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

Raymond ‘Shrimp Boy’ Chow Convicted Of Racketeering, Murder

January 8, 2016 10:51 AM



SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – A jury convicted a key defendant Friday of racketeering, murder and other counts after a years-long federal undercover investigation centered in the Chinatown district of San Francisco.

Defendant Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow stared straight ahead and showed no reaction as the verdicts were announced.

The probe also ensnared former California state Sen. Leland Yee, who has pleaded guilty to a racketeering count involving bribes.

Prosecutors said Chow ordered the slaying of the head of a Chinese fraternal organization with criminal ties that Chow then took over. They also charged him with conspiracy to murder another rival.

Investigators say Chow used the organization as a front for drug trafficking, money laundering and the sale of stolen cigarettes and alcohol.

An attorney for Chow said in his closing argument that the prosecution case was built on secret surveillance and shady witnesses.

The prosecution’s main witness against Chow was an undercover FBI agent who posed as a foul-mouthed East Coast businessman with mafia ties while infiltrating Chow’s organization.

The agent, who testified under a false name, said he wined and dined Chow and his associates for years.

Chow willingly accepted envelopes stuffed with thousands of dollars in cash for setting up various crimes, including illegal liquor and tobacco sales, the agent said.

Defense attorney J. Tony Serra argued that the government set up his client by foisting the envelopes on him and courting him with expensive dinners and high-end liquor purchased with public money.

Chow was actually a reformed gangster who renounced his criminal ways after leaving prison in 2003, the lawyer said.

Chow testified to dealing drugs and getting involved in a street gang but said he decided to renounce criminal activity after engaging in meditation. He denied involvement in the slayings and said he was given the money because the agent was looking out for him, not in exchange for criminal activity.

During her closing argument, federal prosecutor Susan Badger urged jurors to disregard claims that Chow was a changed man, saying deception was part of his nature.

“He is not the victim here,” Badger said during her nearly four-hour presentation. “He is not the world’s most misunderstood criminal.”

The investigation ensnared more than two dozen people, including Yee, who pleaded guilty to a racketeering count in July alleging he accepted bribes with the help of an associate of Chow.

Yee is scheduled to be sentenced Feb. 10.

http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2016/...eering-murder/

Ex-state Sen. Leland Yee gets 5 years in prison in corruption case


Former state Sen. Leland Yee, shown in 2014, was sentenced to five years in prison Wednesday after pleading guilty in a government corruption case.
(Ben Margot / Associated Press)


Maura Dolan and Patrick McGreevyContact Reporters


A federal district judge sentenced former state Sen.Leland Yee, a San Francisco Democrat, to five years in prison Wednesday for trading political favors for campaign contributions. He was also fined $20,000.

Yee admitted in a plea deal that he was part of a racketeering conspiracy that involved exchanging official acts for money, conspiring to traffic in weapons and money laundering. Specifically, Lee promised an undercover FBI agent favors in return for campaign contributions.

Government prosecutors had asked that Yee be sentenced to eight years in prison, a three-year term of supervised release, a fine of $25,000 and a $100 special assessment.

“Yee demonstrated he was a public servant who was willing to betray the trust of those who elected him by being prepared to sell his vote to the highest bidder,” prosecutors said in recommending the sentence.

Yee’s lawyers, citing the poor health of Yee’s wife and the ex-lawmaker’s long years of service, had asked for a sentence of from four years and three months to five years and three months.

Leland Yee, Shrimp Boy and one extraordinary San Francisco corruption scandal

"Today, Yee is a 67-year-old man who has accepted responsibility for his conduct and pleaded guilty before this court,” his lawyer argued. “Yee has led an otherwise exemplary life as a family man, an active voice for the betterment of society, and volunteer.”

Yee also agreed to forfeit about $33,000, mostly from his campaign account for secretary of state, according to a court filing by prosecutors.

Yee was a state senator when an undercover FBI agent recorded him making promises in exchange for campaign money from May 2011 through March 2014. Yee ran unsuccessfully for San Francisco mayor in 2011 and was running for secretary of state when he was arrested.

Yee was one of five state lawmakers — one of them no longer in office — charged with crimes in 2014.

The loss of lawmakers caught in the scandal cost Senate Democrats a supermajority they had won two years earlier. It also tarnished the reputation of the Legislature as a whole, said Jessica Levinson, a Loyola Law School professor and president of the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission.

The prosecution “merely feeds into many people's preconceived notion that politicians are dirty and out for themselves, not their constituents,” Levinson said.


Raymond 'Shrimp Boy' Chow found guilty of 162 counts in massive corruption case

As a result of the scandal, the Legislature placed a measure on this year’s June ballot asking voters to approve suspension without pay for errant lawmakers. The state Constitution requires suspensions with pay.

The prosecutions also led to a significant court ruling in which a judge for the first time said that the public had the right to see legislators’ office calenders and emails, despite a state law that has long protected legislative documents from public disclosure.

The Senate, responding to the scandal, adopted resolutions in 2014 that ban members from fundraising during the last month of the legislative session and the month leading up to a budget vote, when special interests are especially active in trying to influence legislation.

The resolutions also require the Senate Rules Committee to appoint an ethics ombudsman to accept allegations of wrongdoing and protect whistle-blowers from retaliation. In addition, all senators and staff members were ordered by the leadership to undergo more rigorous ethics training that year.

Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed legislation that would have created tougher rules. Brown said in one of his veto messages that the proposed rules on campaign funds "would add more complexity" to existing regulations "without reducing undue influence."

Levinson said the attempts at reform would not prevent future corruption.

“If people, including politicians, are going to engage in wrongdoing, they will do so regardless of legal impediments,” the law professor said. “A senator who is willing to be bribed will do so regardless of whether there are new laws that, for instance, increase the frequency of campaign finance reporting.”

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/l...223-story.html

SF crime boss ‘Shrimp Boy’ Chow sentenced to life in prison

By Bob Egelko
Updated 12:43 pm, Thursday, August 4, 2016

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Photo: Brant Ward, The Chronicle


Former state Sen. Leland Yee tried to avoid photographers as he left the Federal building in San Francisco, Calif. Yee pleaded guilty July 1, 2015, to charges of racketeering and admitting he accepted bribes ... more


Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow, convicted of racketeering and murder as the leader of a venerable community organization in San Francisco’s Chinatown, was sentenced to life in prison by a federal judge Thursday.

U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer sentenced Chow, 56, to two life terms in prison after a federal court jury in San Francisco found him guilty in January of conspiring to operate the Ghee Kung Tong as a racketeering enterprise and of ordering the murder of its previous leader, Allen Leung, in 2006.

Chow was also convicted of conspiring to try to murder another rival, Jim Tat Kong, who was later shot to death in 2013, of five counts of dealing in stolen liquor and cigarettes, and of 154 counts of money-laundering. The Leung murder conviction carried a mandatory sentence of life without the possibility of parole.

His lawyers plan to appeal his convictions.

The trial followed a five-year undercover federal operation that also implicated then-state Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, one of 28 defendants indicted along with Chow in 2014.

FBI agents posing as shady campaign contributors contacted Yee through Keith Jackson, a former San Francisco school board president who had ties to Chow’s organization. In July 2015, Yee and Jackson pleaded guilty to racketeering and admitted that the senator, with Jackson’s help, had accepted bribes in exchange for promises of political favors and an agreement to illegally import firearms.

Breyer sentenced Yee to five years in prison in February, while Jackson, who admitted taking payoffs for other crimes, including a fictitious murder-for-hire plot, got a nine-year term. Jackson and two former local government employees are also charged with agreeing to bribes by undercover agents who allegedly sought access to Mayor Ed Lee.

The undercover investigation focused on the inner workings of the Ghee Kung Tong, a century-old Chinatown “brotherhood” that prosecutors said had become a front for crime and corruption under Chow’s direction.

Chow became the tong’s leader after a still-unidentified gunman shot Leung to death in February 2006 at his import-export business in Chinatown.

A self-described gangster for much of his life, Chow was imprisoned in 1993 on another racketeering charge and won early release a decade later for testifying against a gang leader. Testifying in his current case, he told jurors in December that he had reflected on his past while in prison and promised himself to live a crime-free life.

He began counseling troubled youths in minority communities and later won praise from Lee and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. But prosecutors said Chow was plotting all along to take over the Ghee Kung Tong and to run it as a criminal gang, with the help of longtime followers.

One prosecution witness, who had pleaded guilty to lesser charges, said he had heard Chow order Leung‘s murder in the midst of a feud between the two men. The driver of the getaway car also said Chow had set up the killing. Jurors heard a secretly recorded conversation in which Chow supposedly told an undercover agent in 2013 that he had once advised Leung that anyone who messed around with Chow, or with his investments, would be “gone.”

Chow listened to the same recording and testified that he hadn’t been referring to Leung. Defense lawyers told the jury that the prosecution witnesses were convicted criminals and liars who had been allowed to meet in jail and coordinate their stories.

The other homicide charge involved Kong, the onetime rival in an affiliated organization, the Hop Sing Tong, who was shot to death in Mendocino County in 2013. Another co-defendant testifying for the prosecution said Chow had ordered him to kill Kong in 2011, then told him later that the matter had been “handled.” Chow denied any involvement in Kong’s death.

Most of the charges against Chow involved crimes that his subordinates allegedly agreed to commit with an undercover agent who posed as “Dave Jordan,” and described himself as an East Coast businessman with mob connections. The agent recorded three years of conversations with Chow.

Testifying in a courtroom closed to the public, the agent described agreements with members of the tong for sales of supposedly stolen liquor and cigarettes, and some drug deals, with more than $2 million of the proceeds laundered to evade government detection.

The agent said Chow had introduced him to his followers and approved their transactions. Jurors heard recordings in which the agent thanked Chow and pressed envelopes of cash on him, which Jordan said totaled more than $60,000. Chow usually protested, saying he hadn’t done anything for the money and didn’t want to know the details — but, the agent said, he never refused payment.

http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/...ow-9123055.php