September 23, 2025 • 38 mins
Here’s a preview of a new Pushkin podcast, The Chinatown Sting. In the late 1980s, a group of women connected through the mahjong parlors in Manhattan’s Chinatown were caught in a massive undercover drug bust. But this bust was just the beginning of an even bigger case. Host Lidia Jean Kott and co-reporter Shuyu Wang interview sources who’ve never spoken on record before, including witnesses, defendants, and federal prosecutors, to reconstruct a case that still has repercussions today. In this episode, we meet Tina Wong, a young mother who found herself in the middle of the operation with two choices—go to prison, or risk her life to bring down the man at the helm.
Listen to The Chinatown Sting wherever you get podcasts and binge the entire season, ad-free, with a Pushkin+ subscription—sign up on The Chinatown Sting Apple Podcasts show page or at pushkin.fm/plus.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Hi everyone, I'm Liddy Agene Cat. I'm dropping into your
feed today to bring you a preview of my new podcast,
The Chinatown Sting. It's about a woman living in Manhattan's
Chinatown in the nineteen eighties. After she agrees to receive
a package in the mail for her best friend, she
finds herself caught in a criminal case. It's led by
(00:39):
a prosecutor determined to bring down one of Chinatown's most
notorious gangsters. No matter the cost, let's get into it.
On February ninth, nineteen eighty eight, David Shechian was working
his usual shift. He was a US customs agent at
JFK Airport.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
His phone rang.
Speaker 4 (01:03):
I was talking through a customs agent in California who says, hey,
we just got three shipments of heroin and three different
bailed parcels. Do you guys want the case? So I
said it, absolutely, We'll take it.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
The parcels were on their way from Hong Kong to
New York. Customs agents were looking inside packages more often
ever since President Reagan in Congress had ramped up.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
The War on drugs.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
David shechan was part of this special task force to
combat narcotic smuggling, so they got calls about drugs coming
into New York City all the time. This call was special, though,
because inside each of these packages was about seven million
dollars worth of heroin. In today's money, that's something like
(01:54):
eighteen million dollars per package. Peter Matasser was an agent
for the Drug Enforcement Administration. He really wanted to know
who was waiting for those boxes.
Speaker 5 (02:07):
I know it was going to be a big case
because it was a lot of heroin and the focus
was on China white heroin at the time, because a
lot was coming into New York. A lot of heroin
was coming in from China to Hong Kong then into
New York, and it sounded like a good opportunity to
work a big case.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
On February seventeenth, the boxes arrived at the airport. Peter
and David knew they were at the beginning of something big,
but they didn't know how big. My name is Liddy
(02:48):
Jin Kott. As a journalist, I often report on law
and power. I've written an audiobook about the Supreme Court,
covered the federal trial of the crypto billionaire, and investigated
the fallout of the legalization of sports budding. I'm interested
in how throughout American history we've used the law as
a tool to make our country both more and less.
(03:10):
Just a few years ago I came into possession of
a suitcase. It was full of thousands of pages of
court documents. They were all about a case a prosecutor
spent years trying to build against a criminal who refused
to be caught. There was mention of a criminal syndicate
powerful enough to take on the Italian mafia, an attempted assassination,
(03:33):
a global manhunt, congressional hearings, international press coverage, a standing
room only trial, And none of it would have happened
without a group of ordinary people, people who in time
would have to make a decision about who to protect
and who to betray. But that afternoon in nineteen eighty eight,
(03:55):
one of these people was.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
Just waiting for a box.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
This is the Chinatown Staying, Episode one Lucky Bird. Court
documents would later describe the exact contents of each box
that landed in New York. Twenty small bricks made up
(04:24):
of white compressed powder, wrapped up in either brown tape
or duct tape. In one of the packages, the heroin
was hidden inside these red and white tea boxes that
had Chinese characters on them, and the other two the
heroin was hidden among stuffed animals. Now Peter Mtesser and
the DA could get to work. Step one, take out
(04:48):
the heroin and replace it with decoy heroin. It was
made out of wooden blocks, cut and tape together.
Speaker 5 (04:54):
Except you leave a sample of the heroin in there.
We'd put the stuffed animals back in. Our goal was
to get someone opening up that box and going through it.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
That was our goal.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
So when someone on the receiving end looked at inside
the boxes, they should notice nothing weird.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
Step two.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
The Feds hid thin wires in a transmitter inside each box.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
Whoever was looking through the box.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Would break the wires and that would trigger a silent
electric signal that would be picked up by these special
machines in the hands of law enforcement. And this receiver
had only two signals.
Speaker 5 (05:29):
It was a slow beep you're listening in to like
a computer almost and you hear the beat beat beeping
in when a rapid beaf goes bepp beat, that means
it's been open.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
The dagents set up their trap as fast as they could.
They didn't want the people who were waiting for the
packages to get suspicious.
Speaker 5 (05:49):
They know how long it takes from point A to
point B, so as soon as you get a day
or two late, you're.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
The investiation could be compromised.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Step three. Each of these boxes had to be dropped
off at exactly the same time they were to be
delivered by postal inspectors who were working undercover. Vans full
of agents were waiting nearby, listening in on their little
computers and ready to spring into action.
Speaker 5 (06:17):
You have to cover all the different parts of the
locations because if someone takes the box and runs out
the door, then we have Heroin on the street.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
On February twenty third, the mail packages, the vans full
of agents, and the undercover postal workers, they were all
ready to go. Two of the packages were addressed to
Manhattan's Chinatown and one was going to Brooklyn. Peter and
the customs agent David Shan followed the two packages that
were going to Chinatown.
Speaker 5 (06:46):
The thrill of the chase really becomes it just it
sort of takes you over.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
That day, like on any other day, Chinatown was bustling.
The sidewalks were crowded with vendors selling cucumbers, eggplants, bockjoy,
dried mushrooms. People were walking shoulder to shoulder on the
main streets. There were neon side everywhere saying go this
way or go that way, and there was always a
truck somewhere squeezing its way down these narrow streets full
(07:17):
of fresh wares. That's all to say, Chinatown wasn't an
easy place to find parking, especially not for a van
full of non Asian undercover federal agents.
Speaker 4 (07:28):
We were underneath the highway in the hand these river drive,
and that's where we had thirty agents all lined up
ready to go with shotguns and rifles and un davy.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
There were two wired up packages addressed to two apartment
buildings right next to each other. So the undercover postal
inspector buzzed at one address and then he buzzed at
the other. No answer. He left behind mail slips. Peter
and David waited to see what would happen next, and
(08:02):
waited some more.
Speaker 4 (08:04):
One of the guys from DA he took a leak
in the East River and believe he or not too
sanitation please guys ca him up to him and said, hey,
you can't pee in the river.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
David Shean could feel his hopes of catching anyone in
Chinatown pissing away to Nobody was coming to collect the packages,
even though their street value was supposed to be huge.
Maybe someone had tipped them off. The whole operation now
hinged on the third box, the one that was going
to Brooklyn.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
We heard the beep go off.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Peter Mattessa rushed over to the Brooklyn address to meet
the agents.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
There.
Speaker 5 (08:42):
We knocked on the door or broke down the door.
There's a package open. The stuffed animals were out.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Peter found himself face to face with a thirty eight
year old woman, a mother of two, an accountant at
a bank. Peter explained she was under arrest.
Speaker 5 (08:59):
Read her rights, you know in Cantonese, Amandarin. I forgot
exactly which one it was. She was very upset, crying,
and your goal is to try to calm the situation
down as soon as you can and then hopefully move
up the ladder.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
But move up the ladder, Peter means this woman might
have information that would help the FEDS figure out who's
in charge of importing the heroin the first rung of
the ladder was right here in this house, Peter needed
to know the box's next destination, and to find that out,
he needed this woman to act totally normal. She needed
(09:41):
to call whoever she was going to call after the
box's arrival. They needed her to go from being an
accomplice to being a cooperating witness quickly.
Speaker 5 (09:50):
I tell her the amunt of heroin here, you're facing
ten years to life because it's so much herowin. This
is your time to help out yourself. We can't guarantee
you how much jail time you do, but it'll be
brought to the attention of the judges, will know how
much you've helped out in this case. And it's a
courageous decision to make. We try to tell them. We
(10:11):
think it's the right one to make. To help us,
and we help you.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
But the person this woman was going to call was
her friend. If she cooperated, that would mean betraying her friend.
But if she didn't cooperate, she might not see her
two children grow up. She had to make an impossible
decision as the agents hovered over her the clock was ticking.
(10:38):
This woman agreed to cooperate. Her name is in the
court documents, but she never responded to her real quest
for an interview. Anyway, her name's not that important to
the story. What's important is the chain of events she
set off by giving the federal agents the name of
her contact.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
Over the next few days.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
Agents were arresting moms like her all over in New
York City.
Speaker 5 (11:01):
It was like the first time we've ever seen anything
like that. Really, basically, you're stay at home moms. We're
picking up these these lodge amtsa heroin and I'm sure
they knew it was drugs.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
It turned out that all of these women, women who
received packages of heroin sent to their homes, all to
each other from playing mahjong. Majong is a game of
luck and skill. You play with domino like tiles instead
of with cards. They have different designs on them, stones, bamboos, dragons,
and the goal is to end up with four pairs
(11:35):
of three tiles and one pair of two tiles. That's
called the eyes. Different hands are with different amounts of points.
There were Majong parlors all over Chinatown. These are places
where people could play for a.
Speaker 3 (11:47):
Bit of money or a lot of money.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
The parlors were a place to catch up with old
friends and make new ones, but Now, many of these
friends were under arrest and they were being forced to
turn on one another. Customs agent David Shechan was doing
a lot of that forcing.
Speaker 4 (12:07):
We're going to seize all your assence, to take all
your kids away from you, and you're going to go
to jail, and they're going to go to force for
care and things of that nature.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
You know you're doing that because you really need their
help to get to the person at the top.
Speaker 4 (12:23):
I guess absolutely, Yeah, you need somebody, and you know
you need more than one person to cooperate.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
Because you need it to be cooperated.
Speaker 6 (12:30):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
After I got that suitcase full of court documents on
the Chinatown drug trials, I realized I need help from
someone who spoke Cantonese. That's the language that's spoken by
many of the people in the documents.
Speaker 7 (12:48):
My name is Shu Yu Wang. I'm a practicing attorney
in the city in New York.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
I met she through a friend of a friend. We
met up at a bar and I told her all
about the Chinatown case.
Speaker 7 (13:00):
It was a very interesting story to me personally. I
came from the Cantonese area in China, which is like
super close to Hong Kong. Where a lot of the
those people in the story were originally from. My major
in college was actually journalism, so I sort of like
opened up a part of my brain.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
So she joined me in reporting out this story. We
went over court documents together, and we visited Chinatown together
for months and months.
Speaker 7 (13:27):
Love a podcast, Yeah, that's love that.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
For most of the time that I've lived in New York,
Chinatown's been a place where I'd get dinner or drinks
with friends. For sure, you was a neighborhood where she
got groceries.
Speaker 7 (13:48):
There are certain ingredients that's a rare fine in a
non Chinese grocery stores, like chicken feet. There are like
certain things that I can only get here at a
good price.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
But we've been learning that Chinatown's a place with one
hundred and fifty years of history.
Speaker 6 (14:08):
So Chinatowns today we think of as these counturist destinations,
and you know, they're fun places to go to get
you know, trash keys or jim sum and some kind
of a colorful urban experience or you know, a fun
meal or something. But the reason Chinatowns exist in the
first place is really about a history of racial segregation.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
That's Ellen Wu.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
She teaches history at Indiana University, Bloomington, and she talked
to us about how Chinatowns arose in American cities in
the face of anti Asian laws and violence. US immigration
laws also helped create Chinatowns, especially a law called the
Chinese Exclusion Act, which passed in eighteen eighty two. Another
(14:54):
historian we spoke to is Michael Luo. He's an editor
at The New Yorker and he wrote a book on
Chinese immigration called Strangers in the Land.
Speaker 8 (15:03):
It was the Justice of the Supreme Court, Justice Stephen
Field who wrote the opinion refer to the China as
strangers in the land, talking about how they could never
assimilate with our people, and I feel like the stranger
label remains imprinted on Asian Americans today.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
She says she's felt what Michael lew was describing, especially
when she first moved to the US for law school.
Speaker 7 (15:32):
So it was kind of like surprised at how friendly
people were surrounding me. But also to that I'm sensing,
like your people out there just kind of like, oh,
you're different, and you can tell by their gestures, by
their like facial expressions, things like that.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
As a white person, I've never experienced that, but I
do know how bad it feels to be viewed as
a stranger. My family moved to the US from Poland
when I was eight. My English was kind of weird,
but I wanted to fit in so badly.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
When I look at pictures of myself, it's embarrassing.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
I was like a parody of what I thought in
American case it was supposed to look like. And the
more sure you and I looked into this Chinatown case
from where we came to see that it's also about
someone who was trying, in their own way to feel
like they belonged.
Speaker 9 (16:40):
Wong Tina date of birth nineteen fifty eight in New York,
New York, Chinese female citizen US height five foot nine inches,
weight one hundred and twenty pounds, brown eyes, black hair.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
As sure you and I went through that suitcase full
of documents together, we kept coming across the name of
one woman, sometimes called Tina Wong, sometimes called Tina.
Speaker 9 (17:04):
I'll say in or about in between early August nineteen
eighty seven and late Deceummer nineteen eighty seven, within the
Eastern District of New York and elsewhere, the defendant Tina
Asse did knowingly and willfully import into the United States
from a place outside thereof a quantity of heroin, a
(17:25):
Schedule one narcotic drug controlled substance.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
So this is a complaint against Tina. Asse what situation
is Tina in if they have this information?
Speaker 7 (17:39):
So, like, first of all, it got an informant which
said I delivered the packages to Dina, and I'm just
quite interested in the last paragraph when they said that
they had a recording between informant and the ultimate recipient
of the drugs. Tina is kind of like a mettleman,
just like someone caught in between who gave her the
(17:59):
package and who she was supposed to give the packages to.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
And apparently the.
Speaker 7 (18:04):
Prosecution had information from both ends, so Tina was kind
of trapped in a situation like she can't get away
with that.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
At first, Tina just seemed like another low level drug smuggler.
She was one of about a half a dozen people
federal authorities arrested. This was after that at Countant in
Brooklyn got caught with that wired up package, setting this
whole investigation off. But as sure you and I went
through the court documents, it started to look like Tina
was actually at the absolute center of the government's case.
(18:35):
Without her, everything might have played out entirely differently. She
and I were desperate to talk to Tina. She, like
all the women who received mail packages, had never spoken
to a reporter before about this time. But I found
what I thought was her address. It was in Manhattan,
and we rang her bell twice three times.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
She was never home.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
Then we showed up with a box of Italian cookies
that we had picked up from a bakery nearby. I
know that sounds weird, but I thought it would seem
friendlier than showing up with just a microphone.
Speaker 7 (19:08):
It was a break apartment building. Yeah, we entered a building,
not knowing if Tina is in this room this time,
but we went up to her floor, went to.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
Her door, the door opened, this woman was standing there
and I said nothing.
Speaker 7 (19:22):
Yeah, I think I was the one who broke this islence, right,
So where the journals sticking here? So I just wondered
that if we can help, said about this project.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
She's like, yeah, come on in, and whoever your impressions
of her? She looked cool.
Speaker 7 (19:42):
She's got short haircut and she's got super thick eyeliners.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
I would say, yeah, she had like black eyeliner.
Speaker 7 (19:50):
And also she looks totally unbothered, even though we're clearly
bothering her and her family. She's kind of like, well, Okay,
they've been bugging me for long enough, let's just see
what they.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
Have to offer. What do you remember about the apartment?
Speaker 7 (20:04):
So it's very homey, I would say, And there's a
huge cage in the center of the living room, and
that might be one of the very first things that
you would notice once you stepped in.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
It was an African gray parrot inside. I think the
first thing I said, right was tell me about your parrot.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Oh, that's a lucky bird. And I had him full
like twenty five years.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
Yes, he said something. I want to record it.
Speaker 10 (20:33):
He knows she's a stranger, so you won't talk, but
if you gets to know anyths to talk.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
We weren't actually there to interview the parrot. We wanted
Tina's story. She was born in the nineteen fifties. She
was living outside of Chinatown at a time when Chinatown
was way smaller. She was one of the few Chinese kids.
Her dad was Chinese and her mom was from was Portuguese.
Speaker 10 (20:59):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we were like the first Chinese family.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
I mean, not the first, but the few. We used
to fight.
Speaker 10 (21:06):
We used to get picked on a lot, everybody that
was Asian and used to get picked on one time
or another a stupid kid's stuff like ching chong, and
then you know, you fight back.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
It's weird now to think of a Chinatown without kids,
but for a long time, there just weren't very many
Chinese kids. In the US period, the Chinese Exclusion Act
made it hard for any new Chinese immigrants to come,
and it took nearly a century until nineteen sixty five
for Congress to finally ban immigration quotas based on ethnicity.
(21:41):
Tina was seven years old at the time when all
these new Chinese immigrants started to show up and Chinatown
was becoming a family neighborhood. Tina talked about how it
was so great to be included in this new world
of all these kids her age, but still she felt
a little different from them.
Speaker 10 (21:58):
I think they were kind of little racist on me
since I wasn't, you know, like because I'm only half Chinese. Yeah,
there was a little racism there, but that didn't stop me. Yeah,
so that's why I learned MJ. Mahjong And you know,
(22:20):
when I would play MJ with them and I beat them,
then I feel that they goad the joke sing.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
It's pretty good.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
And joke saying is someone who is who's American born Chinese?
Speaker 3 (22:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
As an adult, Tina kept playing majong. She went to
these special places that were kind of like speakeasies. You
had to know someone who knew about them and then
they could tell you where they were. Tina's favorite was
on the second floor of a building on one of
Chinatown's main streets, Canal Street.
Speaker 10 (22:51):
It's like a Chinese green wallpaint uh smoky.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
And a lot of majong noise.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
Is there music playing or is it just people talking
on the clack of the tiles.
Speaker 10 (23:06):
Yeah, I think it's just the clacking of the tiles.
People don't want to hear the music might disturb They're focused.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
And what sort of people were there?
Speaker 1 (23:15):
Oh? People, young people, all kinds.
Speaker 3 (23:19):
And how good did you get on like a scale
one through ten?
Speaker 1 (23:23):
I didn't have like really good skills, but I had.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
Look, she was hanging out in these majong parlors and
she was getting lucky. Then her best friend from when
she was little came up to her and said, you know,
I have this proposal for you. I was wondering if
you could receive a package in the mail for me.
Don't worry about what's in the box, basically, but if
(23:46):
you receive this box, it'll be worth your while.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
All you gotta do is receive the package.
Speaker 10 (23:53):
Don't have to open it, don't have to do this,
just accept it and that's it.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
She you do you remember if Tina ever broke the
law before.
Speaker 7 (24:04):
This happened, gambling, if that counts.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
Yeah, she got some fights, I think she said, yeah,
but like street fights, yeah yeah, yeah, No, nothing serious.
Speaker 7 (24:13):
She's not like a risk seeker. I would say, like,
she will never voluntarily invite herself into troubles. I think
she needed money at a time, just trying to like
support herself better. It sounded like an easy deal for her.
Speaker 10 (24:29):
We're poor kids, we don't have that kind of money.
So to have that kind of money, you take a chance.
And I think a lot of people would probably have
take the chance.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
So after she you know, told her friend she would
do it, she waited a few weeks, right, and then
her friend called her and said, you know, the box
is going to arrive like somewhere in these three days.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
Yeah, when it came I took it home.
Speaker 10 (24:54):
I put it in my room and I put it
in the closet with my clothes on top.
Speaker 3 (24:58):
And then she called her friend and was like, I
have the box. What should I do?
Speaker 10 (25:01):
They told me to open it. So I opened it
and there was like Chinese in the box.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
I think that with tea boxes.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
And her friend said, okay, take one of these two
boxes and bring it to this woman who lived like
a seven minute walk away.
Speaker 10 (25:16):
I wasn't scared because I didn't really know the magnitude
of the danger.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
So Tina kept accepting the boxes. Sometimes they came through
the mail. Sometimes a friend brought them to her apartment
and she would carry them on.
Speaker 10 (25:30):
I was bringing down one box and it was kind
of like open, so I like looked at it and
it was like a like a brick. When I touched
it was kind of dusty, and I think I went
like this and it went in my mouth and.
Speaker 7 (25:42):
I said, oh my god, the taste, well, it was heroin.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
Yeah, it was like seven million dollars worth of heroin.
Her friend gave her a like a pasta bag or
a paper.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
Bag full of cash.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Yeah, it was a big brick of cash, so like as.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
Of in a movie getting the money. It was fun.
Speaker 10 (26:04):
I'm not gonna lie. You don't think of tomorrow. Just
think of that day, you know, and what you could
do with it. It's like being queen queen for a day.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
What's the first thing you bought?
Speaker 5 (26:19):
Hmmm?
Speaker 10 (26:20):
I think I would the most expensive food, like lobster,
and took it home and ate it all by myself.
Speaker 3 (26:26):
You ordered a full lobster.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
Yeah, I think I order a double lobster, and then.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
You brought it to your apartment and then you just
ate it by yourself.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 10 (26:36):
I watched TV and ate it and your like, life
is good. Yeah, you could have this every day because
I love lobster.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
She hid all of the cash that she was getting
in a drawer in her bedroom and used it for
all sorts of stuff.
Speaker 3 (26:53):
The dentist that's on Majeong Jewelry.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
Tina bought a car at BMW, and the pinnacle of
all of this is when she and her best friend
went on a trip to Asia together, a trip that
would turn out to be a very big deal in
the case later. And on that trip her world kind
of got expanded. She got to see things she had
never seen before in her life. Like she talked about
how when she and her friend arrived in Indonesia, they
(27:17):
saw this huge beach that looked like it was covered
with black rock, but when she got closer, she realized
those were actually crabs.
Speaker 10 (27:24):
It's like a thousand of them, so it looked like
the rock is black, but when you go there, it's
white because all the crabs walk away.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
It's like thousands.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
Was this fun when you're like getting these packages, doing
these trips?
Speaker 3 (27:37):
It was fun.
Speaker 10 (27:39):
I feel that if you take any ordinary person and
you give them a trip, and you take them here,
you can go shopping. Nobody's gonna say no. I mean,
you know they're they're not gonna say they didn't have fun.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
According to the court docs, Tina made about fifteen thousand
dollars for receiving these boxes, and that's not including other
perks like the plane ticket to Asia. But while the
money was fun, it wasn't drastically teaching her life the
way that she imagined it was, and her friend was
asking her to do more and more she was getting boxy.
(28:15):
Tina had a bad feeling. Tina was right to be
anxious about her luck running out. This was the late eighties.
President Ronald Reagan had doubled down on the war on drugs.
Speaker 8 (28:27):
We're taking down the surrender flag that has flown over
so many drug efforts.
Speaker 11 (28:32):
We're running up a battle flag.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
We can fight the drug problem, and we can win.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
In nineteen eighty six, Reagan signed the Anti Drug Abuse Act.
It created new mandatory and minimum sentences for drug crimes,
and that same year Congress began holding hearings.
Speaker 4 (28:51):
Today will learn more about criminal groups of Asian origin
operating in the United States.
Speaker 11 (28:58):
Drug traffickers love a vacuum. As traditional organized crime appears
to be taking less and less of the market than
other trafficking organizations will move in, and it's certainly appears
from the intelligence we have that the Oriental traffickers are
picking up a big piece of that action.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
All of this was in the distant background of Tina
Wong's life. Her reason for wanting to quit the drug
trade was closer to home. She was worried that if
she kept accepting these packages, she'd put her family in danger.
She had a husband and a one year old daughter.
(29:43):
When Tina Wong was twenty eight years old, she became
a mom to a baby girl.
Speaker 10 (29:49):
They cleaned her up and they put her in the
little basket and they wrapped her up like a sumo,
you know, because they got nails and she was like scratching.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
She named her daughter Fallen after that TV show Dynasty,
which had you heard of that TV show?
Speaker 7 (30:09):
I've heard of that, but I've never watched it.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
Yeah, I had never heard of it, but yeah, apparently
it was like a huge TV show in the eighties,
like number one hit, and it was about this oil
Tycoons family, and Fallen was the daughter.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
And she was like a rich, spoiled rat.
Speaker 5 (30:24):
Your father's Moddy's not a gift, it's a responsibility.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
It is you want to feel guilty for being born rich?
Speaker 2 (30:31):
I don't, But yeah, Tina's daughter, Fallen was born into
a different situation, right. Tina had had the stream of
being a textile designer, and she even got as a
high schooler into this like special program at FT, the
College in New York of Art and Design. But then
she was on a scholarship and both she was like
sixteen seventeen, both of her parents got cancer one after
(30:51):
the other, and she was the person who had to
take care of them and then she missed so much
school that she got kicked out of the program. After
her parents died, she was like trying to get study work,
so she would like go to bars to work there
and have to bring fallen and then people would be like,
you're a bad mom for bringing your kid to a bar.
Speaker 10 (31:10):
Sometimes when people call me and say, oh, we need
a bartender or a waitress, you know for the week
or the day, I fill in. But it wasn't, you know,
often because I had to take care of her because
I was still like young, and so I was like
not really a best mother, but you know, I try.
(31:31):
You know, you got to think about what you're doing.
So I try to work and you know, make ends meet.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
And her husband was working as a cook and sometimes
in some kimbling parlors.
Speaker 7 (31:44):
He works like super long shifts and long hours. I
think at a certain point, like they had to send
a baby to her grandparents who were in Canada at
a time, tick you of her so that like Tina
could go out to work while people were where the
baby was being taken care of by someone.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
They sent Folin to Canada to be with her grandparents,
her husband's parents, So she knew that Allan would be
safe as Tina tried to find study work and figure
out her life. You know, Tina doesn't speak Chinese, but
if she was with her grandparents, then.
Speaker 7 (32:18):
Felin could pick up some Chinese.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
Wait, did you say that your parents did the same thing.
Speaker 7 (32:22):
Yeah, I got through basically the same thing as Fallin.
My extended family is like very closely like supporting each other.
So they also sent me back to my grandparents when
I was about like ten months old. Months old, yes,
about the same time.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
So Tina knew that Fallen was being well taken care
of as she and her husband tried to sort out
how to provide for her, and after feeling like she
had been doing a bad job, Tina felt like this
huge weight had been lifted from her shoulders. Were you
enjoying it or were you like bad because you were
missing her?
Speaker 10 (32:56):
Both? Truthfully, I was enjoying it.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
It was after her daughter was sent away that Tina
started accepting these boxes. But then she could feel her
luck running out. She told her friend she wasn't going
to do this work anymore. Five months went by, then
came the sting, the day DA agents raided that house
in Brooklyn. As we already heard. Agent Petemtesser found that accountant,
(33:23):
the mother of two, standing in front of an open
box of stuffed animals.
Speaker 5 (33:29):
She was very upset, crying, and your goal is to
try to calm the situation down as soon as you
can and then hopefully move.
Speaker 4 (33:39):
Up the ladder.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
This woman led the agents up the ladder to the
woman who had recruited her, and that woman gave up
the names of Tina's best friend and Tina.
Speaker 9 (33:51):
On March first, nineteen eighty eight, an arrest warrant was
issued in the Eastern District of New York for Tina
Wong for importation of heroin. At approximately nine pm, Wong
was arrested at her residence.
Speaker 7 (34:06):
That was the moment maybe that she realized that she
was not really being paranoid and everything she did has
a consequence.
Speaker 3 (34:15):
Tina's worst fears were now coming true.
Speaker 10 (34:19):
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,
you know, like that was kind of.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
A low blow.
Speaker 10 (34:32):
I don't think they should have did it like that,
but that's their way.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
So their way was to keep building a case against
whoever was at the top, the person really behind the
boxes of heroin. To do that, they needed Tina to
tell them everything about what she had done and who
else was involved this time, though. It wasn't going to
be so easy. Was there a part of you that's like,
(34:56):
I'm not going to cooperate.
Speaker 10 (34:58):
Yes, that I wasn't going to cooperate. No, I wasn't
going to cooperate with them.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
Tina had much more valuable information about this scheme than
the account, but she also had no intention of sharing
what she knew, and that was going to be a
big problem because she and all the women like her
were now in the crosshairs of a young and determined
federal prosecutor. Her job was to bring down a drug kingpin,
(35:24):
and she saw all these female witnesses in custody as
a huge opportunity.
Speaker 12 (35:31):
It was fairly early in my career as a prosecutor,
and it was like one of those cases that I
started in general crimes and then took with me to
narcotics as I worked my way up the chain.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
Her name is Beryl Howell. She's the reason I'm able
to report on this case. I've known Beryl for years.
She's my boyfriend's mother.
Speaker 12 (35:53):
These are briefs that I followed the government have always blue.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
Was that more Toronto book stuff?
Speaker 3 (36:00):
Witness list? Oh my god, Beryl.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
Beryl is the one who gave me that suitcase full
of court documents, years worth of filings, interviews, openings, closings, rebuttals.
There are notepads full of her sprawling cursive all about
illegal saga were almost nothing when according to plan, the
case that started with the Chinatown sting would change Beryl's
(36:27):
life and Tina Wong's life and Chinatown. And it was
just getting underway, coming up on the season of the
Chinatown Sting.
Speaker 13 (36:47):
When people came here, there were strangers in a foreign land,
and they didn't speak the language, didn't read English, and
so this was the one place they could go to
for any kind of assistance.
Speaker 11 (37:01):
Once you join a gang, you feel like you have
the whole gang behind you.
Speaker 10 (37:07):
Well, I always know that a good friendship nothing can
break it.
Speaker 12 (37:11):
There's a difference between hearing things and thinking you're not
hearing the truth versus thinking you're not hearing the whole story.
I wasn't sure I was ever hearing the whole story
from Tina Wan.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
The Chinatown Stang is written and produced by Me Liddy
Jine Kott and reported by Me and Shu Yu Wang.
Our senior producer is Emily Martinez, additional production by Sonya Gerwit.
Our editor is Julia Barton, with additional editing by Karen Shakerji.
Our story consultant is wrong shau Ching. Our executive producer
(37:55):
is Jacob Smith. Our music was composed by Johnson Sound
Design and additional music.
Speaker 3 (38:02):
By Jake Gorsky.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
Our fact checker is Kate Furby, and our show art
was designed by Sean Carney. All voiceover work by Telly Leong.
For more information about this episode, check out our show
notes or visit Pushkin, dot fm, slash Chinatown. The Chinatownstang
is a production of Pushkin Industries. To find more Pushkin podcasts,
(38:25):
listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
like to listen to podcasts. You can find The Chinatown
Stang anywhere you get your podcasts. Pushkin Plus subscribers can
(38:49):
binge the entire season right now ad free. Sign up
on the Chinatownstang show page on Apple or at Pushkin
dot fm Slash plus
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Hi everyone, I'm Liddy Agene Cat. I'm dropping into your
feed today to bring you a preview of my new podcast,
The Chinatown Sting. It's about a woman living in Manhattan's
Chinatown in the nineteen eighties. After she agrees to receive
a package in the mail for her best friend, she
finds herself caught in a criminal case. It's led by
(00:39):
a prosecutor determined to bring down one of Chinatown's most
notorious gangsters. No matter the cost, let's get into it.
On February ninth, nineteen eighty eight, David Shechian was working
his usual shift. He was a US customs agent at
JFK Airport.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
His phone rang.
Speaker 4 (01:03):
I was talking through a customs agent in California who says, hey,
we just got three shipments of heroin and three different
bailed parcels. Do you guys want the case? So I
said it, absolutely, We'll take it.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
The parcels were on their way from Hong Kong to
New York. Customs agents were looking inside packages more often
ever since President Reagan in Congress had ramped up.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
The War on drugs.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
David shechan was part of this special task force to
combat narcotic smuggling, so they got calls about drugs coming
into New York City all the time. This call was special, though,
because inside each of these packages was about seven million
dollars worth of heroin. In today's money, that's something like
(01:54):
eighteen million dollars per package. Peter Matasser was an agent
for the Drug Enforcement Administration. He really wanted to know
who was waiting for those boxes.
Speaker 5 (02:07):
I know it was going to be a big case
because it was a lot of heroin and the focus
was on China white heroin at the time, because a
lot was coming into New York. A lot of heroin
was coming in from China to Hong Kong then into
New York, and it sounded like a good opportunity to
work a big case.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
On February seventeenth, the boxes arrived at the airport. Peter
and David knew they were at the beginning of something big,
but they didn't know how big. My name is Liddy
(02:48):
Jin Kott. As a journalist, I often report on law
and power. I've written an audiobook about the Supreme Court,
covered the federal trial of the crypto billionaire, and investigated
the fallout of the legalization of sports budding. I'm interested
in how throughout American history we've used the law as
a tool to make our country both more and less.
(03:10):
Just a few years ago I came into possession of
a suitcase. It was full of thousands of pages of
court documents. They were all about a case a prosecutor
spent years trying to build against a criminal who refused
to be caught. There was mention of a criminal syndicate
powerful enough to take on the Italian mafia, an attempted assassination,
(03:33):
a global manhunt, congressional hearings, international press coverage, a standing
room only trial, And none of it would have happened
without a group of ordinary people, people who in time
would have to make a decision about who to protect
and who to betray. But that afternoon in nineteen eighty eight,
(03:55):
one of these people was.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
Just waiting for a box.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
This is the Chinatown Staying, Episode one Lucky Bird. Court
documents would later describe the exact contents of each box
that landed in New York. Twenty small bricks made up
(04:24):
of white compressed powder, wrapped up in either brown tape
or duct tape. In one of the packages, the heroin
was hidden inside these red and white tea boxes that
had Chinese characters on them, and the other two the
heroin was hidden among stuffed animals. Now Peter Mtesser and
the DA could get to work. Step one, take out
(04:48):
the heroin and replace it with decoy heroin. It was
made out of wooden blocks, cut and tape together.
Speaker 5 (04:54):
Except you leave a sample of the heroin in there.
We'd put the stuffed animals back in. Our goal was
to get someone opening up that box and going through it.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
That was our goal.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
So when someone on the receiving end looked at inside
the boxes, they should notice nothing weird.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
Step two.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
The Feds hid thin wires in a transmitter inside each box.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
Whoever was looking through the box.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Would break the wires and that would trigger a silent
electric signal that would be picked up by these special
machines in the hands of law enforcement. And this receiver
had only two signals.
Speaker 5 (05:29):
It was a slow beep you're listening in to like
a computer almost and you hear the beat beat beeping
in when a rapid beaf goes bepp beat, that means
it's been open.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
The dagents set up their trap as fast as they could.
They didn't want the people who were waiting for the
packages to get suspicious.
Speaker 5 (05:49):
They know how long it takes from point A to
point B, so as soon as you get a day
or two late, you're.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
The investiation could be compromised.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Step three. Each of these boxes had to be dropped
off at exactly the same time they were to be
delivered by postal inspectors who were working undercover. Vans full
of agents were waiting nearby, listening in on their little
computers and ready to spring into action.
Speaker 5 (06:17):
You have to cover all the different parts of the
locations because if someone takes the box and runs out
the door, then we have Heroin on the street.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
On February twenty third, the mail packages, the vans full
of agents, and the undercover postal workers, they were all
ready to go. Two of the packages were addressed to
Manhattan's Chinatown and one was going to Brooklyn. Peter and
the customs agent David Shan followed the two packages that
were going to Chinatown.
Speaker 5 (06:46):
The thrill of the chase really becomes it just it
sort of takes you over.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
That day, like on any other day, Chinatown was bustling.
The sidewalks were crowded with vendors selling cucumbers, eggplants, bockjoy,
dried mushrooms. People were walking shoulder to shoulder on the
main streets. There were neon side everywhere saying go this
way or go that way, and there was always a
truck somewhere squeezing its way down these narrow streets full
(07:17):
of fresh wares. That's all to say, Chinatown wasn't an
easy place to find parking, especially not for a van
full of non Asian undercover federal agents.
Speaker 4 (07:28):
We were underneath the highway in the hand these river drive,
and that's where we had thirty agents all lined up
ready to go with shotguns and rifles and un davy.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
There were two wired up packages addressed to two apartment
buildings right next to each other. So the undercover postal
inspector buzzed at one address and then he buzzed at
the other. No answer. He left behind mail slips. Peter
and David waited to see what would happen next, and
(08:02):
waited some more.
Speaker 4 (08:04):
One of the guys from DA he took a leak
in the East River and believe he or not too
sanitation please guys ca him up to him and said, hey,
you can't pee in the river.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
David Shean could feel his hopes of catching anyone in
Chinatown pissing away to Nobody was coming to collect the packages,
even though their street value was supposed to be huge.
Maybe someone had tipped them off. The whole operation now
hinged on the third box, the one that was going
to Brooklyn.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
We heard the beep go off.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Peter Mattessa rushed over to the Brooklyn address to meet
the agents.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
There.
Speaker 5 (08:42):
We knocked on the door or broke down the door.
There's a package open. The stuffed animals were out.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Peter found himself face to face with a thirty eight
year old woman, a mother of two, an accountant at
a bank. Peter explained she was under arrest.
Speaker 5 (08:59):
Read her rights, you know in Cantonese, Amandarin. I forgot
exactly which one it was. She was very upset, crying,
and your goal is to try to calm the situation
down as soon as you can and then hopefully move
up the ladder.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
But move up the ladder, Peter means this woman might
have information that would help the FEDS figure out who's
in charge of importing the heroin the first rung of
the ladder was right here in this house, Peter needed
to know the box's next destination, and to find that out,
he needed this woman to act totally normal. She needed
(09:41):
to call whoever she was going to call after the
box's arrival. They needed her to go from being an
accomplice to being a cooperating witness quickly.
Speaker 5 (09:50):
I tell her the amunt of heroin here, you're facing
ten years to life because it's so much herowin. This
is your time to help out yourself. We can't guarantee
you how much jail time you do, but it'll be
brought to the attention of the judges, will know how
much you've helped out in this case. And it's a
courageous decision to make. We try to tell them. We
(10:11):
think it's the right one to make. To help us,
and we help you.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
But the person this woman was going to call was
her friend. If she cooperated, that would mean betraying her friend.
But if she didn't cooperate, she might not see her
two children grow up. She had to make an impossible
decision as the agents hovered over her the clock was ticking.
(10:38):
This woman agreed to cooperate. Her name is in the
court documents, but she never responded to her real quest
for an interview. Anyway, her name's not that important to
the story. What's important is the chain of events she
set off by giving the federal agents the name of
her contact.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
Over the next few days.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
Agents were arresting moms like her all over in New
York City.
Speaker 5 (11:01):
It was like the first time we've ever seen anything
like that. Really, basically, you're stay at home moms. We're
picking up these these lodge amtsa heroin and I'm sure
they knew it was drugs.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
It turned out that all of these women, women who
received packages of heroin sent to their homes, all to
each other from playing mahjong. Majong is a game of
luck and skill. You play with domino like tiles instead
of with cards. They have different designs on them, stones, bamboos, dragons,
and the goal is to end up with four pairs
(11:35):
of three tiles and one pair of two tiles. That's
called the eyes. Different hands are with different amounts of points.
There were Majong parlors all over Chinatown. These are places
where people could play for a.
Speaker 3 (11:47):
Bit of money or a lot of money.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
The parlors were a place to catch up with old
friends and make new ones, but Now, many of these
friends were under arrest and they were being forced to
turn on one another. Customs agent David Shechan was doing
a lot of that forcing.
Speaker 4 (12:07):
We're going to seize all your assence, to take all
your kids away from you, and you're going to go
to jail, and they're going to go to force for
care and things of that nature.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
You know you're doing that because you really need their
help to get to the person at the top.
Speaker 4 (12:23):
I guess absolutely, Yeah, you need somebody, and you know
you need more than one person to cooperate.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
Because you need it to be cooperated.
Speaker 6 (12:30):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
After I got that suitcase full of court documents on
the Chinatown drug trials, I realized I need help from
someone who spoke Cantonese. That's the language that's spoken by
many of the people in the documents.
Speaker 7 (12:48):
My name is Shu Yu Wang. I'm a practicing attorney
in the city in New York.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
I met she through a friend of a friend. We
met up at a bar and I told her all
about the Chinatown case.
Speaker 7 (13:00):
It was a very interesting story to me personally. I
came from the Cantonese area in China, which is like
super close to Hong Kong. Where a lot of the
those people in the story were originally from. My major
in college was actually journalism, so I sort of like
opened up a part of my brain.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
So she joined me in reporting out this story. We
went over court documents together, and we visited Chinatown together
for months and months.
Speaker 7 (13:27):
Love a podcast, Yeah, that's love that.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
For most of the time that I've lived in New York,
Chinatown's been a place where I'd get dinner or drinks
with friends. For sure, you was a neighborhood where she
got groceries.
Speaker 7 (13:48):
There are certain ingredients that's a rare fine in a
non Chinese grocery stores, like chicken feet. There are like
certain things that I can only get here at a
good price.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
But we've been learning that Chinatown's a place with one
hundred and fifty years of history.
Speaker 6 (14:08):
So Chinatowns today we think of as these counturist destinations,
and you know, they're fun places to go to get
you know, trash keys or jim sum and some kind
of a colorful urban experience or you know, a fun
meal or something. But the reason Chinatowns exist in the
first place is really about a history of racial segregation.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
That's Ellen Wu.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
She teaches history at Indiana University, Bloomington, and she talked
to us about how Chinatowns arose in American cities in
the face of anti Asian laws and violence. US immigration
laws also helped create Chinatowns, especially a law called the
Chinese Exclusion Act, which passed in eighteen eighty two. Another
(14:54):
historian we spoke to is Michael Luo. He's an editor
at The New Yorker and he wrote a book on
Chinese immigration called Strangers in the Land.
Speaker 8 (15:03):
It was the Justice of the Supreme Court, Justice Stephen
Field who wrote the opinion refer to the China as
strangers in the land, talking about how they could never
assimilate with our people, and I feel like the stranger
label remains imprinted on Asian Americans today.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
She says she's felt what Michael lew was describing, especially
when she first moved to the US for law school.
Speaker 7 (15:32):
So it was kind of like surprised at how friendly
people were surrounding me. But also to that I'm sensing,
like your people out there just kind of like, oh,
you're different, and you can tell by their gestures, by
their like facial expressions, things like that.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
As a white person, I've never experienced that, but I
do know how bad it feels to be viewed as
a stranger. My family moved to the US from Poland
when I was eight. My English was kind of weird,
but I wanted to fit in so badly.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
When I look at pictures of myself, it's embarrassing.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
I was like a parody of what I thought in
American case it was supposed to look like. And the
more sure you and I looked into this Chinatown case
from where we came to see that it's also about
someone who was trying, in their own way to feel
like they belonged.
Speaker 9 (16:40):
Wong Tina date of birth nineteen fifty eight in New York,
New York, Chinese female citizen US height five foot nine inches,
weight one hundred and twenty pounds, brown eyes, black hair.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
As sure you and I went through that suitcase full
of documents together, we kept coming across the name of
one woman, sometimes called Tina Wong, sometimes called Tina.
Speaker 9 (17:04):
I'll say in or about in between early August nineteen
eighty seven and late Deceummer nineteen eighty seven, within the
Eastern District of New York and elsewhere, the defendant Tina
Asse did knowingly and willfully import into the United States
from a place outside thereof a quantity of heroin, a
(17:25):
Schedule one narcotic drug controlled substance.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
So this is a complaint against Tina. Asse what situation
is Tina in if they have this information?
Speaker 7 (17:39):
So, like, first of all, it got an informant which
said I delivered the packages to Dina, and I'm just
quite interested in the last paragraph when they said that
they had a recording between informant and the ultimate recipient
of the drugs. Tina is kind of like a mettleman,
just like someone caught in between who gave her the
(17:59):
package and who she was supposed to give the packages to.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
And apparently the.
Speaker 7 (18:04):
Prosecution had information from both ends, so Tina was kind
of trapped in a situation like she can't get away
with that.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
At first, Tina just seemed like another low level drug smuggler.
She was one of about a half a dozen people
federal authorities arrested. This was after that at Countant in
Brooklyn got caught with that wired up package, setting this
whole investigation off. But as sure you and I went
through the court documents, it started to look like Tina
was actually at the absolute center of the government's case.
(18:35):
Without her, everything might have played out entirely differently. She
and I were desperate to talk to Tina. She, like
all the women who received mail packages, had never spoken
to a reporter before about this time. But I found
what I thought was her address. It was in Manhattan,
and we rang her bell twice three times.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
She was never home.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
Then we showed up with a box of Italian cookies
that we had picked up from a bakery nearby. I
know that sounds weird, but I thought it would seem
friendlier than showing up with just a microphone.
Speaker 7 (19:08):
It was a break apartment building. Yeah, we entered a building,
not knowing if Tina is in this room this time,
but we went up to her floor, went to.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
Her door, the door opened, this woman was standing there
and I said nothing.
Speaker 7 (19:22):
Yeah, I think I was the one who broke this islence, right,
So where the journals sticking here? So I just wondered
that if we can help, said about this project.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
She's like, yeah, come on in, and whoever your impressions
of her? She looked cool.
Speaker 7 (19:42):
She's got short haircut and she's got super thick eyeliners.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
I would say, yeah, she had like black eyeliner.
Speaker 7 (19:50):
And also she looks totally unbothered, even though we're clearly
bothering her and her family. She's kind of like, well, Okay,
they've been bugging me for long enough, let's just see
what they.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
Have to offer. What do you remember about the apartment?
Speaker 7 (20:04):
So it's very homey, I would say, And there's a
huge cage in the center of the living room, and
that might be one of the very first things that
you would notice once you stepped in.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
It was an African gray parrot inside. I think the
first thing I said, right was tell me about your parrot.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Oh, that's a lucky bird. And I had him full
like twenty five years.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
Yes, he said something. I want to record it.
Speaker 10 (20:33):
He knows she's a stranger, so you won't talk, but
if you gets to know anyths to talk.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
We weren't actually there to interview the parrot. We wanted
Tina's story. She was born in the nineteen fifties. She
was living outside of Chinatown at a time when Chinatown
was way smaller. She was one of the few Chinese kids.
Her dad was Chinese and her mom was from was Portuguese.
Speaker 10 (20:59):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we were like the first Chinese family.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
I mean, not the first, but the few. We used
to fight.
Speaker 10 (21:06):
We used to get picked on a lot, everybody that
was Asian and used to get picked on one time
or another a stupid kid's stuff like ching chong, and
then you know, you fight back.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
It's weird now to think of a Chinatown without kids,
but for a long time, there just weren't very many
Chinese kids. In the US period, the Chinese Exclusion Act
made it hard for any new Chinese immigrants to come,
and it took nearly a century until nineteen sixty five
for Congress to finally ban immigration quotas based on ethnicity.
(21:41):
Tina was seven years old at the time when all
these new Chinese immigrants started to show up and Chinatown
was becoming a family neighborhood. Tina talked about how it
was so great to be included in this new world
of all these kids her age, but still she felt
a little different from them.
Speaker 10 (21:58):
I think they were kind of little racist on me
since I wasn't, you know, like because I'm only half Chinese. Yeah,
there was a little racism there, but that didn't stop me. Yeah,
so that's why I learned MJ. Mahjong And you know,
(22:20):
when I would play MJ with them and I beat them,
then I feel that they goad the joke sing.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
It's pretty good.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
And joke saying is someone who is who's American born Chinese?
Speaker 3 (22:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
As an adult, Tina kept playing majong. She went to
these special places that were kind of like speakeasies. You
had to know someone who knew about them and then
they could tell you where they were. Tina's favorite was
on the second floor of a building on one of
Chinatown's main streets, Canal Street.
Speaker 10 (22:51):
It's like a Chinese green wallpaint uh smoky.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
And a lot of majong noise.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
Is there music playing or is it just people talking
on the clack of the tiles.
Speaker 10 (23:06):
Yeah, I think it's just the clacking of the tiles.
People don't want to hear the music might disturb They're focused.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
And what sort of people were there?
Speaker 1 (23:15):
Oh? People, young people, all kinds.
Speaker 3 (23:19):
And how good did you get on like a scale
one through ten?
Speaker 1 (23:23):
I didn't have like really good skills, but I had.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
Look, she was hanging out in these majong parlors and
she was getting lucky. Then her best friend from when
she was little came up to her and said, you know,
I have this proposal for you. I was wondering if
you could receive a package in the mail for me.
Don't worry about what's in the box, basically, but if
(23:46):
you receive this box, it'll be worth your while.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
All you gotta do is receive the package.
Speaker 10 (23:53):
Don't have to open it, don't have to do this,
just accept it and that's it.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
She you do you remember if Tina ever broke the
law before.
Speaker 7 (24:04):
This happened, gambling, if that counts.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
Yeah, she got some fights, I think she said, yeah,
but like street fights, yeah yeah, yeah, No, nothing serious.
Speaker 7 (24:13):
She's not like a risk seeker. I would say, like,
she will never voluntarily invite herself into troubles. I think
she needed money at a time, just trying to like
support herself better. It sounded like an easy deal for her.
Speaker 10 (24:29):
We're poor kids, we don't have that kind of money.
So to have that kind of money, you take a chance.
And I think a lot of people would probably have
take the chance.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
So after she you know, told her friend she would
do it, she waited a few weeks, right, and then
her friend called her and said, you know, the box
is going to arrive like somewhere in these three days.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
Yeah, when it came I took it home.
Speaker 10 (24:54):
I put it in my room and I put it
in the closet with my clothes on top.
Speaker 3 (24:58):
And then she called her friend and was like, I
have the box. What should I do?
Speaker 10 (25:01):
They told me to open it. So I opened it
and there was like Chinese in the box.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
I think that with tea boxes.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
And her friend said, okay, take one of these two
boxes and bring it to this woman who lived like
a seven minute walk away.
Speaker 10 (25:16):
I wasn't scared because I didn't really know the magnitude
of the danger.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
So Tina kept accepting the boxes. Sometimes they came through
the mail. Sometimes a friend brought them to her apartment
and she would carry them on.
Speaker 10 (25:30):
I was bringing down one box and it was kind
of like open, so I like looked at it and
it was like a like a brick. When I touched
it was kind of dusty, and I think I went
like this and it went in my mouth and.
Speaker 7 (25:42):
I said, oh my god, the taste, well, it was heroin.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
Yeah, it was like seven million dollars worth of heroin.
Her friend gave her a like a pasta bag or
a paper.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
Bag full of cash.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Yeah, it was a big brick of cash, so like as.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
Of in a movie getting the money. It was fun.
Speaker 10 (26:04):
I'm not gonna lie. You don't think of tomorrow. Just
think of that day, you know, and what you could
do with it. It's like being queen queen for a day.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
What's the first thing you bought?
Speaker 5 (26:19):
Hmmm?
Speaker 10 (26:20):
I think I would the most expensive food, like lobster,
and took it home and ate it all by myself.
Speaker 3 (26:26):
You ordered a full lobster.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
Yeah, I think I order a double lobster, and then.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
You brought it to your apartment and then you just
ate it by yourself.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 10 (26:36):
I watched TV and ate it and your like, life
is good. Yeah, you could have this every day because
I love lobster.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
She hid all of the cash that she was getting
in a drawer in her bedroom and used it for
all sorts of stuff.
Speaker 3 (26:53):
The dentist that's on Majeong Jewelry.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
Tina bought a car at BMW, and the pinnacle of
all of this is when she and her best friend
went on a trip to Asia together, a trip that
would turn out to be a very big deal in
the case later. And on that trip her world kind
of got expanded. She got to see things she had
never seen before in her life. Like she talked about
how when she and her friend arrived in Indonesia, they
(27:17):
saw this huge beach that looked like it was covered
with black rock, but when she got closer, she realized
those were actually crabs.
Speaker 10 (27:24):
It's like a thousand of them, so it looked like
the rock is black, but when you go there, it's
white because all the crabs walk away.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
It's like thousands.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
Was this fun when you're like getting these packages, doing
these trips?
Speaker 3 (27:37):
It was fun.
Speaker 10 (27:39):
I feel that if you take any ordinary person and
you give them a trip, and you take them here,
you can go shopping. Nobody's gonna say no. I mean,
you know they're they're not gonna say they didn't have fun.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
According to the court docs, Tina made about fifteen thousand
dollars for receiving these boxes, and that's not including other
perks like the plane ticket to Asia. But while the
money was fun, it wasn't drastically teaching her life the
way that she imagined it was, and her friend was
asking her to do more and more she was getting boxy.
(28:15):
Tina had a bad feeling. Tina was right to be
anxious about her luck running out. This was the late eighties.
President Ronald Reagan had doubled down on the war on drugs.
Speaker 8 (28:27):
We're taking down the surrender flag that has flown over
so many drug efforts.
Speaker 11 (28:32):
We're running up a battle flag.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
We can fight the drug problem, and we can win.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
In nineteen eighty six, Reagan signed the Anti Drug Abuse Act.
It created new mandatory and minimum sentences for drug crimes,
and that same year Congress began holding hearings.
Speaker 4 (28:51):
Today will learn more about criminal groups of Asian origin
operating in the United States.
Speaker 11 (28:58):
Drug traffickers love a vacuum. As traditional organized crime appears
to be taking less and less of the market than
other trafficking organizations will move in, and it's certainly appears
from the intelligence we have that the Oriental traffickers are
picking up a big piece of that action.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
All of this was in the distant background of Tina
Wong's life. Her reason for wanting to quit the drug
trade was closer to home. She was worried that if
she kept accepting these packages, she'd put her family in danger.
She had a husband and a one year old daughter.
(29:43):
When Tina Wong was twenty eight years old, she became
a mom to a baby girl.
Speaker 10 (29:49):
They cleaned her up and they put her in the
little basket and they wrapped her up like a sumo,
you know, because they got nails and she was like scratching.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
She named her daughter Fallen after that TV show Dynasty,
which had you heard of that TV show?
Speaker 7 (30:09):
I've heard of that, but I've never watched it.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
Yeah, I had never heard of it, but yeah, apparently
it was like a huge TV show in the eighties,
like number one hit, and it was about this oil
Tycoons family, and Fallen was the daughter.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
And she was like a rich, spoiled rat.
Speaker 5 (30:24):
Your father's Moddy's not a gift, it's a responsibility.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
It is you want to feel guilty for being born rich?
Speaker 2 (30:31):
I don't, But yeah, Tina's daughter, Fallen was born into
a different situation, right. Tina had had the stream of
being a textile designer, and she even got as a
high schooler into this like special program at FT, the
College in New York of Art and Design. But then
she was on a scholarship and both she was like
sixteen seventeen, both of her parents got cancer one after
(30:51):
the other, and she was the person who had to
take care of them and then she missed so much
school that she got kicked out of the program. After
her parents died, she was like trying to get study work,
so she would like go to bars to work there
and have to bring fallen and then people would be like,
you're a bad mom for bringing your kid to a bar.
Speaker 10 (31:10):
Sometimes when people call me and say, oh, we need
a bartender or a waitress, you know for the week
or the day, I fill in. But it wasn't, you know,
often because I had to take care of her because
I was still like young, and so I was like
not really a best mother, but you know, I try.
(31:31):
You know, you got to think about what you're doing.
So I try to work and you know, make ends meet.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
And her husband was working as a cook and sometimes
in some kimbling parlors.
Speaker 7 (31:44):
He works like super long shifts and long hours. I
think at a certain point, like they had to send
a baby to her grandparents who were in Canada at
a time, tick you of her so that like Tina
could go out to work while people were where the
baby was being taken care of by someone.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
They sent Folin to Canada to be with her grandparents,
her husband's parents, So she knew that Allan would be
safe as Tina tried to find study work and figure
out her life. You know, Tina doesn't speak Chinese, but
if she was with her grandparents, then.
Speaker 7 (32:18):
Felin could pick up some Chinese.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
Wait, did you say that your parents did the same thing.
Speaker 7 (32:22):
Yeah, I got through basically the same thing as Fallin.
My extended family is like very closely like supporting each other.
So they also sent me back to my grandparents when
I was about like ten months old. Months old, yes,
about the same time.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
So Tina knew that Fallen was being well taken care
of as she and her husband tried to sort out
how to provide for her, and after feeling like she
had been doing a bad job, Tina felt like this
huge weight had been lifted from her shoulders. Were you
enjoying it or were you like bad because you were
missing her?
Speaker 10 (32:56):
Both? Truthfully, I was enjoying it.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
It was after her daughter was sent away that Tina
started accepting these boxes. But then she could feel her
luck running out. She told her friend she wasn't going
to do this work anymore. Five months went by, then
came the sting, the day DA agents raided that house
in Brooklyn. As we already heard. Agent Petemtesser found that accountant,
(33:23):
the mother of two, standing in front of an open
box of stuffed animals.
Speaker 5 (33:29):
She was very upset, crying, and your goal is to
try to calm the situation down as soon as you
can and then hopefully move.
Speaker 4 (33:39):
Up the ladder.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
This woman led the agents up the ladder to the
woman who had recruited her, and that woman gave up
the names of Tina's best friend and Tina.
Speaker 9 (33:51):
On March first, nineteen eighty eight, an arrest warrant was
issued in the Eastern District of New York for Tina
Wong for importation of heroin. At approximately nine pm, Wong
was arrested at her residence.
Speaker 7 (34:06):
That was the moment maybe that she realized that she
was not really being paranoid and everything she did has
a consequence.
Speaker 3 (34:15):
Tina's worst fears were now coming true.
Speaker 10 (34:19):
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,
you know, like that was kind of.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
A low blow.
Speaker 10 (34:32):
I don't think they should have did it like that,
but that's their way.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
So their way was to keep building a case against
whoever was at the top, the person really behind the
boxes of heroin. To do that, they needed Tina to
tell them everything about what she had done and who
else was involved this time, though. It wasn't going to
be so easy. Was there a part of you that's like,
(34:56):
I'm not going to cooperate.
Speaker 10 (34:58):
Yes, that I wasn't going to cooperate. No, I wasn't
going to cooperate with them.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
Tina had much more valuable information about this scheme than
the account, but she also had no intention of sharing
what she knew, and that was going to be a
big problem because she and all the women like her
were now in the crosshairs of a young and determined
federal prosecutor. Her job was to bring down a drug kingpin,
(35:24):
and she saw all these female witnesses in custody as
a huge opportunity.
Speaker 12 (35:31):
It was fairly early in my career as a prosecutor,
and it was like one of those cases that I
started in general crimes and then took with me to
narcotics as I worked my way up the chain.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
Her name is Beryl Howell. She's the reason I'm able
to report on this case. I've known Beryl for years.
She's my boyfriend's mother.
Speaker 12 (35:53):
These are briefs that I followed the government have always blue.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
Was that more Toronto book stuff?
Speaker 3 (36:00):
Witness list? Oh my god, Beryl.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
Beryl is the one who gave me that suitcase full
of court documents, years worth of filings, interviews, openings, closings, rebuttals.
There are notepads full of her sprawling cursive all about
illegal saga were almost nothing when according to plan, the
case that started with the Chinatown sting would change Beryl's
(36:27):
life and Tina Wong's life and Chinatown. And it was
just getting underway, coming up on the season of the
Chinatown Sting.
Speaker 13 (36:47):
When people came here, there were strangers in a foreign land,
and they didn't speak the language, didn't read English, and
so this was the one place they could go to
for any kind of assistance.
Speaker 11 (37:01):
Once you join a gang, you feel like you have
the whole gang behind you.
Speaker 10 (37:07):
Well, I always know that a good friendship nothing can
break it.
Speaker 12 (37:11):
There's a difference between hearing things and thinking you're not
hearing the truth versus thinking you're not hearing the whole story.
I wasn't sure I was ever hearing the whole story
from Tina Wan.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
The Chinatown Stang is written and produced by Me Liddy
Jine Kott and reported by Me and Shu Yu Wang.
Our senior producer is Emily Martinez, additional production by Sonya Gerwit.
Our editor is Julia Barton, with additional editing by Karen Shakerji.
Our story consultant is wrong shau Ching. Our executive producer
(37:55):
is Jacob Smith. Our music was composed by Johnson Sound
Design and additional music.
Speaker 3 (38:02):
By Jake Gorsky.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
Our fact checker is Kate Furby, and our show art
was designed by Sean Carney. All voiceover work by Telly Leong.
For more information about this episode, check out our show
notes or visit Pushkin, dot fm, slash Chinatown. The Chinatownstang
is a production of Pushkin Industries. To find more Pushkin podcasts,
(38:25):
listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
like to listen to podcasts. You can find The Chinatown
Stang anywhere you get your podcasts. Pushkin Plus subscribers can
(38:49):
binge the entire season right now ad free. Sign up
on the Chinatownstang show page on Apple or at Pushkin
dot fm Slash plus
Host
Lucy Sherriff
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