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Posted on Wed, Feb. 15, 2006


Trio charged in threats to collect immigration debt


Three Chinese nationals, including a Philadelphia couple, were accused by a federal grand jury yesterday of threatening to harm the young son of an illegal Chinese immigrant to coerce her to pay a $90,000 debt to the "snakehead" gang that in 2003 smuggled them into the United States.

Mei Qiao Zheng, a woman prosecutors say is believed to be in Fujian Province in China, and Yan Yu Zheng, 41, and her husband, Min Zhang Zheng, 47, both of Philadelphia, were indicted on a charge of conspiracy to collect extensions of credit by extortionate means. The Philadelphia couple were in federal custody yesterday pending a detention hearing.

According to the indictment, the Chinese immigrant, identified only as "X.G.," and her minor son were smuggled out of China through New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport on April 18, 2003. The three smugglers, known as "snakeheads," provided the woman and child with transportation from their village in Fujian to Beijing, food and lodging, airline tickets, and false passports and visas.

From the woman's arrival until March 2004, the indictment alleges, Mei Qiao Zheng - via telephone from China - and the Zhengs here began pressuring the woman to start paying her $90,000 debt. The woman was told that "to live or die" was up to her and that snakeheads would cut off her son's hand if the debt went unpaid.