Hospital on Main Street in Flushing.

“By participating in this, the defendant and others played a critical role in the laundering of millions of dollars in drug proceeds,” federal prosecutors wrote in Lee’s November 2021 sentencing document.

On the subject: New York used drug tests that gave incorrect results: 1600 people were affected

From 'BOOM' to recession

Around the same time that Li was smuggling and laundering drug money, Jian Feng Wu, a taxi driver in Flushing, received a business proposal from one of his clients to join the team. The man paid the taxi driver several hundred dollars in exchange for picking up bags of cash and delivering them around the city.

Wu, who fled China's Fujian province at 18 to emigrate to Queens, agreed to take part in the Capers.

In April 2018, Wu and alleged accomplice Xian De Jiang met with a suspected drug dealer in the parking lot of a Chinese buffet on Francis Lewis Boulevard in Bayside, Queens, according to authorities.

Wu took a red bag containing more than $150 from the Latin American and allegedly left with Jiang. Law enforcement officers who were watching the exchange stopped them and seized the cash.

Five crew members were arrested in 2019 and charged in federal court in Manhattan with conspiracy to launder money.

Herrera-Guzman, a drug dealer from Georgia, was separately convicted on drug trafficking charges last week and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Atlanta DEA agent Robert J. Murphy said the Mexican cartel supplied Herrera-Guzmán with heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported at the time of his arrest.

Wu was given a suspended sentence Thursday by Manhattan federal judge Laura Taylor Swain. The woman agreed with his lawyer, Chris Madiu, that he was a low-level player in the scheme. The ruling comes three months after Li was sentenced to two years in prison after pleading guilty to money laundering charges. Song pleaded guilty to deliberately concealing information about a serious crime and is due to be sentenced later this month.

Wu's accused partner, Xian De Jiang, posted bail and fled. And he hasn't appeared in court since. The fifth suspect, Xiao Yu Wang, pleaded not guilty. He is due to appear in federal court in Manhattan later this year, according to court documents.

A spokesman for the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York declined to comment on the case.