A grandmother, reputed to have brought thousands of illegal Chinese migrants into Canada and the United States goes on trial in New York this week in a case that is to shed light on the inner-workings of a global people smuggling operation.

And for the first time, U.S. authorities are admitting that they had tried to recruit the woman to work as their informant--a fact published in "The Asian Pacific Post on Jul 10, 2003":http://www.asianpacificpost.com/news/article/93.html --after the suspect was arrested.

Cheng Chui Ping better known as "Big Sister Ping" faces life behind bars if convicted of alien-smuggling and money-laundering charges in Manhattan Federal Court.

Prosecutors allege Ping oversaw a US$40 million (C$51 million) global smuggling network and an intricate money laundering operation from her base at the Yeung Sun restaurant on East Broadway in New York's Chinatown.

Although Cheng is always referred to by intelligence agencies as a prolific people smuggler and dubbed the 'mother of all snakeheads', the case in New York specifically deals with charges revolving around the ill-fated 1992 Golden Venture voyage.

Snakehead is a term used to refer to leaders of Chinese-based people smuggling operations.

During one month in 1993, at least 25 ships, carrying thousands of immigrants, set off from the coastal province of 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--a former Ping associate.

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.

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 2.00 am on June 7, 1993, the Golden Venture ran aground on a sand bar just off Queens, N.Y., spilling some of its 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.

Cheng's fomer associates from the Fuk Ching gang, including Ah Kay, are expected to testify that she invested US$300,000 (C$380,000) to help finance the Golden Venture operation.

In recently filed court papers in New York, prosecutors charged for the first time that Cheng's smuggling operation actually began in the 1980s, and that she previously was caught and agreed to inform against the infamous Fuk Ching gang.

But, officials now say, Ping double-crossed the FBI, not coming across with the information and continuing her smuggling.

Prosecutors say Cheng commonly used ships--some of which she owned--to bring the aliens into East Coast cities such as Boston and New York and then transported them over land in rented U-Haul trailers, charging fees of up to $50,000 (C$63,454).

Ping's lawyer, Lawrence Hochheiser, said he plans to question the "quality and character" of the co-operating witnesses.

"Most of the witnesses are people who have been co-operating with the government for years to get a reduction in their sentences," Hochheiser said before the trial opened.

"Most are Fuk Ching gangsters who have pleaded guilty to racketeering and murders... we're going to be attacking not what was said but who said it."

Cheng, who bears the persona of a demure middle-aged businesswoman, was born in 1949 in the poor farming village of Shengmei in China's coastal province of Fujian.

Cheng 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.

She started out selling clothes and cheap food in New York's Chinatown but by the late 80s and early 90s, Cheng's stature had grown so large that she was among the best-known and most revered figure in the area.

Hundreds of Fujianese migrants owed her money and the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown created a boom in her business.

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

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. Cheng'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's gang was 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, Cheng became an informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation but she was continuing to engage in illegal activities even while she purported to be co-operating with the FBI.

After she got out of jail, Cheng 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.

In a later episode linked to Cheng in May 1998 prosecutors say 14 aliens drowned off the coast of Guatemala as they were being transferred from a larger smuggling ship to a smaller boat.

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 pocketing over $13.5 million (C$17,1 million) over a decade.

In 1994, after the Golden Venture disaster Cheng was able to slip out of the U.S. and go to Hong Kong, triggering an international manhunt.

She was arrested at a Hong Kong airport on April 17, 2000, travelling under an alias with her son. She was extradited to the U.S. in July 2003.

"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 after her arrest.

Said Peter Kwong, a Hunter College professor who has written extensively on human smuggling, "She is one of the few they have... The unique aspect to Sister Ping is that she was brazen enough to be staying around in the U.S. Most of the people who are doing this do not want to be in the U.S."

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.

"She ran a reliable and smooth operation," said Wong, adding many of those who dealt with her to flee China called her a "snakehead with a heart"

See 'The mother of all snakeheads' , "Asian Pacific Post, Jul 10, 2003":http://www.asianpacificpost.com/news/article/93.html