Thread: CALIFORNIA STATE SENATOR ACCUSED OF CONSPIRICY TO DEAL FIREARMS AND WIRE FRAUD

CALIFORNIA STATE SENATOR ACCUSED OF WIRE FRAUD

By PAUL ELIAS
Mar. 26, 2014 5:53 PM EDT

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  State Senate sergeant-at-arms Leroy Hamer, right, and a California highway patrol officer stand outside the office of Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, at the state Capitol, Wednesday, March 26, 2014, in Sacramento, Calif. FBI spokesman Peter Lee said Yee was arrested Wednesday, he declined to discuss the charges, citing an ongoing investigation. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)
  
  
  
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  FILE - In this May 25, 2012 file, State Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, speaks at the Capitol in Sacramento, Calif. Yee was arrested Wednesday, March 26, 2014, during a series of raids in the San Francisco Bay Area. FBI spokesman Peter Lee declined to discuss the charges, citing an ongoing investigation. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, File)
  
  
  
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  Police officers enter a business connected to California State Sen. Leland Yee in San Francisco, Wednesday, March 26, 2014. The FBI said Yee was arrested during a series of raids in the San Francisco Bay Area on Wednesday. (AP Photo/Jason Dearen)
  
  
  
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  A California highway patrol officer stands outside the office of Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, at the state Capitol, Wednesday, March 26, 2014, in Sacramento, Calif. FBI spokesman Peter Lee said Yee was arrested Wednesday, he declined to discuss the charges, citing an ongoing investigation. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)
  
  

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Federal officials are accusing a California state senator of conspiracy to deal firearms and wire fraud.

The allegations against State Sen. Leland Yee were outlined in an FBI affidavit in support of a criminal complaint against Yee and 25 other people. The affidavit was unsealed Wednesday, as Yee was scheduled to appear in court.

Also named in the affidavit is Raymond Chow. Chow, who is also known as "Shrimp Boy," was the former leader of a Chinese criminal organization with ties to Hong Kong.

Chow is accused of money laundering, conspiracy to receive and transport stolen property and conspiracy to traffic contraband cigarettes.

He and Yee were arrested earlier in the day during a series of raids by the FBI in Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay Area.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

A California state senator who was lauded for his efforts to make government more transparent was arrested Wednesday along with a onetime gang leader known as "Shrimp Boy" during a series of raids by the FBI in Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay Area, authorities said.

FBI spokesman Peter Lee confirmed the arrests of State Sen. Leland Yee and Raymond Chow, but declined to discuss the charges, citing an ongoing investigation. Yee was scheduled to be arraigned in federal court in San Francisco later Wednesday.

The agency was executing numerous arrests and search warrants in the Bay Area, FBI Special Agent Michael Gimbel said outside the offices of Ghee Kung Tong, a fraternal organization in San Francisco's Chinatown that Chow reportedly headed. It was among the sites searched. Firefighters were seen going inside with a circular saw and later said they had cracked a safe.

Yee is the third Democratic senator to face charges this year. Sen. Rod Wright was convicted of perjury and voter fraud for lying about his legal residence in Los Angeles County, and Sen. Ron Calderon has been indicted on federal corruption charges. Wright and Calderon are taking a voluntary leave of absence, with pay, although Republicans have called for them to be suspended or expelled from the Legislature.

Mark Hedlund, spokesman for Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, confirmed that the FBI searched Yee's office in the state capitol on Wednesday, but he said he had no information about the arrest.

"We're hoping for more as we go through the day," he said.
Steinberg, D-Sacramento, said he had no comment and did not know anything about the investigation.

Officers from the California Highway Patrol and Senate sergeant-at-arms details were standing guard outside Yee's office, where a morning newspaper remained untouched.

Yee, 65, represents western San Francisco and much of San Mateo County. A spokesman for the senator, Dan Lieberman, said he had no comment, but the senator's office would release a statement in the afternoon.

He is best known publicly for his efforts to strengthen open records, government transparency and whistleblower protection laws, including legislation to close a loophole in state public records laws after the CSU Stanislaus Foundation refused to release its $75,000 speaking contract with former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin in 2010.

Chow ran a Chinese criminal organization with ties to Hong Kong and was convicted of gun charges. But he had recently been held up as an example of successful rehabilitation and was praised for his work in the community.

Yee's arrest came as a shock to Chinese-Americans who see the senator as a pioneering leader in the community and a mainstay of San Francisco politics, said David Lee, director of the Chinese American Voters Education Committee.

"People are waiting to see what happens, and they are hoping for the best, that the charges turn out not to be true," said Lee, whose organization just held a get-out-the-vote event with Yee and other Chinese-American elected officials last week.

For his efforts to uphold the California Public Records Act, Yee was honored last week by the Northern California chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, which awarded him its public official citation for his efforts last year to maintain the requirements of the California Public Records Act.

Yee has at times clashed with fellow Democrats for casting votes of conscience, refusing to support the Democratic budget proposal in 2011 because of its deep cuts to education, social services and education. He also opposed legislation by a fellow Democrat, Assemblyman Paul Fong of Cupertino, that banned the sale of shark fins used for Chinese shark fin soup, saying that it unfairly targeted the Chinese-American community.

Yee is among three Democrats running this year for secretary of state, the office that oversees elections and campaign finance reporting. He lost a bid for mayor of San Francisco in 2011.

A man was charged last year for threatening Yee over legislation that he proposed to limit rapid reloading of assault weapons.

Chow acknowledged in an unpublished autobiography that he ran prostitution rings in the 1980s, smuggled drugs and extorted thousands from business owners as a Chinatown gang member, KGO-TV reported two years ago.

In 1992, Chow was among more than two-dozen people indicted on racketeering charges for their alleged involvement in crimes ranging from teenage prostitution to an international drug trade mostly involving heroin.

He was later convicted of gun charges and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. He spent 11 years in prison and was released in 2003 after he cut a deal with the government to testify against another high-ranking associate, Peter Chong. Chong was later convicted of racketeering.

But Chow told KGO-TV in a 2012 interview that he had changed and was working with at-risk children in San Francisco.

U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California issued a statement in 2012 recognizing Chow as a former offender who had become an asset to his community, the Sacramento Bee reported. Chow was also praised by San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee for his "willingness to give back to the community," the Bee reported.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/fbi-c...d-yee-arrested

RELATED

http://www.alipac.us/f9/state-sen-ye...es-nbc-299837/

Yee affidavit (137 pages)

http://www.scribd.com/doc/214734146/Yee-affidavit

Also named in the affidavit is Raymond Chow. Chow, who is also known as "Shrimp Boy," was the former leader of a Chinese criminal organization with ties to Hong Kong.

The affidavit is fascinating especially the part about this guy being a Chinese national.

Originally Posted by Newmexican

The affidavit is fascinating especially the part about this guy being a Chinese national.

I can't copy that pdf file but I typed this much of it:

B. COMPLAINTANTS

Kwok Cheung CHOW, a/k/a Raymond Chow, a/k/a Shrimp Boy, a/k/a/ Ha Jai (hereinafter CHOW) is a 54 year old Chinese citizen who is believed to reside in San Francisco, California...

... CHOW currently wears an ancle bracelet and is under supervision of an ICE deportation officer. . .

So why didn't the FEDS deport him when he got out of prison?

http://www.alipac.us/f9/mayor-charlo...harges-299853/

GOP candidate for Calif. governor is sex offender, served decade in jail for manslaughter

http://www.alipac.us/f9/gop-candidat...fender-299662/

From the Citizen's Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms:

"BELLEVUE, WA – Criminal charges announced in San Francisco federal court Wednesday afternoon against anti-gun California State Sen. Leland Yee and several others shows the contemptible nature of the gun prohibition movement, because among the allegations is one that he was involved in a conspiracy to traffic firearms, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today.

“If these allegations are true,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, “Sen. Yee is easily the biggest hypocrite on gun control to walk the halls of the capitol in Sacramento, if not the entire United States.”

The complaint alleges that Sen. Lee conspired with two other men, identified as Keith Jackson, a political consultant, and Dr. Wilson Sy Lim, to traffic in firearms. “The 137-page complaint is simply staggering,” Gottlieb added. “Here’s a prominent anti-gun Democrat state senator allegedly involved in a gun trafficking scheme, among other alleged crimes that include wire fraud and dealing firearms without a license. And this guy has spent a considerable amount of energy in the California legislature trying to deny law-abiding Californians of their gun rights.”

The gun trafficking scheme allegedly involved activities in the Philippines, with the cash to be broken up into “legitimate campaign donations,” according to the court documents.

“It is hard to fathom this kind of activity on a scale as massive as these court documents allege,” Gottlieb said. “If Sen. Yee and his fellow defendants are convicted, they’re going to wind up in one of the biggest gun-free zones in the country, a federal prison.”"

CA DEMOCRAT'S ALLEGED ARMS TRAFFICKING SCHEME LINKED TO ISLAMIST REBELS




by JOEL B. POLLAK
26 Mar 2014

The 137-page, FBI-sworn affidavit against California State Sen. Leland Yee, a Democrat who is also running for Secretary of State, and over two dozen other individuals reads like a crime thriller.

Beyond the widely reported stories of alleged wire fraud, money laundering, corruption, and bribery, the affidavit contains tales of alleged murder-for-hire plots involving a political consultant close to Yee, as well as large international weapons trafficking operations.

Indeed, while the media have fixated on the hypocrisy of a gun-control advocate--Yee sponsored legislation against detachable magazines, for example--alleged involvement in gun smuggling, few reports delve into the kind of weapons with which Yee was allegedly involved.

The FBI affidavit describes conversations about shipments of automatic weapons and talk of heavier weapons, including shoulder-fired missiles and artillery.

One arms trafficker Yee allegedly discussed sourced weapons from Russia. Another trafficker, in an alleged meeting with Sen. Yee, political consultant Keith Jackson, and the FBI informant on March 11, 2014, allegedly discussed arms to be obtained from the Philippines. The affidavit claims the arms trafficker claimed personal relationships with Islamic rebels in the Philippines, though the weapons were supposedly to be obtained from sources inside the Philippine military.

Throughout the document, a portrait emerges of a politician who is not only allegedly cavalier about campaign finance limits but who allegedly associates with violent criminals and drug traffickers.

And it is a rather sad picture: at one stage Yee allegedly confides that he does not enjoy his life and wants to live in anonymity in the Philippines.

The Los Angeles Times notes that the persona that emerges in the affidavit is a very different figure than the one Sen. Yee presented to the public: a local community leader and steadfast advocate for gun control whose efforts were nationally recognized.

The sworn testimony by FBI Special Agent Emmanuel Pascua paints Yee as a man who allegedly used corrupt relationships to finance his various campaigns and campaign debts.

Another theme throughout the affidavit is the skillful way in which the FBI manipulated the greed of some of the alleged criminals, who push each other into alleged conspiracies for fear of missing out on their own independent opportunities for self-enrichment.

Though the presumption of innocence must hold for now, the sheer scale and detail of the FBI's work is impressive.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Governm...ns-Traffickers

Warning: SB 249 is California's Worst Gun Confiscation Threat in 20 Years!

Posted on August 3, 2012

Contact your state Legislator TODAY!

Senator Leland Yee of San Francisco now trying to ban and confiscate more so-called "assault weapons."

Originally, Senate Bill 249 was a quiet agriculture bill that passed in the California Senate back in May. With sneaky back-door tactics, Senator Yee turned the bill into a gun ban monster.

SB 249, as amended, would make a small but profound change to the definition of what constitutes a detachable magazine for a semiautomatic firearm. By doing so, hundreds of thousands of semi-automatic rifles, which were legally sold in California over the last decade, would become illegal on July 1, 2013.

The existing definition of detachable magazine was used by Governor Brown’s administration for the four years he served as Attorney General.

Senator Yee’s bill has no provisions to allow permitting, licensing or reimbursement for the loss of valuable property. Worse yet, the bill doesn’t require a public notice program to advise owners of this change in state law.
Thousands of owners could be arrested for inadvertent violations. If you own an affected firearm, your only choices would be to destroy it, surrender it to a law enforcement agency, sell it out of state or have it confiscated at the time of your arrest! Which option would you prefer?

Call AND E-mail your state legislators TODAY and urge them to OPPOSE SB 249

Contact information for your state Senator can be found here.

Contact information for your state Assembly Member can be found here.

Also, contact Governor Jerry Brown and urge him to tell the state Legislature that he stands by the existing definition of detachable magazine,just as he did when he was Attorney General.

Governor Brown can be reached at 916-445-2841 and by e-mail at: http://gov.ca.gov/m_contact.php

Please forward this alert to your family, friends and fellow gun owners across California and urge them to do the same.

California is going to need EVERYONE to help fend off this attack!

http://www.nraila.org/legislation/st...20-years!.aspx