Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Hey everyone, before we get into this episode, I wanted
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Speaker 2: slash plus. On February ninth, nineteen eighty eight, David Shean
Speaker 2: was working his usual shift. He was a US customs
Speaker 2: agent at JFK Airport.
Speaker 1: His phone rang.
Speaker 3: I was talking through a customs agent in California who says, hey,
Speaker 3: we just got three shipments of heroin and three different
Speaker 3: bailed parcels. Do you guys want the case? So I
Speaker 3: said absolutely, we'll take it.
Speaker 2: The parcels were on their way from Hong Kong to
Speaker 2: New York. Customs agents were looking inside packages more often
Speaker 2: ever since President Reagan in Congress had ramped up the
Speaker 2: war on drugs. David Chian was part of this special
Speaker 2: task force to combat and narcotic smuggling, so they got
Speaker 2: calls about drugs coming into New York City all the time.
Speaker 2: This call was special, though, because inside each of these
Speaker 2: packages was about seven million dollars worth of heroin. In
Speaker 2: today's money, that's something like eighteen million dollars per package.
Speaker 2: Peter Mattesser was an agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Speaker 2: He really wanted to know who was waiting for those boxes.
Speaker 4: I know it was going to be a big case
Speaker 4: because there was a lot of heroin and the focus
Speaker 4: was on China white heroin at the time, because a
Speaker 4: lot was coming into New York. A lot heroin was
Speaker 4: coming in from China to Hong Kong then into New York,
Speaker 4: and it sounded like a good opportunity to work a
Speaker 4: big case.
Speaker 2: On February seventeenth, the boxes arrived at the airport. Peter
Speaker 2: and David knew they were at the beginning of something big,
Speaker 2: but they didn't know how big. My name is Liddy
Speaker 2: Jin Kott. As a journalist, I often report on law
Speaker 2: and power. I've written an audiobook about the Supreme Court,
Speaker 2: covered the federal trial of the crypto Billionaire, and investigated
Speaker 2: the fallout of the legalization of sports bedding. I'm interested
Speaker 2: in how throughout American history we've used the law as
Speaker 2: a tool to make our country both more and less.
Speaker 2: Just a few years I came into possession of a suitcase.
Speaker 2: It was full of thousands of pages of court documents.
Speaker 2: They were all about a case a prosecutor spent years
Speaker 2: trying to build against a criminal who refused to be caught.
Speaker 2: There was mention of a criminal syndicate powerful enough to
Speaker 2: take on the Italian mafia, an attempted assassination, a global manhunt,
Speaker 2: congressional hearings, international press coverage, a standing room only trial.
Speaker 2: And none of it would have happened without a group
Speaker 2: of ordinary people, people who in time would have to
Speaker 2: make a decision about who to protect and who to betray.
Speaker 2: But that afternoon in nineteen eighty eight, one of these
Speaker 2: people was just.
Speaker 1: Waiting for a box.
Speaker 2: This is the Chinatown Staying, Episode one Lucky Bird. Court
Speaker 2: documents would later describe the exact contents of each box
Speaker 2: that landed in New York, twenty small bricks made up
Speaker 2: of white compressed powder, wrapped up in either brown tape
Speaker 2: or duct tape. In one of the packages, the heroin
Speaker 2: was hidden inside these red and white tea boxes that
Speaker 2: had Chinese characters on them, and the other two. The
Speaker 2: heroin was hidden among stuffed animals. Now Peter Mtesser and
Speaker 2: the DA could get to work. Step one, take out
Speaker 2: the heroin and replace it with decoy heroin. It was
Speaker 2: made out of wooden blocks, cut and tape together.
Speaker 4: Except you leave a sample of the heroin in there.
Speaker 4: We'd put the stuffed animals back in. Our goal was
Speaker 4: to get someone opening up that box and going through it.
Speaker 5: That was our goal.
Speaker 2: So when someone on the receiving end lived inside the boxes,
Speaker 2: they should notice nothing weird.
Speaker 1: Step two.
Speaker 2: The Feds hid thin wires in a transmitter inside each box.
Speaker 2: Whoever was looking through the box would break the wires
Speaker 2: and that would trigger a silent electric signal that would
Speaker 2: be picked up by these special machines in the hands
Speaker 2: of law enforcement. And this receiver had only two signals.
Speaker 4: It was a slow beep you're listening in to like
Speaker 4: a computer almost and you hear the beat beat beeping
Speaker 4: in When a rapid beap goes beppp beat, that means
Speaker 4: it's been open.
Speaker 2: The dagents set up their trap as fast as they could.
Speaker 2: They didn't want the people who were waiting for the
Speaker 2: packages to get suspicious.
Speaker 4: They know how long it takes from point A to
Speaker 4: point B, so as soon as you get a day
Speaker 4: or two late, you're investiation could be compromised.
Speaker 2: Step three. Each of these boxes had to be dropped
Speaker 2: off at exactly the same time they were to be
Speaker 2: delivered by postal inspectors who were working undercover. Vans full
Speaker 2: of agents were waiting nearby, listening in on their little
Speaker 2: computers and ready to spring into action.
Speaker 4: You have to cover all the different parts of the
Speaker 4: locations because if someone takes the box and runs out
Speaker 4: the door, then we have Heroin on the street.
Speaker 2: On February twenty third, the mail packages, the vans full
Speaker 2: of agents, and the undercover postal workers, they were all
Speaker 2: ready to go. Two of the packages were addressed to
Speaker 2: Manhattan's Chinatown and one was going to Brooklyn. Peter and
Speaker 2: the customs agent David Shan followed the two packages that
Speaker 2: were going to Chinatown.
Speaker 4: The thrill of the chase really becomes just it sort
Speaker 4: of takes you over.
Speaker 2: That day, like on any other day, Chinatown was bustling.
Speaker 2: The sidewalks were crowded with vendors selling cucumbers, eggplants, bockjoy,
Speaker 2: dried mushrooms. People were walking shoulder to shoulder.
Speaker 1: On the main streets.
Speaker 2: There are neilon signs everywhere saying go this way or
Speaker 2: go that way. And there was always a truck somewhere
Speaker 2: squeezing its way down these narrow streets full of fresh wares.
Speaker 2: That's all to say, Chinatown wasn't an easy place to
Speaker 2: find parking, especially not for a van full of non
Speaker 2: Asian undercover federal agents.
Speaker 3: We were underneath the highway in the hend the East
Speaker 3: River Drive War and that's where we had thirty agents
Speaker 3: all lined up ready to go with shotguns and rifles
Speaker 3: and un davy.
Speaker 2: There were two wired up packages addressed to two apartment
Speaker 2: buildings right next to each other. So the undercover postal
Speaker 2: inspector buzzed at one address and then he buzzed at
Speaker 2: the other. No answer, he left behind mail slips. Peter
Speaker 2: and David waited to see what would happen next, and
Speaker 2: waited some more.
Speaker 3: One of the guys from DA took a leak in
Speaker 3: the East River, and believe it or not, two sanitation
Speaker 3: police guys ca him up to him and said, hey,
Speaker 3: you can't pee in the river.
Speaker 2: David Shean could feel his hopes of catching anyone in
Speaker 2: Chinatown pissing away to nobody was coming to collect the packages,
Speaker 2: even though their street value was supposed to be huge.
Speaker 2: Maybe someone had tipped them off. The whole operation now
Speaker 2: hinged on the third box, the one that was going
Speaker 2: to Brooklyn. We heard the beep go off. Peter Mattessa
Speaker 2: rushed over to the Brooklyn address to meet the agents.
Speaker 6: There.
Speaker 4: We knocked on the door or broke down the door.
Speaker 4: There's the package open. The stuffed animals were out.
Speaker 2: Peter found himself face to face with a thirty eight
Speaker 2: year old woman, a mother of two, an accountant at
Speaker 2: a bank. Peter explained she was under arrest.
Speaker 4: Read her rights, you know in Cantonese, amandarin. I forgot
Speaker 4: exactly which one it was. She was very upset, crying,
Speaker 4: and your goal is to try to calm the situation
Speaker 4: down as soon as you can and then hopefully move
Speaker 4: up the ladder.
Speaker 2: By move up the ladder, Peter means this woman might
Speaker 2: have information that would help the FEDS figure out who's
Speaker 2: in charge of importing the heroin. The first rung of
Speaker 2: the ladder was right here in this house. Peter needed
Speaker 2: to know the box's next destination, and to find that out,
Speaker 2: he needed this woman to act totally normal. She needed
Speaker 2: to call whoever she was going to call after the
Speaker 2: box's arrival. They needed her to go from being an
Speaker 2: accomplice to being a cooperating witness quickly.
Speaker 4: I tell her the man of heroin here, you're facing
Speaker 4: ten years to life because it's so much Harwin. This
Speaker 4: is your time to help out yourself. We can't guarantee
Speaker 4: you how much jail time you do, but it'll be
Speaker 4: brought to the attention of the judges. Will know how
Speaker 4: much you've helped out in this case. And it's a
Speaker 4: courageous decision to make. We try to tell them we
Speaker 4: think it's the right to make. To help us, then
Speaker 4: we help you.
Speaker 2: But the person this woman was going to call was
Speaker 2: her friend. If she cooperated, that would mean betraying her friend.
Speaker 2: But if she didn't cooperate, she might not see her
Speaker 2: two children grow up. She had to make an impossible
Speaker 2: decision as the agents hovered over her the clock was ticking.
Speaker 2: This woman agreed to cooperate. Her name is in the
Speaker 2: court documents, but she never responded to her request for
Speaker 2: an interview. Anyway, her name's not that important to the story.
Speaker 2: What's important is the chain of events she set off
Speaker 2: by giving the federal agents the name of her contact.
Speaker 2: Over the next few days, agents were arresting moms like
Speaker 2: her all over in New York City.
Speaker 4: It was like the first time we've ever seen anything
Speaker 4: like that. Really, basically your stay at home moms were
Speaker 4: picking up these you know, these lodge of matsa heroin
Speaker 4: and I'm sure I knew it was drugs.
Speaker 2: It turned out that all of these women, women who
Speaker 2: received packages of heroin sent to their homes, all to
Speaker 2: each other from playing mahjong. Mahjong is a game of
Speaker 2: luck and skill. You play with domino like tiles instead
Speaker 2: of with cards. They have different designs on them, stones, bamboos, dragons,
Speaker 2: and the goal is to end up with four pairs
Speaker 2: of three tiles and one pair of two tiles. That's
Speaker 2: called the eyes. Different hands are with different amounts of points.
Speaker 2: There were majong parlors all over Chinatown. These are places
Speaker 2: where people could play for a bit of money or
Speaker 2: a lot of money. The parlors were a place to
Speaker 2: catch up with old friends and make new ones. But
Speaker 2: now many of these friends were under arrest and they
Speaker 2: were being forced to turn on one another. Customs agent
Speaker 2: David Shechan was doing a lot of that forcing.
Speaker 3: We're going to seize all your assets, We're gonna take
Speaker 3: all your kids away from you, and you're gonna go
Speaker 3: to jail, and they're going to go to Forster care
Speaker 3: and things of that nature.
Speaker 2: You know you're doing that because you really need their
Speaker 2: help to get to the person at the top.
Speaker 3: I guess absolutely, Yeah, you need somebody, and you know
Speaker 3: you need more than one person to cooperate.
Speaker 1: Because you need it to be cooperated.
Speaker 7: Yes.
Speaker 2: After I got that suitcase full of court documents on
Speaker 2: the Chinatown drug trials, I realized I need help from
Speaker 2: someone who spoke Cantonese. That's the language that's spoken by
Speaker 2: many of the people in the documents.
Speaker 6: My name is Shu Yu Wang. I'm a practicing attorney
Speaker 6: in the city in New York.
Speaker 2: I met she Used through a friend of a friend.
Speaker 2: We met up at a bar and I told her
Speaker 2: all about the Chinatown case.
Speaker 6: It was a very interesting story to me personally. I
Speaker 6: came from the Cantonese area in China, which is like
Speaker 6: super close to Hong Kong, where a lot of those
Speaker 6: people in the story were originally from. My major in
Speaker 6: college was actually journalism, so that sort of like opened
Speaker 6: up a part of my brain.
Speaker 2: So she joined me in reporting out this story. We
Speaker 2: went over court documents together, and we visited Chinatown together
Speaker 2: for months and.
Speaker 1: Months loss.
Speaker 4: Podcast.
Speaker 8: Yeah, that's that.
Speaker 2: For most of the time that I've lived in New York,
Speaker 2: Chinatown's been a place where I'd get dinner or drinks
Speaker 2: with friends.
Speaker 1: For sure, you was a neighborhood where she got groceries.
Speaker 6: You are certain ingredients that's a rare fine in a
Speaker 6: non Chinese grocery stores, like chicken feet. There are like
Speaker 6: certain things that I can only get here at a
Speaker 6: good price.
Speaker 2: But we've been learning that Chinatown's a place with one
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty years of history.
Speaker 7: So Chinatown's today we think of as these tryst destiny,
Speaker 7: and you know, they're fun places to go to get
Speaker 7: you know, trash keys or jim sum and have kind
Speaker 7: of a colorful urban experience or you know, a fun
Speaker 7: meal or something. But the reason Chinatowns exist in the
Speaker 7: first place is really about a history of racial segregation.
Speaker 1: That's Ellen Wu.
Speaker 2: She teaches history at Indiana University, Bloomington, and she talked
Speaker 2: to us about how Chinatowns arose in American cities in
Speaker 2: the face of anti Asian laws and violence. US immigration
Speaker 2: laws also helped create chinatowns, especially a law called the
Speaker 2: Chinese Exclusion Act, which passed in eighteen eighty two. Another
Speaker 2: historian We spoke to is Michael Luo. She's an editor
Speaker 2: at The New Yorker, and he wrote a book on
Speaker 2: Chinese immigration called Strangers in the Land.
Speaker 9: It was the Justice of the Supreme Court, Justice Stephen Field,
Speaker 9: who wrote the opinion, referred to the Chinese as strangers
Speaker 9: in the land, talking about how how they could never
Speaker 9: assimilate with our people, and I feel like the stranger
Speaker 9: label remains imprinted on Asian Americans today.
Speaker 2: She says she's felt what Michael Lewe was describing, especially
Speaker 2: when she first moved to the US for law school.
Speaker 6: So it was kind of like surprised at how friendly
Speaker 6: people were surrounding me. But also to that I'm sensing,
Speaker 6: like your people out there just kind of like, oh,
Speaker 6: you're different, and you can tell by their gestures, by
Speaker 6: their like facial expressions, things like that.
Speaker 2: As a white person, I've never experienced that, but I
Speaker 2: do know how bad it feels to be viewed as
Speaker 2: a stranger. My family moved to the US from Poland
Speaker 2: when I was eight. My English was kind of weird,
Speaker 2: but I wanted to fit in so badly. When I
Speaker 2: look at pictures of myself, it's embarrassing. I was like
Speaker 2: a parody of what I thought an American kid was
Speaker 2: supposed to look like. And the more she You and
Speaker 2: I looked into this Chinatown case from where we came
Speaker 2: to see that it's also about someone who was trying,
Speaker 2: in their own way to feel like they belonged.
Speaker 10: Whong Tina date of birth nineteen fifty eight in New York,
Speaker 10: New York, Chinese female citizen US height five foot nine inches,
Speaker 10: weight one hundred and twenty pounds, brown eyes, black hair.
Speaker 2: As sure you and I went through that suitcase full
Speaker 2: of documents together, we kept coming across the name of
Speaker 2: one woman sometimes called Tina Wong, sometimes called Tina.
Speaker 10: A'll say in or about in between early August nineteen
Speaker 10: eighty seven and late this summer nineteen eighty seven, within
Speaker 10: the Eastern District of New York and elsewhere, the defendant
Speaker 10: Tina Asse did knowingly and willfully import into the United
Speaker 10: States from a place outside there of a quantity of
Speaker 10: heroin a Schedule one narcotic drug controlled substance.
Speaker 2: So this is a complaint against Tina. Asse what situation
Speaker 2: is Tina in if they have this information?
Speaker 6: So like, first of all, it got an informant which
Speaker 6: said I delivered the packages to Dina, and I'm just
Speaker 6: quite interested in the last paragraph when they said that
Speaker 6: they had a recording between informant and the ultimate recipient
Speaker 6: of the drugs. Tina is kind of like a middleman,
Speaker 6: just like someone caught in between who gave her the
Speaker 6: package and who she was supposed to give the packages to.
Speaker 11: And apparently the.
Speaker 6: Prosecution had information from both ends, so Tina was kind
Speaker 6: of trapped in a situation like she can't get away
Speaker 6: with that.
Speaker 2: At first, Tina just seemed like another low level drug smuggler.
Speaker 2: She was one of about a half a dozen people
Speaker 2: federal authorities arrested. This was after that at Countant in
Speaker 2: Brooklyn got caught with that wired up package, setting this
Speaker 2: whole investigation off. But as she you and I went
Speaker 2: through the court documents, it started to look like Tina
Speaker 2: was actually at the absolute center of the government's case.
Speaker 2: Without her, everything might have played out entirely differently. She
Speaker 2: and I were desperate to talk to Tina. She, like
Speaker 2: all the women who received mail packages, had never spoken
Speaker 2: to a reporter before about this time. But I found
Speaker 2: what I thought was her address. It was in Manhattan,
Speaker 2: and we rang her bell twice three times.
Speaker 1: She was never home.
Speaker 2: Then we showed up with a box of Italian cookies
Speaker 2: that we had picked up from a bakery nearby. I
Speaker 2: know that sounds weird, but I thought it would seem
Speaker 2: friendlier than showing up with just a microphone.
Speaker 11: It was a brick apartment building.
Speaker 6: Yeah, we entered a building, not knowing if Tina is
Speaker 6: in this room this time, but we went up to
Speaker 6: her floor, went to.
Speaker 2: Her door, the door opened, this woman was standing there
Speaker 2: and I said nothing.
Speaker 11: Yeah, I think I was the one who broke this silence. Right,
Speaker 11: So where the journal is stacking here? So I just
Speaker 11: wondered that if we can have Sai about this project.
Speaker 12: Check.
Speaker 2: She's like, yeah, come on in, and whoever your impressions
Speaker 2: of her?
Speaker 6: She looked cool, She's got short haircut, and she's got
Speaker 6: super thick eyeliners.
Speaker 2: I would say, yeah, she had like black eyeliner.
Speaker 6: And also she looks totally unbothered even though we're clearly
Speaker 6: bothering her in her family. She's kind of like, well, Okay,
Speaker 6: they've been bugging me for long enough, let's just see
Speaker 6: what they have to offer.
Speaker 1: What do you remember about the apartment?
Speaker 6: So it's very homey, I would say. And there's a
Speaker 6: huge cage in the center of the living room, and
Speaker 6: that might be one of the very first things that
Speaker 6: you would notice once you stepped in.
Speaker 2: It was an African gray parrot inside. I think the
Speaker 2: first thing I said, right was tell me about your parrot.
Speaker 5: Oh that's a lucky bird. And I had him full.
Speaker 1: Like twenty five years es he said something. I want
Speaker 1: to record it.
Speaker 13: He knows a stranger, so you won't talk, but if
Speaker 13: he gets to know, he starts to talk.
Speaker 2: We weren't actually there to interview the parrot. We wanted
Speaker 2: Tina's story.
Speaker 1: She was born in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 2: She was living outside of Chinatown at a time when
Speaker 2: Chinatown was way smaller. She was one of the few
Speaker 2: Chinese kids. Her dad was Chinese and her mom was
Speaker 2: from was Portuguese.
Speaker 13: Yeah, yeah, yeah, we were like the first Chinese family.
Speaker 5: I mean not the first, but the few. We used
Speaker 5: to fight. We used to get picked on a lot.
Speaker 13: Everybody that was Asian used to get picked on one
Speaker 13: time or another a stupid kid's stuff like ching chong,
Speaker 13: and then you know, you fight back.
Speaker 2: It's weird now to think of a Chinatown without kids,
Speaker 2: but for a long time, there just weren't very many
Speaker 2: Chinese kids in the US period, the Chinese Exclusion Act
Speaker 2: made it hard for any new Chinese immigrants to come,
Speaker 2: and it took nearly a century until nineteen sixty five
Speaker 2: for Congress to finally ban immigration quotas based on ethnicity.
Speaker 2: Tina was seven years old at the time when all
Speaker 2: these new Chinese immigrants started to show up and Chinatown
Speaker 2: was becoming a family neighborhood. Tina talked about how it
Speaker 2: was so great to be included in this new world
Speaker 2: of all these kids her age, but still she felt
Speaker 2: a little different from them.
Speaker 13: I think they were kind of little racist on me
Speaker 13: since I wasn't, you know, like because I'm only half Chinese. Yeah,
Speaker 13: there was a little racism there, but that didn't stop me. Yeah,
Speaker 13: so that's why I learned MJ Mahjong. And you know,
Speaker 13: when I would play MJ with them and I beat them, then.
Speaker 5: I feel they go, Yeah, the joke sing.
Speaker 2: It's pretty good and joke saying is someone who who's
Speaker 2: American born Chinese.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 2: As an adult, Tina kept playing majong. She went to
Speaker 2: these special places that were kind of like speakeasies. You
Speaker 2: had to know someone who knew about them and then
Speaker 2: they could tell you where they were. Tina's favorite was
Speaker 2: on the second floor of a building on one of
Speaker 2: Chinatown's main streets, Canal Street.
Speaker 13: It's like a Chinese green wallpaint, Uh, smoky and a
Speaker 13: lot of majong noise.
Speaker 2: Is there music playing or is it just people talking
Speaker 2: on the clack of the tiles.
Speaker 13: Yeah, I think it's just the clacking of the tiles.
Speaker 13: People don't want to hear the music that might disturb though.
Speaker 2: The focus and what sort of people were there?
Speaker 5: Oh, people, young people, all kinds?
Speaker 2: And how good did you get on like a scale
Speaker 2: one through ten.
Speaker 5: I didn't have like really good skills, but I had.
Speaker 2: Look, she was hanging out in these majong parlors and
Speaker 2: she was getting lucky. Then her best friend from when
Speaker 2: she was little came up to her and said, you know,
Speaker 2: I have this proposal for you. I was wondering if
Speaker 2: you could receive a package in the mail for me.
Speaker 1: Don't worry about what's in the box.
Speaker 2: Basically, but if you receive this box, it'll be worth
Speaker 2: your while.
Speaker 5: All you gotta do is receive the package.
Speaker 13: Don't have to open it, don't have to do this,
Speaker 13: just accept it and that's it.
Speaker 11: Shoot.
Speaker 2: You do you remember if Tina ever broke the law
Speaker 2: before this.
Speaker 11: Happened, gambling, if that counts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she got into some fights, I think she said, yeah,
Speaker 2: but like street fights. Yeah, yeah, No, nothing serious.
Speaker 6: She's not like a risk seeker, I would say, like,
Speaker 6: she will never voluntarily invite herself into troubles. I think
Speaker 6: she needed money at a time, just trying to like
Speaker 6: support herself better. It sounded like an easy deal for her.
Speaker 13: We're poor kids, we don't have that kind of money.
Speaker 13: So to have that kind of money, you take a chance.
Speaker 5: And I think a lot of people would probably have
Speaker 5: take the chance.
Speaker 2: So after she you know, told her friend she would
Speaker 2: do it, she waited a few weeks and then her
Speaker 2: friend called her and said, you know, the box is
Speaker 2: going to ride like somewhere in these three days.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 13: When it came, I took it home, I put it
Speaker 13: in my room and I put it in the closet
Speaker 13: with my clothes on top.
Speaker 2: And then she called her friend and was like, I
Speaker 2: have the box.
Speaker 1: What should I do?
Speaker 13: They told me to open it. So I opened it
Speaker 13: and there was like Chinese in the box. Think there
Speaker 13: were tea boxes.
Speaker 2: And her friend said, Okay, take one of these tea boxes.
Speaker 2: Bring it to this woman who lived like a seven
Speaker 2: minute walk away.
Speaker 13: I wasn't scared because I didn't really know the magnitude
Speaker 13: of the danger.
Speaker 2: So Tina kept accepting the boxes. Sometimes they came through
Speaker 2: the mail. Sometimes a friend brought them to her apartment
Speaker 2: and she would carry them on.
Speaker 13: I was bringing that one box and it was kind
Speaker 13: of like open, so I like looked at it and
Speaker 13: it was like a like a brick. When I touched
Speaker 13: it was kind of dusty, and I think I went
Speaker 13: like this and it went in my mouth and I said,
Speaker 13: oh my god, the taste.
Speaker 11: Well it was heroin.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was like seven million dollars worth of heroin.
Speaker 2: Her friend gave her a like a pasta bag or
Speaker 2: a paper bag full of cash. Yeah, it was a
Speaker 2: big brick of cash, so like.
Speaker 11: As of in a movie getting the money.
Speaker 13: It was finn. I'm not gonna lie you don't think
Speaker 13: of tomorrow. Just think of that day, you know, and
Speaker 13: what you could deal with it.
Speaker 5: It's like being queen queen for a day.
Speaker 2: What's the first thing you bought?
Speaker 13: Mmm? I think what the most expensive food, like lobster
Speaker 13: and took it home and ate it all by myself.
Speaker 2: You ordered a full lobster.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think I orded a double lobster.
Speaker 2: And then you brought it to your apartment and then
Speaker 2: you just ate it by yourself.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I watched TV and ate it and your like life
Speaker 2: is good.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 13: I could have this every day because I love lobster.
Speaker 2: She hid all of the cash that she was getting
Speaker 2: in a drawer in her bedroom and used it for
Speaker 2: all sorts of stuff, the dentist that's on Majeong Jewelry.
Speaker 2: Tina bought a car at BMW And the pinnacle of
Speaker 2: all of this is when she and her best friend
Speaker 2: went on a trip to Asia together, a trip that
Speaker 2: would turn out to be a very big deal in
Speaker 2: the case later. And on that trip her world kind
Speaker 2: of got expanded. She got to see things she had
Speaker 2: never seen before in her life. Like she talked about
Speaker 2: how when she and her friend arrived in Indonesia. They
Speaker 2: saw this huge beach that looked like it was covered
Speaker 2: with black rock, But when she got closer, she realized
Speaker 2: those were actually crabs.
Speaker 13: It's like a thousand of them, so it looked like
Speaker 13: the rock is black, but when you go there, it's
Speaker 13: white because all the crabs walk away.
Speaker 5: It's like thousands.
Speaker 2: Was this fun when you're like getting these packages doing
Speaker 2: these trips?
Speaker 5: It was fun.
Speaker 13: I feel that if you take any ordinary person and
Speaker 13: you give them a trip, and you take them here
Speaker 13: you can go shopping. Nobody's gonna say no. I mean,
Speaker 13: you know they're they're not gonna say they didn't have fun.
Speaker 2: According to the court docs, Tina made about fifteen thousand
Speaker 2: dollars for receiving these boxes, and that's not including other
Speaker 2: perks like the plane ticket to Asia. But while the
Speaker 2: money was fun, it wasn't drastically teaching her life the
Speaker 2: way that she imagined it would. And her friend was
Speaker 2: asking her to do more and more. She was getting boxy.
Speaker 2: Tina had a bad feeling. Tina was right to be
Speaker 2: anxious about her luck running out. This was the late eighties.
Speaker 2: President Ronald Reagan had doubled down on the War on drugs.
Speaker 4: We're taking down the surrender flag that has flown over
Speaker 4: so many drug efforts.
Speaker 12: We're running up a battle flag. We can fight the
Speaker 12: drug problem, and we can win.
Speaker 2: In nineteen eighty six, Reagan signed the Anti Drug Abuse Act.
Speaker 2: It created new mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes, and
Speaker 2: that same year Congress began holding hearings.
Speaker 3: Today will learn more about criminal groups of Asian origin
Speaker 3: operating in the United States.
Speaker 12: Drug traffickers love a vacuum. As traditional organized crime appears
Speaker 12: to be taking less and less of the market than
Speaker 12: other trafficking organizations will move in, and it certainly appears
Speaker 12: from the intelligence we have that the Oriental traffickers are
Speaker 12: picking up a big piece of that action.
Speaker 2: All of this was in the distant background of Tina
Speaker 2: Wong's life. Her reason for wanting to quit the drug
Speaker 2: trade was closer to home. She was worried that if
Speaker 2: she kept accepting these packages, she'd put her family in danger.
Speaker 1: She had a husband and a one year old daughter.
Speaker 2: When Tina Wong was twenty eight years old, she became
Speaker 2: a mom to a baby girl.
Speaker 13: They cleaned her up, and they put her in the
Speaker 13: little basket and they wrapped it up like a sumo,
Speaker 13: you know, because they got nails and she was like scratching.
Speaker 2: She named her daughter Fallen after that TV show Dynasty,
Speaker 2: which had you heard of that TV show before?
Speaker 11: I've heard of that, but I've never watched it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I had never heard of it, but yeah, apparently
Speaker 2: it was like a huge TV show in the eighties,
Speaker 2: like number one hit, and it was about this oil
Speaker 2: Tycoons family, and Fallen was the daughter. And she was
Speaker 2: like a rich, spoiled rat.
Speaker 12: Your father's Whatdy's not a gift, it's a responsibility. Hell
Speaker 12: it is. You want to feel guilty for being born rich?
Speaker 2: I don't, But yeah, Tina's daughter, Fallen was born into
Speaker 2: a different situation, right. Tina had had the stream of
Speaker 2: being a textile designer, and she even got as a
Speaker 2: high schooler into this special program at FT, the College
Speaker 2: in New York of Art and Design. But then she
Speaker 2: was on a scholarship and both she was like sixteen seventeen,
Speaker 2: both of her parents got cancer one after the other,
Speaker 2: and she was the person who had to take care
Speaker 2: of them, and then she missed so much school that
Speaker 2: she got kicked out of the program. After her parents died,
Speaker 2: she was like trying to get study work, so she
Speaker 2: would like go to bars to work there and have
Speaker 2: to bring fallen and then people would be like, you're
Speaker 2: a bad mom for bringing your kid to a bar.
Speaker 13: Sometime when people go on me and say, oh, we
Speaker 13: need a bartender or waitress, you know for the week
Speaker 13: or the day, I fill in. But it wasn't, you know,
Speaker 13: often because I had to take care of her because
Speaker 13: I was still like young, and so I was like
Speaker 13: not really a best mother, but you know, I try.
Speaker 13: You know, you got to think about what you're doing.
Speaker 13: So I try to work and you know, make ends meet.
Speaker 2: And her husband was working as a cook and sometimes
Speaker 2: in some kimbling parlors.
Speaker 6: He works like super long shifts and long hours. I
Speaker 6: think at a certain point, like they had to send
Speaker 6: a baby to her grandparents, who were.
Speaker 11: In Canada at a time take care of her so that.
Speaker 6: Like Tina could go out to work while people were
Speaker 6: where the baby was being taken care of by someone.
Speaker 2: They sent Folin to Canada to be with her grandparents,
Speaker 2: her husband's parents, so she knew that Valin would be
Speaker 2: safe as Tina tried to find study work and figure
Speaker 2: out her life. You know, Tina doesn't speak Chinese, but
Speaker 2: if she was with her grandparents, then.
Speaker 11: Felin could pick up some Chinese wall.
Speaker 1: Did you say she that your parents did the same thing.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I got through basically the same thing as Fallin.
Speaker 6: My extended family is like very closely like supporting each other.
Speaker 6: So they also sent me back to my grandparents when
Speaker 6: I was about.
Speaker 11: Like ten months old.
Speaker 12: Months.
Speaker 11: Yes, about the same time.
Speaker 2: So Tina knew that Fallen was being well taken care
Speaker 2: of as she and her husband tried to sort out
Speaker 2: how to provide for her, and after feeling like she
Speaker 2: had been doing a bad job, Tina felt like this
Speaker 2: huge weight had been lifted from her shoulders. Were you
Speaker 2: enjoying it or were you like Fad because you were
Speaker 2: missing her both?
Speaker 13: Truthfully, I was enjoying it.
Speaker 2: It was after her daughter was sent away that Tina
Speaker 2: started accepting these boxes. But then she could feel her
Speaker 2: luck running out. She told her friend she wasn't going
Speaker 2: to do this work anymore. Five months went by, then
Speaker 2: came the sting, the day DA agents raided that house
Speaker 2: in Brooklyn. As we already heard, Agent Petemtesser found that accountant,
Speaker 2: the mother of two, standing in front of an open
Speaker 2: box of stuffed animals.
Speaker 4: She was very upset, crying, and your goal is to
Speaker 4: try to calm the situation down as soon as you
Speaker 4: can and then hopefully move up the ladder.
Speaker 2: This woman led the agents up the ladder to the
Speaker 2: woman who had recruited her, and that woman gave up
Speaker 2: the names of Tina's best friend and Tina.
Speaker 10: On March first, nineteen eighty eight, an arrest warrant was
Speaker 10: issued in the Eastern District of New York for Tina
Speaker 10: Wong for importation of heroin. That approximately nine pm, Wong
Speaker 10: was arrested at her residence.
Speaker 6: That was the moment maybe that she realized that she
Speaker 6: was not really being paranoid and everything she did as
Speaker 6: a consequence.
Speaker 1: Tina's worst fears were now coming true.
Speaker 13: They took my daughter's picture off the refrigerator. They go,
Speaker 13: is this your daughter? I said yes. They go, oh,
Speaker 13: you may not see her for like twenty five years.
Speaker 13: You know, like that was kind of a low blow.
Speaker 13: I don't think they should have did it like that,
Speaker 13: but that's their way.
Speaker 2: So their way was to keep building a case against
Speaker 2: whoever was at the top, the person really behind the
Speaker 2: boxes of heroin. To do that, they needed Tina to
Speaker 2: tell them everything about what she had done and who
Speaker 2: else was involved this time though, it wasn't going to
Speaker 2: be so easy. Was there a part of you that's like,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to cooperate.
Speaker 13: Yes, that I wasn't going to cooperate. No, I wasn't
Speaker 13: going to cooperate with them.
Speaker 2: Tina had much more valuable information about this scheme than
Speaker 2: the account, but she also had no intention of sharing
Speaker 2: what she knew, and that was going to be a
Speaker 2: big problem because she and all the women like her
Speaker 2: were now in the crosshairs of a young and determined
Speaker 2: federal prosecutor. Her job was to bring down a drug kingpin,
Speaker 2: and she saw all these female witnesses in custody as
Speaker 2: a huge opportunity.
Speaker 14: It was fairly early in my career as a prosecutor,
Speaker 14: and it was like one of those cases that I
Speaker 14: started in general crimes and then took with me to
Speaker 14: narcotics as I worked my way up the chain.
Speaker 2: Her name is Beryl Howell. She's the reason I'm able
Speaker 2: to report on this case. I've known Beryl for years.
Speaker 2: She's my boyfriend's mother.
Speaker 11: These are briefs that I filed.
Speaker 2: The government was always blue was that more torontoebook stuff
Speaker 2: witness list. Oh my god, Beryl. Beryl is the one
Speaker 2: who gave me that suitcase full of court documents, years
Speaker 2: worth of filings, interviews, openings, closings, rebuttals. There are note
Speaker 2: pads full of her sprawling cursive all about illegal Saga
Speaker 2: were almost nothing when according to plan, the case that
Speaker 2: started with the Chinatown Sting would change Beryl's life and
Speaker 2: Tina Wong's life and Chinatown. And it was just getting underway,
Speaker 2: coming up on the season of the Chinatown Sting.
Speaker 15: When people came here, there were strangers in a foreign land,
Speaker 15: and they didn't speak the language, didn't read English, and
Speaker 15: so this was the one place they could go to
Speaker 15: for any kind of assistance.
Speaker 11: Once you join a gang, you feel like you have
Speaker 11: the whole gang behind you.
Speaker 13: Well, I always know that a good friendship nothing can
Speaker 13: break it.
Speaker 8: There's a difference between Quayne hearing things and thinking you're
Speaker 8: not hearing the truth versus thinking you're not hearing the
Speaker 8: whole story. I wasn't sure I was ever hearing the
Speaker 8: whole story from Tina Wan.
Speaker 2: The Chinatown Stang is written and produced by me Liddy
Speaker 2: Jine Kott and reported by me and Shu Yu Wang.
Speaker 2: Our senior producer is Emily Martinez, additional production by Sonya Gerwit.
Speaker 2: Our editor is Julia Barton, with additional editing by Karen Shakerji.
Speaker 2: Our story consultant is rongshau Ching.
Speaker 1: Our executive producer is Jacob Smith.
Speaker 2: Our music was composed by Johnson Sound Design and additional
Speaker 2: music by Jake Gorsky. Our fact checker is Kate Furby,
Speaker 2: and our show art was designed by Sean Carney. All
Speaker 2: voiceover work by Tally Leong. For more information about this episode,
Speaker 2: check out our show notes or visit Pushkin dot fm
Speaker 2: slash Chinatown. The Chinatown Staying is a production of Pushkin Industries.
Speaker 2: To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts.