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Speaker 1: Pushkin In New York City in nineteen eighty eight, federal

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Speaker 1: authorities laid a trap. They'd gotten a tip that a

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Speaker 1: vast amount of heroin was being mailed to the city

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Speaker 1: inside boxes filled with tea.

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Speaker 2: All you gotta do is we see in the package.

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Speaker 2: Don't have to open it, just accept it, and that's it.

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Speaker 3: It was a slow beep. You're listening in and you

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Speaker 3: hear the beat beat beeping in. When a rapid beap

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Speaker 3: goes bet BBP beat, that means it's been open.

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Speaker 1: This sting was huge.

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Speaker 3: We probably had about thirty agents. We had undercover postal

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Speaker 3: agents in uniform attempt to deliver the package at each location.

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Speaker 1: That day. The Feds caught low level drug courriers, mostly

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Speaker 1: women who played Majrong together and town.

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Speaker 2: I would play MJ with them, Majohn and I beat them.

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Speaker 3: Read her rights, you know in Cantonese, Amandarin. I forgot

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Speaker 3: exactly which one it was. She was very upset, crying.

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Speaker 2: They took my daughter's picture off the refrigerator. They go,

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Speaker 2: is this your daughter? I said yes, They go, oh,

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Speaker 2: you may not see her for like twenty five years.

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Speaker 1: My name is Lidia jen Kok. For the last few years,

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Speaker 1: I've been trying to unravel what happened to a group

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Speaker 1: of moms who played Majong in Chinatown. How they got

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Speaker 1: pulled into a criminal underworld. To escape, they were forced

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Speaker 1: to play the highest takes game of their lives.

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Speaker 3: I couldn't trust her. I was not going to put

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Speaker 3: her on the stand.

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Speaker 4: That was the moment that she realized that she was

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Speaker 4: not really being paranoid, and everything she did has a consequence.

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Speaker 3: Five secs white white people, you know, push in the corn.

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Speaker 3: What the hell not to take with the mafi I don't.

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Speaker 5: Know they can get to any resident in Chinatown. So

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Speaker 5: that's why the fear is there, because there's no place

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Speaker 5: for the residents to go.

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Speaker 2: Once I saw the gon I tried to take his hand,

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Speaker 2: and I saw the flash of light, and that was it.

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Speaker 1: This is the Chinatown Sting.

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Speaker 3: When you place money about your heartbeat, that's where it goes.

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Speaker 3: That's your adrenaline rush. That's the worst you want.

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Speaker 1: Subscribe to push gum Plus to hear the entire season

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Speaker 1: of The Chinatown Staning ad free starting September sixteenth. Subscribers

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Speaker 1: also get bonus episodes, full audiobooks, and early adrey listening

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Speaker 1: from your favorite Pushkin hosts and authors. Find push gumb

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Speaker 1: Plus on the Chinatowns Day Show page on Apple. Podcasts

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Speaker 1: are at pushkin, dot fm, slash plus