Introducing: The Chinatown Sting

In the late 1980s, federal authorities laid a trap. They’d gotten a tip that huge amounts of heroin were being mailed to New York City inside boxes filled with tea. The investigation would uncover a network of drug smugglers who used women recruited at mahjong parlors in Chinatown. Host Lidia Jean Kott and co-reporter Shuyu Wang interview sources who’ve never spoken on record before, including federal prosecutors, to reconstruct a years-long effort to bring down one of the most powerful gangsters in Chinatown.

The Chinatown Sting drops weekly on Tuesdays starting September 16.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin In New York City in nineteen eighty eight, federal
authorities laid a trap. They'd gotten a tip that a
vast amount of heroin was being mailed to the city
inside boxes filled with tea.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
All you gotta do is we see in the package.
Don't have to open it, just accept it, and that's it.

Speaker 3 (00:40):
It was a slow beep. You're listening in and you
hear the beat beat beeping in. When a rapid beap
goes bet BBP beat, that means it's been open.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
This sting was huge.

Speaker 3 (00:54):
We probably had about thirty agents. We had undercover postal
agents in uniform attempt to deliver the package at each location.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
That day. The Feds caught low level drug courriers, mostly
women who played Majrong together and town.

Speaker 2 (01:10):
I would play MJ with them, Majohn and I beat them.

Speaker 3 (01:15):
Read her rights, you know in Cantonese, Amandarin. I forgot
exactly which one it was. She was very upset, crying.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
They took my daughter's picture off the refrigerator. They go,
is this your daughter? I said yes, They go, oh,
you may not see her for like twenty five years.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
My name is Lidia jen Kok. For the last few years,
I've been trying to unravel what happened to a group
of moms who played Majong in Chinatown. How they got
pulled into a criminal underworld. To escape, they were forced
to play the highest takes game of their lives.

Speaker 3 (01:54):
I couldn't trust her. I was not going to put
her on the stand.

Speaker 4 (01:58):
That was the moment that she realized that she was
not really being paranoid, and everything she did has a consequence.

Speaker 3 (02:06):
Five secs white white people, you know, push in the corn.
What the hell not to take with the mafi I don't.

Speaker 5 (02:13):
Know they can get to any resident in Chinatown. So
that's why the fear is there, because there's no place
for the residents to go.

Speaker 2 (02:23):
Once I saw the gon I tried to take his hand,
and I saw the flash of light, and that was it.

Speaker 1 (02:32):
This is the Chinatown Sting.

Speaker 3 (02:35):
When you place money about your heartbeat, that's where it goes.
That's your adrenaline rush. That's the worst you want.

Speaker 1 (02:45):
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(03:05):
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