Suspects Had More Than Guns To Offer Arms Dealer Allegedly Negotiating Sale Of Surface-To-Air Missiles
A key middleman arrested in an alleged arms smuggling ring was negotiating with U.S. undercover agents - including one he believed represented the Mafia - to sell them Chinese-made munitions ranging from handheld rocket launchers to tanks to surface-to-air missiles, according to court documents released Thursday.
Arms broker Hammond Ku also repeatedly told the federal undercover operatives that the Chinese government knew thousands of automatic assault rifles were being shipped illegally to America.
Ku boasted to the agents that the surface-to-air missiles, known as “Red Parakeets,” were so powerful that they could bring down a jumbo jet, according to a complaint filed by the U.S. Customs Service. “Ku said they could take out a 747, that they were hard to get and that they were very effective,” the complaint said.
Ku was one of seven people arrested Wednesday in Northern California on charges of conspiring to smuggle 2,000 fully automatic AK-47s from China to the United States through the Port of Oakland.
Confiscation of the shipment, which arrived in March, was the largest seizure of fully operational automatic weapons ever in the United States, said U.S. Attorney Michael Yamaguchi.
Yamaguchi said the Chinese smugglers apparently were motivated solely by money and were unconcerned that the weapons could end up in the hands of gang members in the United States.
Investigators are attempting to determine the full extent of participation by Chinese government officials, Yamaguchi said.
“The shipment of the weapons from the Dalian (China) plant of Norinco involved the active participation of that firm’s (China-)based vice president, export manager and other officials,” according to a statement released by Yamaguchi’s office.
The arrests climaxed an 18-month sting investigation in which a U.S. customs agent posed as a smuggler who could get shipments past customs in Oakland and a federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agent posed as a member of the Mafia from Miami. Neither of the agents spoke Chinese.
The agents were negotiating as recently as last week to buy more sophisticated munitions. But federal officials, concerned that word of the investigation was beginning to leak out, began making arrests Wednesday.
Seven other people - including high-ranking officials of the Chinese munitions manufacturing firm Norinco - are wanted by federal agents but are not believed to be in the United States, officials said.
Under investigation by the United States are two companies at the center of China’s military-industrial complex: Norinco and Poly Technologies. Poly Technologies operates directly under the People’s Liberation Army and has been run by children of several of China’s top leaders, including the son-in-law of China’s leader, Deng Xiaoping.
One of the suspects being sought by federal agents is Baoping Ma, also known as Robert Ma, who is head of Poly Technologies for the United States, according to an American weapons industry source.
The U.S. government, which had spent $700,000 to buy the automatic weapons, recovered $80,000 in cash and seized more than 800 weapons in a series of searches of the suspects’ homes, offices and a storage facility on Wednesday. In addition to Ku, 49, of San Jose, Calif., those arrested include restaurateur Richard Chen, 65, and his wife, Ching Hua Chen, 68, both of Aptos, Calif.; travel agent Linda Wei Lin Huang, 55, of Atherton, Calif.; Susan Hong Lin, 39, of San Jose; Kenneth Frank Taylor, 40, or Carmichael, Calif.; and Kai Wan “Kevin” Wong, 36, of Hayward, Calif.
Charges against the suspects include conspiracy, smuggling, firearms importation without a license, importation and sale of firearms with obliterated serial numbers and transfer and possession of machine guns.
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