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Immigrants' smuggler iced
Golden Venture big faces 35 yrs.

BY ROBERT GEARTY
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
June 23, 2005

The 10 Chinese immigrants who drowned when the ill-fated Golden Venture ran aground in Queens in 1993 were avenged yesterday when "the mother of all snakeheads" was convicted of trafficking in human cargo.

Cheng Chui Ping, a Chinatown grandmother and shopkeeper better known as Big Sister Ping, was convicted of money laundering and conspiracy to smuggle people into the U.S. for two decades.

But Ping is most notorious for engineering the ill-fated attempt to smuggle in nearly 300 illegal Chinese immigrants aboard a decrepit freighter that ran aground off the Rockaways early on a June morning.

The sight of terrified immigrants shivering on the beach in their underwear shocked the city and led to an international probe that revealed the sleazy world of the snakeheads - heartless smugglers of humans.

Ping, 56, fled to China when she was indicted a year later, and allegedly continued to prey on her own peoples' desire to find a better life in America.

Yesterday, Ping betrayed no emotion when she was convicted in Manhattan Federal Court on three counts of conspiracy, money laundering and trafficking in ransom proceeds - crimes that could send her to jail for 35 years.

But the jury, which deliberated for five days, failed to reach a verdict on the most serious count - that she held immigrants hostage and extorted money.

The jury will resume deliberations on the count today, which carries a maximum penalty of life in prison without parole.

Ping's lawyer, Lawrence Hochheiser, said prosecutors pilloried his client with the testimony of Chinese "murderers" and "extortionists" who ratted out his client in return for reduced sentences.

Hochheiser said the 35 years that Ping faces behind bars might as well be a life sentence. "There's enough years there to cause a problem," he said.

Ping ran a multimillion-dollar empire that used boats, cars, planes and even trucks with fake floors to flood the country with thousands of illegal immigrants, prosecutors said.

Calling her "the most powerful and most successful alien smuggler of our time" and "the mother of all snakeheads," prosecutors said Ping operated out of a storefront at 47 E. Broadway - a souvenir shop.

She watched TV coverage of the Golden Venture tragedy from the store, according to testimony.

For $40,000, Ping offered desperate Chinese a chance to get to America. But she used a violent Chinatown gang, the Fuk Ching, to squeeze smuggled migrants for more money when they got here - and make sure they paid, prosecutors said.

Ping's secret empire began to crumble when the Golden Venture hit a sand bar off the Rockaways.

Prosecutors David Burns and Leslie Brown described how Ping and her snakehead associates arranged to have the Golden Venture travel to Kenya to retrieve a load of illegal aliens that another captain had left stranded there.

They described the squalid conditions the victims lived in during the more than 100-day voyage. When they weren't fighting off snakeheads, the migrants fought seasickness, hunger and despair.

One of Ping's henchmen, Hui Yu Weng, gave the order to scuttle the ship when he couldn't find anybody to unload the human cargo.

Weng testified against Ping, as did the Fuk Ching boss, Ah Kay, who is serving time for murder. Ah Kay said his gang bought the Golden Venture with $300,000 Ping wired to Thailand from East Broadway.

While in China, prosecutors said Ping was involved in another smuggling venture by boat that ended in disaster when 14 immigrants drowned off the coast of a small town in Guatemala in 1998.

Ping was captured by the FBI two years later when she tried to board a plane with a false passport at a Hong Kong airport. She was returned to New York after a three-year extradition battle.

Charges vs. Big Sister Ping

Count 1: Conspiracy - participating in international human smuggling and hostage-taking operation.

GUILTY

Count 2: Hostage taking - holding hostage 130 people offloaded from a boat and taken to Boston and then New York.

DEADLOCKED

Count 3: Money laundering - Wiring $30,000 to smuggle four people from China.

GUILTY

Count 4: Money laundering - wiring $60,000 to Thailand to smuggle 300 people from China.

NOT GUILTY

Count 5: Trafficking in ransom proceeds - receiving money from families of illegal immigrants as payments for their release.

GUILTY