Golden Venture Smuggler Sentenced

TheChinatown businesswoman who calls herself Sister Ping was sentenced yesterdayto 35 years in prison for running one of New York City’s most lucrative immigrantsmuggling rings and for financing the infamous voyage of the Golden Venture,the rusting freighter that ran aground off Queens in 1993 with nearly 300starving immigrants in its fetid hold.

Tenof the immigrants died after they leaped into chilly waves off the Rockaways ina final effort to reach American soil.

SisterPing, whose given name is Cheng Chui Ping, was handed the maximum penalty bythe judge after she ignored her lawyers’ advice and delivered a meanderingspeech for more than an hour, saying she was just another honest victim ofChinatown’s vicious gangs and snakeheads, as immigrant smugglers are known.

Ms.Cheng, 57, was convicted on June 23 after a monthlong trial in Federal DistrictCourt in Manhattan on three counts of immigrant smuggling, money-laundering andtrafficking in kidnapping proceeds. Judge Michael B. Mukasey was clearlyangered by what he called her “lengthy exercise inself-justification,” and as he announced the sentence he said “itdefies belief” that Ms. Cheng suggested she was unjustly convicted.

“Youare not the victim of fabricated evidence,” Judge Mukasey told her, histone prickling with indignation. “You were willing to take advantage ofthe attraction of the United States for thousands of other people and turn it toyour financial advantage.” He said this in response to Ms. Cheng’srepeated statements that she loved the United States.

Thetough sentence marked the end of a 12-year effort to catch and prosecute Ms.Cheng and, with the exception of appeals, the end of the case of the GoldenVenture. Martin D. Ficke, the special agent in charge of Immigration andCustoms Enforcement for New York, said Ms. Cheng’s was the biggest immigrantsmuggling operation ever investigated in New York. He said the operation had beenshut down.

Anassistant United States attorney, Leslie C. Brown, said at the beginning of thehearing that Ms. Cheng had run an “extraordinarily lucrative”operation that carried people from China aboard barely seaworthy tramp vessels.In a two-decade smuggling career, the prosecutor said, Ms. Cheng chargedexorbitant rates for a sea trip in which passengers were given little food andsometimes only two sips of water a day. Once they arrived in the United Statesshe hired gang members to ensure that they paid their debts to her, Ms. Brownsaid.

Source: NY Times, Mar. 17, 2006

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