New York Chinatown Figures Laundered Millions in Cartel Money for Atlanta Based Smuggler

"Socalj" for Borderland Beat

New York drug enforcement authorities dismantled a group that for years laundered millions of dollars for a Mexican drug cartel operating in the US.

According to an investigation by The New York Post, the team of launderers moved into Big Apple neighborhoods such as Flushing, Queens, Sunset Park, and Bensonhurst in Brooklyn at the behest of drug traffickers. The launderers answered to well-known Atlanta drug trafficker José “Chiquis” Herrera-Guzmán, whom authorities had been tracking for some time before identifying his front men.

It was because of an interception of Herrera-Guzmán's cell phone that the agents were able to observe the delivery of millions of dollars in cash to two New Yorkers later identified as Shaui Sun and Darren Hing Li in a Walmart parking lot and in an apartment building north of New York. the capital of the state of Georgia.

Agents followed the couple, who took the I-85 highway northeast of Atlanta in a rented GMC Terrain and stopped them more than 700 miles from New York. The police stopped the vehicle and ordered them to get out, noticing that they were anxious.

“Mr. Sun seemed very nervous talking to me. He couldn't sit still and I could see his carotid artery beating rapidly in his neck,” the police officer later wrote in a police report. The officer searched the men's truck and discovered a suitcase and backpack containing 33 bundles of $20 bills, two bundles of $100 bills, and a money counting machine. One of those captured, Jian Feng Wu, was a taxi driver who was paid large sums of money to pick up bags of cash and drop them around the city.

The police seized the cash, $350,000 in total, in an arrest that took place in August 2018 and served to expose the gang. According to the authorities, the two detainees were released, and since then they have been closely followed, something that allowed the discovery of a broader network of money launderers that operated throughout New York.

Queen's taxi driver Ian Feng Wu joined the money-laundering scheme and cooperated with authorities.

The laundering scheme was a multi-million dollar and expanding. It was operated by a group of men including Li and Sun, but also a taxi driver from Queens named Ian Feng Wu and two other suspected money launderers, Xian de Jiang and Xiao Yu Wang. Li and Sun's trip to Georgia was one of several out of state the couple took during 2017 and 2018 as part of their money-laundering operation, according to court documents.

During that time, the men, both in their 30s, flew to Georgia and also traveled to Detroit, Michigan, several times to pick up cash that they would then drop off at warehouses in New York or launder themselves. Crew members also picked up cash in Chicago, the feds said. To launder the dough, Sun opened two accounts at TD Bank in the name of a purported company based in Flushing, New York, authorities said.

From 2017 to 2018, he deposited multiple checks totaling exactly $100,000 into the accounts. The feds found that the checks were written by another person who was later convicted of tax evasion and writing bogus checks for cash. Sun also laundered the cash by spending it on a number of luxury items at a Baltimore jewelry exchange, including a $10,520 Vacheron Constantin wristwatch and a $4,234 Bulgari ring. Meanwhile, the run-in with the Georgia State Trooper didn't stop Li, a Baruch College graduate who speaks four languages ​​and attended Brooklyn Technical High School.

Over the course of 2018, the federal agents who had him under surveillance seized more than $500,000 from him during several returns, after which they finally let him go while he continued to be tracked.

The cash seizures included more than $20,000 seized in a shopping center parking lot on Willis Avenue in Roslyn, Long Island, and more than $39,000 seized at New York-Presbyterian Hospital on Main Street in Flushing. The group operated in New York City neighborhoods with a large Asian population, including Flushing and Bensonhurst.

“By engaging in this conduct, the defendant and others played a critical role in laundering millions of dollars in drug money,” federal prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum for Li in November 2021. At about the same time that Li was transporting and laundering the drug money, Jian Feng Wu, a liveried taxi driver in Flushing, received a business proposal from one of his clients to join the crew.

A man whom Wu later identified to authorities as "TVB" or "Boom" paid the taxi driver several hundred dollars in exchange for picking up bags of cash and dropping them off in the city. Wu, who escaped from China's Fujian province to immigrate to Queens at the age of 18, agreed to participate in the criminal network. In one of the deliveries in April 2018, Wu and a suspected associate, Xian de Jiang, encountered a suspected drug dealer in the parking lot of a Chinese buffet on Francis Lewis Boulevard in Bayside, Queens. Wu picked up a red bag loaded with more than $150,000 from the Hispanic man and allegedly left with Jiang. Agents who were guarding the exchange stopped them and confiscated the cash. 

The money-laundering operation was connected to Atlanta drug trafficker José “Chiquis” Herrera-Guzmán who was arrested in 2018 and had over $5 million worth of drugs seized. 

The five crew members were arrested in 2019 and charged in federal court in Manhattan with conspiracy to commit money laundering. Herrera-Guzman, the Georgia drug lord, was separately convicted on drug charges last week and sentenced to 20 years in prison, according to local reports. Atlanta DEA Agent Robert J. Murphy said a Mexican cartel supplied Herrera-Guzmán with heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported at the time of his arrest.

More than $5 million worth of cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin along with $850,000 in cash were found during a massive drug bust in metro Atlanta, authorities said. “The drugs came in and were off-loaded at a tire shop down in the south Fulton area, and the stash house was up in north Gwinnett,” DEA Atlanta agent Robert J. Murphy said.

Authorities began monitoring the tire shop on Metropolitan Parkway, and agents conducted surveillance on two vehicles seen leaving the shop for Gwinnett, the release said. The Georgia State Patrol conducted a traffic stop on one of the targeted vehicles, a U-Haul truck, on Washington Road in East Point and found about 250 pounds of crystal methamphetamine, also known as “ice,” inside the vehicle, the release said.

Wu, meanwhile, was sentenced Thursday to time served by Manhattan federal judge Laura Taylor Swain, who agreed with his attorney, Chris Madiou, that he was a low-level player in the scheme. The trial came three months after Li was sentenced to two years in prison after pleading guilty to the money laundering charge. Sun pleaded guilty to willful concealment of knowledge of a felony and is scheduled to be sentenced later this month.

Wu's accused associate, Jiang Xian, posted bail and allegedly fled, and has not appeared in court since. A fifth suspect, Xiao Yu Wang, has pleaded not guilty and could go on trial in federal court in Manhattan later this year.

Source Infobae Atlanta-Journal Constitution