The mother of all snakeheads

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Thu, July 10 2003

For over two decades, police in Canada, the U.S. and Hong Kong have been trying to put away Cheng Chui Ping. She is accused of smuggling thousands of Chinese migrants into North America and Europe via boats, planes and trucks. Last week she was brought to the U.S. to face trial. In this special investigative report we tell you the story of the woman they call...

"The mother of all snakeheads"

By Asian Pacific News Service

The undercover agent remembers the day clearly. Doing his best not to scratch at the wire, which was painfully taped to his body, the agent ordered some tea at the Yung Sun restaurant in New York's Chinatown. A few minutes later there was a commotion. A sort of respectful bustle. The kind you see and hear when someone important arrives. But there was no one of that import that caught the agent's eye.

"She looked like one of the workers at the restaurant," he said. "We talked for a while...she denied having anything to do with bringing in people to the U.S...I told her we knew all about her

operation "She said she had nothing to do with what I was talking about. I told her the U.S. government wanted her to work for them, go after the big guys." She said the only people she had helped were her relatives.

Then the meeting was over as abruptly as it started. Cheng Chui Ping aka Big Sister Ping aka Mother of all Snakeheads went back to work - organizing the movement of thousands of illegal migrants to the Chinatowns of Canada and the United States.

THE EARLY YEARS

Born in 1949 in the poor farming village of Shengmei in China's coastal province of Fujian, Ping's parents were peasants and life was hard under the brutal communist regime.

Ping somehow made her way to Hong Kong and later with the help of human smugglers to Canada and later New York in 1981. She came alone leaving her husband and family behind.

Not much is known about Ping's early years and those who knew her from those days do not say very much. Shortly after arriving in New York, she began selling clothes on Hester street and cheap food along East Broadway. Described as an extremely hardworking woman, she opened a general merchandise shop on Hester Street selling variety items and souvenirs.

According to New York police she was naturalized shortly later and her husband and children joined her in New York. For 13 years, Ping worked in Chinatown as a businesswoman and became quite well known in the area said Justin Yu, a writer.

"When we talked to some of the people who remember her, they say they remember her chopping vegetables, washing dishes and waiting on tables at a restaurant that served dishes from her native Fujian province," said Yu. Yu who has been covering crime and immigration for almost two decades in New York's Chinatown for a Taiwanese publication remembers the first time he met Ping.

"There was a robbery at her shop and the robbers took $8,000 in cash...everyone was surprised how she had so much cash in such a small shop," said Yu. Not many people in New York's Chinatown like to talk about Ping fearing repercussions from the authorities and her connections.

At the local Fujian Association, a woman working there said "I don't know who you are talking about." This was the same association to which Ping and her husband donated $10,000 in the early nineties. Ping's husband, Cheung Yick-tak also sat on the board of the association in the early nineties.

While the couple were already quite wealthy by the late eighties, both continued to work each day in the store or restaurant. There were no big cars or flashy clothes. When Ping travelled, she took the subway.

In 1990, business for Ping started booming after the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

She moved to 47 East Broadway, in New York's Chinatown paying US$3 million in cash, for a building directly across the street from a branch of the Bank of China - Beijing's central bank.She later bought the building next door. Steven Wong, a social activist in New York's Chinatown who worked for the U.S. government on Fujian migrant cases, said Ping was very well established by the late eighties and early nineties.

"People really liked her because she was kind? she ran a reliable and smooth operation," said Wong. Wong, who has interviewed Ping said the Yung Sun restaurant was a major activity centre for Fujian migrants. "It was right across from the Bank of China and she was running a better operation than the bank," he said.

According to Yu and Wong, Ping set up an underground bank in her restaurant and could transfer money overnight just by making phone calls to China. "Nobody wanted to use the bank anymore...they were slow and bureaucratic," said Yu. "The Bank of China took three weeks, charged a bad foreign-exchange rate and delivered the cash in Yuan. Sister Ping delivered the money in hours, charged less and paid in American dollars. It was a better service."

Wong said that things became so bad for the Bank of China that it began offering colour televisions and prizes to lure customers away from Ping's operation. "Still," he says, "no one went to the bank." Yu said the bank began a big propaganda campaign against Ping taking out ads in local Chinese newspapers warning people they could get in trouble by using the underground banks.

DAIJIE PING, THE BIG SISTER

By the late '80s and early 90s, Ping's stature had grown so large that she was probably the best-known and most revered figure in New York's Chinatown. Hundreds of Fujianese migrants owed her money. The 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown created a boom in Ping's business.

The amnesty granted by the U.S. government to Chinese living in the U.S. established a huge legal population that could afford to pay to bring family and relatives over. People in Chinatown began calling Ping Daijie Ping"Big Sister Ping. Police intelligence files and Asian organized crime investigators said by this time Ping had put the pieces of a global smuggling network together, at first by making trips to China herself and acting as guide to small groups, using Mexico, Belize and other Central American states as staging points. Police said she did it by buying off corrupt immigration, tourist and other officials, using fake or purchased papers and then trans-shipping immigrants to America.

She had direct connections with the Public Security Officials in Fuzhou and used them to obtain entry and exit visas for her clients.

She charged a small down payment, and hopeful migrants promised to borrow the rest of the money upon arrival from families already in the U.S. Those who couldn't pay were found jobs at restaurants and garment factories and allowed to pay off the debt, with interest and in instalments. But unlike other snakeheads, known for beating up migrants who could not afford to make payments, Ping was described as benevolent and kind. "I haven't heard many bad stories about her - those that I interviewed tell me she was good and sent money to the families of those who died on their way here or gave free passage to a son if someone died on the way here," said Wong.

"The Fujianese don't see human smuggling as a crime. They see it as a necessary service. She was like a goddess. A snakehead with a heart."

"She is even better than Robin Hood," said Ping's younger sister Sue, who lives in New Jersey. In an interview published in the United States, Sue Ping said: "Sister Ping never stole anything and still helped the poor. She is a good person... My sister was just thinking of helping others. How would she know it would get her into trouble"

Police and others however paint a different picture of Ping. They say she is a cruel woman, who used the notorious Fuk Ching gang to prey on the helpless migrants. They claimed she would not hesitate to kill. She was a travel agent selling tickets to hell," said Wyng Lam of The Chinese Staff and Workers Association in New York.

GOLD MOUNTAIN

At the height of her prowess in moving people, Ping the one-time queen of Manhattan's Chinatown used her underground bank in New York to funnel $40 million US in illegal earnings back to China. She had turned a mom-and-pop migrant smuggling sideline into a vast global empire with links to organized crime, especially with the notorious Fuk Ching triad.

Her prey was mainly mainland Chinese farmers and displaced workers who viewed North America as the "Gold Mountain". Peter Kwong, a professor of Asian-American studies at Hunter College in New York, described Ping thus: "There was something very normal, very nondescript about her for someone so powerful. She was plump and dressed like any other middle-aged woman in Chinatown."

But Ping's carefully woven facade of modesty and benevolence began to fray as police in Canada and the United States began to close in on her operations.

In Canada, her name began cropping up on wiretaps as the RCMP began tracking Fuk-Ching Triad members, suspected of using native reserves to smuggle people across the Canada-U.S. border. Ping's husband, Cheng Yick Tak, was also caught at U.S. airports and border points trying to bulk-carry cash back to China.

In 1989, Cheng and Ping's gang are alleged to have smuggled two women, including a Malaysian and two children, aged 13 and seven, across the Niagara River into the U.S. in a cheap rubber raft. They all drowned. In another case, the gang is said to have kidnapped three Chinese women in Vancouver who had entered Canada illegally in the early 1990s. The gang demanded ransoms from their families in China after threatening to rape them and force them into prostitution.

Ping was arrested and convicted of conspiracy to smuggle aliens into the United States, and sentenced to six months in prison after the Niagara drownings.

While serving time, Ping became an informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, providing information on other migrant smugglers " called "snakeheads" " as well as on the Fuk Ching. Special agent Peter Lee, her FBI handler said, she "was continuing to engage in illegal activities even while she purported to be co-operating with the FBI."

Both Canadian and U.S. authorities put together major cases against her competitors based on Ping's information, according to U.S. court documents. After she got out of jail, Ping had abandoned the simple small shipments and was allegedly putting together massive loads of migrants. In September, 1992, 130 Fujianese arrived in a ship off the coast of Massachusetts. In April, 1993, 120 were discovered off the coast of Mexico.

The migrants paid " or promised to pay " amounts ranging from US$20,000 to US$35,000 for the journey. Many were held hostage by members of the Fuk Ching, according to the FBI, and were tortured and beaten until they produced the cash or made payment arrangements, often over several years. Others were threatened with having their feet amputated and sent to their families, Some victims had cellphones taped to their heads so their families overseas could hear them being tortured, one report said.

As the negative publicity around Ping began to dominate the New York media, Ping allegedly put a $50,000 US contract on the head of a Chinese-American reporter with the New York Daily News. As business boomed, Ping was working hand-in-glove with Harvard lawyer Robert Porges. New York prosecutors and investigators allege that Porges and his wife Sheery Lu ran an operation filing thousands of political asylum cases for Chinese immigrants and were the front for international alien smugglers.

Among the firm's biggest client was Big Sister Ping.

The firm, run by Porges, has pocketed over $13.5 million over the past decade filing bogus asylum cases, according to indictments in Manhattan Federal Court. Porges allegedly advised the smugglers on the best ways to sneak immigrants into the country, and helped concoct false stories of political persecution for the ones who were caught by immigration officials. "Manhattan attorneys in three-piece suits do not typically come to mind when one pictures the criminals who traffic in human cargo," said Doris Meissner, commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, at the time of Porges arrest.

Immigration agents arrested Porges, 61, and his wife, Sheery Lu, 47, in September 2001 along with five others, including several paralegals. As the investigation continued, seven young women who worked for Porges were arrested and charged. "They were sales people working for the Porges law firm who went out looking for clients and snakeheads," said an Immigration spokesman. The seven were charged under the RICCO act.

Porges and his wife who are serving time in a New York jail used to live in a 50-year-old, 17-room, Cape Cod-style mansion in Stamford with four bedrooms, three fireplaces and eight bathrooms on 1.76 acres, records show.They own additional property in Stamford and a condo in Hollywood, Fla. When agents raided their home, they found $360,000 in cash.

THE GOLDEN VENTURE

During one month in 1993, at least 25 ships, carrying thousands of immigrants, set off from Fujian crammed with human cargo. One of them was the Golden Venture, a dilapidated freighter that had been won in a poker game by Ah Kay. According to U.S. government charges, Ah Kay, Ping and several other snakeheads loaded the ill-fated ship with immigrants. Two of Ah Kay's brothers were supposed to meet the Golden Venture in New Jersey and supervise the unloading of the ship.

But they were killed in a gunfight with rival gang members in New Jersey. The rival gang members were taking revenge against Ah Kay and his group who had killed two of their members earlier in Manhattan's Chinatown.

With no contact on shore, The Golden Venture with about 300 Fujianese tried to get close to New York to unload the migrants. Shortly after 2 a.m. on June 7,1993, the Golden Venture ran aground on a sand bar just off Queens, N.Y., spilling a human cargo into the cold Atlantic. Ten drowned, 200 others, some dressed in business suits, some in their underwear, were pulled from the water, and 100 more were found huddled on the squalid ship, where they had lived under wretched conditions for three months.

When the Golden Venture ran aground, a horrified Ping was watching the tragedy on TV from her New York apartment. The Golden Venture " a ship, incidentally, which had earlier visited Vancouver's harbour without attracting notice " convinced the U.S. government that the human smuggling racket was both dangerous to the immigrants and a threat to the nation's stability.

Within months of the Golden Venture incident, the Clinton Administration passed anti-alien-smuggling legislation, speeded up deportation hearings, stopped granting political asylum to those who said they were fleeing China because of its restrictive family planning laws, and had law enforcement agencies target organized crime associated with smuggling. Ping and Ah Kay were feeling the heat. Police were hunting for them and raided the Fujian Association in Chinatown, which they believed to be the headquarters of the Fuk Ching gang.

But Ah Kay and Ping had fled back to Fujian.

In August of 1993, Ah Kay was arrested in Hong Kong and later extradited to the United States on murder charges. According to the then U.S. Consul General Michael Klosson in Hong Kong, Ah Kay, who also used the name Guo Liang Chi, was sentenced in 1998 to 20 years in jail and fined US$200,000 for organizing a criminal conspiracy.

He is now going to be one of the main witnesses against Big Sister Ping.

ESCAPE TO CHINA

The Golden Venture debacle put Ping squarely in the sights of law enforcement officials in Canada and the United States. Ping knew she had to lay low and used her connections to avoid the law. Several months after the Golden Venture ran aground, Ping was invited to China along with other overseas notables of Fujianese descent for an anniversary celebration of the Communist Party. She saw this as an opportunity to get away from America and use the shelter of her connections in China.

But when she arrived in China she was arrested.

According to police, she bribed her way out of custody and fled to her native village of Shengmei and took refuge at No. 398 Shengmei village"her house"a three-story structure with a pagoda on the roof. She has erected other buildings in town as well. Police say Ping turned Shengmei into her new headquarters and continued to travel extensively.

She legally holds three passports: one from Hong Kong, one from the U.S. and one from Belize. While in China, she allegedly explored new routes and techniques for getting people into the U.S. One of her key contacts is believed to be Zhuang Rushun the former Public Security Bureau chief in Fujian who has been executed for corruption.

She also worked with another high ranking official in Fujian identified as Fhang Wei. Fhang Wei has been indicted by the US government after a sting operation showed him running passports out of his office. Police and immigration officials in Canada and the US say Ping and other snakeheads also made an alliance with Serbian officials and funnelled several planeloads of immigrants a day through Belgrade to Europe and the U.S. In addition, intelligence officials said she and others were running migrants using military trucks overland to Europe.

THE UNPLANNED VOYAGE

From her base in China, Ping continued her operations masterminding several loads of illegal migrant shipments to west. She continued to move around the world, using several different passports. Police in Britain, the Netherlands, Central America, the United States and Canada suspect she was involved in many migrant smuggling operations, including the failed attempt to bring 60 migrants into Britain via cargo container.

Late last month, a Dutch court sentenced eight people to up to six years in jail in connection with a year 2000 case. In the incident, 58 Chinese migrants were discovered dead when a Dutch lorry rolled off a ferry at the English port of Dover. They had been hidden behind a load of tomatoes in the lorry from Rotterdam. Two migrants survived.

As the noose around Ping tightened, police chased several reports of her visiting European and Asian countries. Her name turned up on wiretaps in Canada, the United States and Central America throughout the late 1990s.

In April 2000, her luck ran out. Unable to locate her after an intensive search, Interpol agents began checking passenger lists of flights from Hong Kong's Chek Lap Kok airport to New York after getting word that she may be trying to slip back into the U.S.

They already suspected she had made at least one undetected trip back to the United States, likely in January 2000, by using a false passport. In the end, it wasn't her name that gave her away, but that of her son. Interpol agents spotted his name on a flight manifest to New York on April 17, 2000. With more than 40 agents staked out in the Hong Kong airport on the morning of the son's flight, Ping eventually was spotted wandering around the airport at about noon.

She was carrying her three passports at the time of her arrest. For the last three years, Ping, 52, has been housed at the Tai Lam prison for women, fighting depression and a deportation order to the United States.

Last week she was brought to the United States and arraigned in a U.S. Federal court in New York. Ping faces a possible life sentence if convicted of charges including conspiracy and extortion.

"It's really a case of an enterprising individual who took advantage of those so desperate to escape the poverty and misery of their homeland," said prosecutor David Kelley.

"But while promising them passage to their dreams, Sister Ping often delivered only a nightmare and sometimes death."