The Connect- with Johnny Mitchell - Secrets Of The Chinese-American Mafia: Chinese Gang Leader Exposes RUTHLESS Criminal Underworld

Episode Date: June 29, 2025

In this powerful and unfiltered interview, Mike Moy—a former made man in the infamous Fuk Ching Syndicate and later a 25-year NYPD officer—breaks down the bloody history of Chinese-American gangs in New York City's Chinatown during the 70s, 80s, and early 90s. From underground gambling parlors, prostitution rings, and extortion rackets, to the $1 billion heroin trade and brutal gang wars, Mike reveals shocking insider details never before shared so openly. He explains how the Tong associations, triads, and local street gangs like the Ghost Shadows, Flying Dragons, and BTK worked together—and what ultimately led to their collapse under federal RICO prosecutions. Go Support Michael! Book: https://a.co/d/eVaVsur YouTube: @chinatowngangstories IG: https://www.instagram.com/chinatowngangstories/ This Episode Is #Sponsored By The Following: MANDO! Control Body Odor ANYWHERE with @shop.mando and get 20% off + free shipping with promo code MITCHELL at https://shopmando.com! #mandopod BAY SMOKES! To get your free sample just head to https://baysmokes.com/pages/free-thca-flower-gram-sample/theconnect Join The Patreon For Bonus Content! https://www.patreon.com/theconnectshow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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A lot of shootings, a lot of gang activity. They'll do a hit anyway. They don't care. You could be right next to the prison. Everyone's afraid of the gangs back then. During that era, there was about maybe 38 cold cases, homicide. If you ask me a goal, kill somebody for you, consider taking care of. Michael Moy is a former Chinese American gangster from New York City's infamous Chinatown neighborhood. He was a made man in the Fuk Ching Syndicate, one of the most powerful Chinese gangs in

America at the time. Mike breaks down exactly how Chinese American gangs operate, from gambling dens to extortion to prostitution and China white heroin trafficking. Mike lived it all by the age of 24, and then left the game without so much as a parking ticket. He then became, get this, a New York City cop, and worked the force for 25 years before finally retiring so he could tell his story. His book, Bad to Blue, is available on Amazon and his YouTube channel, Chinatown Gang Stories, contains fascinating insider account. of how he survived the New York City gang wars of the 1980s and 90s, the bloodiest era in the history of Asian gangs in America.

And for a bonus episode with Mike, you know what to do. Hit that Patreon. Patreon.com slash The Connect Show. This is a rare one, folks, and it's a gem. Enjoy this episode with Mike Moy, right here on The Connect with Johnny Mitchell. I served as a cop in the 6th-6th precinct, and it covers Brooklyn's Chinatown. The NYPD, they had the power to do anything they want. We have Intel.

We have informants out there. They did a drug bust in Chinatown that was valued over a billion dollars. Did you grow up in an apartment this size or was it smaller? Oh, let me see. Okay. I would say the living room was half, about half a little bit bigger than about three quarters of this size. No, maybe smaller. I would say half.

Yeah, you know what? The living room was half. half of this and it's a small room but it was a railroad apartment yeah railroad apartment is you have to walk

through the bedroom yeah explain what a railroad just for people that don't know a railroad apartment is one long hallway and you have the bedrooms either on the right side or left side but the apartment that I lived in

it was on the right side as I'm walking down the hallway and there was three rooms, but don't know doors. It's just three rooms. And you have to pass through the bathroom oftentimes to get to a bedroom.

In the apartment in those days, the bathtub was in the kitchen area. Right. My great grandmother lived on Pell Street. I believe it was six Pell Street. Yeah. Or maybe 10 Pell Street. I don't know if I see it because I used to go there as a kid and the bathtub was actually right there. smack in the middle of the kitchen.

And they would just put a, what do you call it, a piece of wood over it and use that as like a cutting board and where you place all your dishes. And when you take a bath, you take that board out. You should take it off. Yeah. And they, you know what? It's like prison. They have some pictures on the internet of those old apartments in Chinatown.

Yeah. Yeah. I think they're probably still there, a lot of them. Oh, no, they took it. I guess they renovated it. Surely they renovated it. But, I mean, those. places now rent for

probably $4,000 a month. Probably, yeah, more, maybe. It's just the hippest place. But there's still Chinese down there. There's still some last, the last throes of that generation, your generation to come from communist China, I think, you know.

Rent control probably. For sure. Yeah. For sure. And they're like the Puerto Ricans on the Lower East side. Like, the only thing keeping them there is the rent control that's been passed on from like the 70s. Not too many Chinese left in New York City, Chinatown. Oh, it's a shame.

They're moving out. Yeah. There's a lot in Flushing and 8th Avenue in Brooklyn. Right. Brooklyn and Queens. That's right. That's right. So your generation, you were born here?

Yes, I was born in New York City. And then who came over? Was it your grandparents or your parents? My grandparents came over with my mom. Let me start over. My grandmother came over with my mom in 1966. Okay. My father came over in 1946.

Oh, so your father came over here early? Yes, when he was seven years old. Okay. So they're escaping... He was known as a paper son. Why? Do you know what a paper son is? No.

Look it up. Paper son is when they give the child to another family. so they can come over to the U.S. That's what the paper son is. How did your parents grow up in China? Were they poor? Very poor. My mother's side of the family, they weren't poor.

They grew up poor, but eventually they were able to make money because my grandmothers are my, who is it, my grandmothers? My grandmother's grandfather was in the U.S. Back in those days when they had the long, the cue. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And he was living on Ma Street back in those days.

And he was sending money back home to China to her. Right. And she was able to build a business with that money. In the beginning, they were poor. Yeah. But then, you know, I don't want to go into politics about, What happened during the Mount St. Yeah, well, but that's important, though, because the Great Leave Forward and, you know, the five-year programs, all of China, millions, tens of millions of people were starving to death in China under his programs.

And that was the wave, the 1960s wave when your mother and your grandparents finally came over here. Yes. And it's funny now because we associate Chinese gangs and Chinese criminals with these very, affluent kind of fentanyl traffickers and money launders. And we assume Chinese in America are like these rich, affluent people. But you're from the previous generation before it opened up. During that generation, it was the poor Chinese who came over to the U.S. You're talking about the poorest of the poor. Yeah. They had nothing lose. They would take on debt just to come to the U.S. But now it's different.

Now when you see Chinese people come over, they're the ones to have money. Because you have to have money or be able to leave China. Right, right. So there's a different era now. Yeah. So was the 60s when your mom came over, 66, was that a big migration of Chinese to New York? During that time, yes, yes, during that time. My father came in the 1940s.

And it wasn't easy to get to the U.S. Unless you come over as a paper son. What do you do? Do you take a ship over? Or unless you have family here. Right. How do you get over in the 1940s? He came by ship.

It's in my book. If you read the book. That's insane. Back to blue. He came by ship. I mean, how much the world has changed. Yeah. And so you were born in Chinatown, New York City.

I was born in Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn. Yeah, then I lived in New York City, Chinatown, 26 East Broadway, six-story building. And what kind of kid were you? You seemed like a nice guy. Did you grow up? I was surrounded by gangsters? No, I was very quiet and reserved. I usually keep to myself.

I'm not like, I wasn't like a troublemaker until probably. when I went to a public school, I would say sometime around the fifth grade, that's when I started, maybe fourth grade, fifth grade, that's when I started acting out. Yeah. And the Chinese from Chinatown,

you're surrounded by all working class kids, kids from working class families. And so it's hard. There's not a lot of money. Yeah, if you're talking about Chinatown in the 70s, they all speak Chinese. You don't come, across anyone who speaks English in Chinatown back in the 70s when I was growing up there.

It's very rare that you come across someone who speaks English. And I didn't speak any English, not even a word of English until I went to public school and I was drawn into kindergarten, not knowing any English at all. You can live in Chinatown and live your whole life in Chinatown and not, you don't need to know how to speak English and you can survive in Chinatown. That's why a lot of people get stuck in Chinatown. Yeah. I mean, you have a pretty thick Chinese accent, but you were born in America.

I was born in the U.S., in America, in New York, but I have an accent because of all the people I was hang out with, especially the gang members, they all speak Chinese, most of them. And even like those Cambodian, the Vietnamese gang members, the Laotian gang members, they speak Cantonese. Right.

Because if you didn't speak Cantonese, back then, you didn't fit into the gang. It's so different that East Coast Asian gangs and the West Coast Asian. Right. It's very different. Are West Coast Asian gangs? Is that Mandarin Chinese? The West Coast, the way I see how the West Coast Asian gangs are is they're more,

I would say, Americanized because maybe it's because the first wave of immigration, many of them, many of the Chinese people, they landed in the West Coast first. And then eventually they worked away to the East Coast. Right. You know, so they have been here longer. They've been here longer. And like if you see the West Coast Asian gangs, eventually they adapt to like the hip-hop culture. Yeah.

But in the East Coast, it wasn't like that. It was more like the triad culture. Right. You know, so I can say that me as an ABC, American-born Chinese, I didn't fit in to. the Asian gangs, the Chinatown gangs, I didn't fit in if I did not speak

Chinese. I'll be like seeing like a okay like an outsider. Like okay you're just you're just an associate. You're not in the inner circle. Right.

So that's why a lot of the Chinatown gangs in New York City they had branched out into factions called ABC Flying Dragons or like the gold showers have there. A, B, C faction, which is very small, you know, because they didn't feel like they fit in. Right, right.

So in the 70s, when you're coming up as a kid, there's already gang presence, Chinese gang presence in Chinatown. A heavy gang presence. Yeah. A lot of the people who lived in the area, the residents, they try to, like, move their kids out because they don't want the kids to get caught up in the gangs. Even as a kid, I was five, six, seven years old, I would hear my relatives like just huddling around in the living room, whispering, talking about the gangs,

how they don't want my uncles to get caught up in it or their relatives, you know, cousins or whoever. Wow. And, um, and, um, and even that was the grip that the gangs had they had a misconception that the gang is going to force you to go in force you to join so a lot of the residents of Chinatown the parents were worried that the kids get forced to join

so many of them who had the means to move out moved out of Chinatown but those who got stuck in Chinatown they were worried every day for the kids. Yeah. Wow, that's really insane. Yeah. And it makes sense because you have all these Chinese people who don't speak English, don't feel comfortable going to the cops, and there's a lot of money here.

A lot of money. The cops didn't care about the Chinese back in those days. No. Especially the Chinese gang members, let them kill each other. Right. So a big thing people probably know, if you know anything about Chinese. Chinese culture, you guys love to gamble. That was one of the biggest rackets back then.

Tell us about the gambling houses in Chinatown. Gambling houses are making a lot of money, a lot of money. I mean, you go to the casino now. You see a lot of Chinese people gambling, right? That's all you see there. So just imagine. And back then, they didn't have all these casinos. So where do they gamble?

In Chinatown. So all the money flowed into the gambling houses. They didn't have the means to drive to Atlantic City back then. In Atlantic City, the casino, it wasn't 24 hours back in those days. What do the Chinese like to play? What game specifically? Is it poker? Is it backer at?

Back then, they liked to play tiles, the Pikeout tiles. Now, if you talk about nowadays, They like to play backer at. But what were the gambling houses specifically serving the Chinese market in Chinatown back then? What was that? What game specifically? What was the biggest game amongst the illegal gambling parlors in Chinatown back then? The biggest games back then, Pai Gau, Ma Zhang, and 13-card poker.

Those were the biggest games back in Chinatown in those days. And we're talking about the 70s. into the 80s, up until like the early 90s, then it became back rat. And then you have all these electronic machines. Like the Italians just have the joker poker. Right. The Chinese have their version of their games. Memorial Day weekend is almost here.

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And so the gangs would control these gambling houses. I assume they can be anywhere, right, above restaurants, in people's apartments. Tell us where they would host these games. Where would they host these games? They would host anywhere. They're hosting the basement of a storefront or in the back room of a factory. It could be anyway. Or they could just rent a high-rise condo, like in Flushing.

That's what my title had. that was back in probably the early 90s. Yeah, he went to a place in a high-rise condo. Expensive condo just to cater to the high-end client house. And then for the lower-end client-tells, he had gambling houses on Bowie, Christie Street, you know, in the storefront, in the back. And then me, I had mine on Avenue U. and in the basement of a storefront.

And we also did gambling in my pool hall. I had a pool hall on Flatbush and Northern Avenue back in those days. It was a 6,000 square foot pool hall. And I had 19 tables and a table tennis table. So I had 20 tables. And in the back room, we used it for gambling. And I put the Joker poker machines on the side

and I had a little game room in the front. So, yeah, so there's always, places where you could sell up a gambling house. I mean, Chinese people, their form of entertainment back then

was gambling because there's no other form of entertainment for them besides gambling and going to see a movie in Chinatown. That's why back then there was so many movie theaters in Chinatown. Many movie theaters playing the Shorebother movies

from Hong Kong. Wow. And that was their form of entertainment because what else they're going to do? If they don't speak English, you're not going to catch them to see a Broadway show. You're not going to catch them on the Disney cruise. Right.

You know, what other form of entertainment do they have besides going to watch a movie and gambling. Right. Right. And then later on, eventually it came out with the VCR tapes. And that was the end of the movie there was then. Right. And then now they all stay home and watch the movies from the Hong Kong industry, the TVB movies and whatever movies that they get.

And that's how this guy, Vincent Jew, got his hands into that business. And he was making a lot of money with that from the West Coast. And he came down here and tried to muscle in on the East Coast. And that story you can get from Peter Chin, Diluteau the Gold Shadows. And that's a lot of money involved with those VCR tapes. And is that bootleg tapes?

Bootleg tapes. Okay. Can you explain just a lot of? a little bit for people who don't know what a bootleg tape is. They would copy these soap operas from Hong Kong. And then they'll open up a store and they'll rent it out or they'll sell it. Yeah. And it's 100% profit because you're copying it.

Of course. So what Vincent Drew did was he, I guess he got the rights to it, made a deal, whatever, got the rights. But, and then he basically, like was the enforcer. Okay, nobody's going to open up on, in this area, because he's got his name attached to it. I mean, look it up. Vincent Joe.

And it seems like from the outside when you hear these stories, you're like, oh, this is petty cash. Petty cash. But it's not. No, I was making a lot. I was doing bootleg video myself back in the 90s, Sun and Shaw Brothers movies. Right.

And I hooked up with a West Indian guy, black guy, diamond. And he was making money handle a fit. I sent them up in the business. Okay, explain how much money you can make in bootleg videos. How does the whole business work? A to Z. We started out small because Flatbush Avenue was a big black community,

West Indian people. They love short brother martial arts movies from the 70s. Remember those days? Yeah. Yeah. And, okay, so what I did was I really had the store of a cross street from my pool and it was a collectible store. So I basically gave him a spot, like the size of this table,

to sell the bootleg movies. So we set up, the setup was like this. So we bought like maybe 10 VCRs, a couple hundred VCR tapes. And we went next door to the print shop, and we copied the covers in color. and it may look like a regular VCR tape back in those days. It looked really, really nice, the packaging and everything, with the box and everything. And we started selling those tapes.

Back then, how much was it? I forgot how much those tapes were because, you know, we used stolen credit cards to buy anyway. So I don't know how much it was, but it was 100% profit for us. So, you know, he had this connection with people who worked in. Radio Shack to swipe the cards and I got the cards and, you know, we got like 10 VCRs, a couple hundred tapes copied it and we're selling for $10 a pop. Yeah. So it was like you're making more than drug money.

Yeah, you're printing money. Yeah. So basically it's all profit and he was making a lot of money. And what I got from him was, okay, I gave you this little booth right here. And you're going to pay me the rent and pay me back my investment, which is whatever cost for the year. That would be 100% profit for me. And I get a little cut of it.

And he was making a lot of money. And so I helped them in that sense where, you know, we made money together. And then we move on to other things. And he had somebody over there working from him. We moved on to other things. Okay. And eventually we opened the pool all right across the street. Yeah.

And I named it after him, Diamond. One day you got to get an interview with Diamond. Okay. He's very interesting. Now, there was extortion, you know, in these ethnic enclaves like the Italian neighborhoods and like the Chinese neighborhoods, there's always people taking protection money from businesses. Was that going on in the 70s or did that come about later? Can you tell us about that? The extortions started in the 70s.

I was a kid back then. But it started in the 70s. Yeah. Was it common for businesses to understand that, yeah, this is what you do. You pay the local, whoever controls this block, we pay them a certain amount of money every week. It was basically common knowledge back then. You open a store, you're going to pay somebody. That's it.

You just got to pay. It was just common knowledge to all the store on us. because if you're going to open a store, you're going to need to go through the tongues, the organization who's going to help you. You're going to have connections to open whatever stores. You just don't, like, oh, you know what? You come to the U.S., you don't speak any English,

and you're going to open up a store? No, it don't work like that in that community. Maybe now you can because people who's coming here now into this country, they may have relatives who speak English, who's able to speak to a real estate agent, get them a storefront and navigate through the whole process. But back then, you come to the U.S.? Who do you have?

You know, it was like the first generation here, and the second generation, and who do you have? You don't have anybody to help you out, except the Tong Association, right? The people you know. Before you even come here, they already know you're coming because, you know, the people who were smuggled here, like my uncle, he opened the liquor store when he got here.

the Lehman liquor store on Bowery Street and that was way, way back then and he got smuggled into this country and he came by boat

and he was, the boat actually capsized in the East River and already there were people from the Tongass Association waiting for that boat

to arrive and they plucked them out of the water and saved them there were a whole bunch of people that plucked out from the East River so

They already have everything all lined up before you even come to the U.S. And even when you're going to come to the U.S. and how you're going to get here, they already have everything lined up just like those snake heads. Later on, it became more, I guess, streamlined with Sister Ping. Can you tell us about the Tong Association? Is that a legitimate organization or do they also have illegal? aspects to them. Well, the Tongs, if you go way back into like early 1900s,

you know, late 1800s with the Tongue wars, they were gangsters, right? They were gangsters. But then eventually, they try to, like, present themselves as a legitimate entity. So who are these Tong members? They're like the elderly or the elders of the community, the respectful citizens, the residents of the community, people who are business owners, people who've been here longer, right?

Maybe some of them are able to speak English. So they're able to help the newer immigrants coming over to the U.S. So they try to present themselves as eventually they shied away from the criminal aspects. of the organization, what they had before, like doing what the gang members used to do, like fighting. But money always draw them in to do illegal things. I wouldn't say all the tongue members are criminals, but then you have the people on the board maybe,

or maybe the leader of a tongue association may get involved with the criminal elements, and that's what gave him a bad name later on because now these Tongue associations they're the ones that's linked to the politicians the police department so they're like the bridge

to them so the gangs use them just like how they use the gangs so they go hand in hand but they don't have that much control over the gangs like how the media portrays how the movie portray them you know

they need the gangs Right. Why do they need the games? For example, like the online association, they had the Black Eagles and the White Eagles, right, as the enforcer. And when the ghost shadows muscled in on My Street, they had no choice but to take on the gold shadows. You know, so it's just, they work hand in hand together. Today's episode is sponsored by Mando,

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That's two L's at the end of Mitchell. That's shopmando.com promo code Mitchell to get 20% off sitewide plus free shipping. That's S-H-O-P-M-A-N-D-E. dot com. Use that promo code Mitchell. Tell them we sent you. Go support them because they support us. Shop Mando. Do it up, folks. And when you're opening a new business and how do you, what do the tongs have to do with it? Do they assume they get you a business license and they find you a real estate agent? Well. And how do the gangs fit into that piece of the puzzle? If you're a new immigrant and you come to the U.S.

and you landed in New York City, Chinatown, and now you want to open the business. You got to have some connections. Of course, you're going to be tied to a Tongue Association. Once you come to the U.S., you're going to be tied to a Tongue Association. And you can pay your dues. It's like paying union dues. So every week, every month, you pay your dues,

and they know where you work, they know everything you do, they know your family. It's all tied to what village you came from. you know, what your last name is. And now you want to open a business and you want to borrow money. You can't go to the bank and borrow money. You know, bank's going to, like, who are you?

Right. You know, but you could borrow money from the tongues. They'll be able to lend you money. Okay, how much you need. Okay. How are you going to pay this back? Oh, your family. Your family's here.

So they know your family. They know where you're from. They know, they know your family. you're not going anywhere. So they'll lend you the money for you to open the business. Now if the business fails, everybody's going to have to pitch in to pay that loan back. And that's why some of these gold shadows,

I mean, like Peter Chin, he was loaning money out at 10%, right, whereas the Italians were getting 2%. And he never had a bad loan. Right? Because the fear was there, you know, that if you don't pay back, what's going to happen?

you're going to leave Chinatown? Where are you going to go? There's only a couple of Chinatowns in the whole entire United States back then. Where are you going to hide? Yeah. You know, and your family's here.

They're just going to pick up and go. They're going to have to come up with that money no matter what. They could be, they could be the most degenerant gamble and lose all the money, but the family's going to have to pay. Mm-hmm.

You know, so. So they're essentially like a more sophisticated loan shark. Yes. Now, as far as, getting a store now you want to open a store, they provide you the money. Now you're open,

they provide you with the location. They know who's leaving, who's coming in. They know, there's like a real estate agent. They know, which business is doing well, which is going out,

where the stores are available for rent. So now you're able to open the store. So you already pay the tongs their red envelope. Okay. And you're part of that tongue association, right? And then now the gangs come in. Right now you open a store, now the gang's come in. Now here's the thing. You open a restaurant and you're doing very well. And if I'm a gang

member and I'm a leader of a gang member, I send my underling as like the associates. That's you go collect and that money is going to carry you, feed you, whatever. You're at the low, bottom of the totem pole. Those are the gang members who are. collecting the extortion money from those type of stores, like a restaurant or a mom and pop store. But then it's not like how the movie portrays it. Like, you're going to put them out of business? No, no.

If you're a restaurant making tens of thousands of dollars a week, and guess what? Those restaurants were making that kind of money. Back in those days, they'd probably make more money back then than now. Look at the restaurants in Chinatown now. It's desolate. They close at, I can't even get an order of beef child fund, right?

At 8, 7.45, 7.50 p.m. I try to get an order of beef child fund in Chinatown in Brooklyn. I can't even do it because they closed at 8. The kitchen already closed already. Back then, in New York City, Chinatown, 24 hours. You have to wait online to get food or a table. at 4 a.m. in the morning. Wow.

You know, that was the energy back then. Right. The vibe in Chinatown. And it's because there were so many Chinese people and so many people that wanted authentic Chinese food. I guess so many Chinese people condensed into one place. Right. And then you also have tourists and now the Chinese people,

they branch out. They'll live in Jersey. They'll live in Staten Island. So is that... So if you're one of these restaurants... So if you're one of these restaurants... ... concentrated into one place. So if you're one of these restaurants,

restaurants, it's you can pay a $200 a week, whatever, extortion fee to a gang to make sure that your store is safe. Sort of like that, right? So you're a gang member. You're a 15-year-old, 14-year-old kid. You go in there and you identify who you are. You know, hey, you know, you're with the gold shadows. You're here to collect some money, extortion, whatever.

You're the owner of the restaurant, okay? You talk to them a home. 200, whatever. Okay. That's it. You're just basically feeding these kids. Let them eat for free or whatever. Every now and then, they'll sign the bill with their name, with the gang name.

For example, like GS, okay? And then the dialogue will pick up the tab. You know, but dialore is not going to stiff the owner. He'll pick up the tap. Actually, my dialogue, like every time we'll sign the bill, he has his own records. he's making money. He'll pick up the tab. So like let's say Chinese New Year,

we'll go there, we'll give him we'll give the restaurant owner homage to some tangerine plant and then they'll give us money. They'll give us a red envelope. We're not putting them out of business. We're not putting them out of business. It's just breadcrumbs. Now how do you make sure

that multiple people aren't collecting from the same business, different gangs. The gangs are based on territory. If you're on Ma Street, Bayard Street, Elizabeth Street, that's the ghost shadow territory. You're on Doyle Street, Pell Street, now you're entering Flying Dragons territory. So they know. Plus, back in those days, which they don't have anymore, when you go into the restaurant,

they have a certificate hanging on the wall, Hipsing Tong Association, or the On Long Tong Association, right next to all the other business certificate like the tax ID and all that they hang it there. It's like a plaque. Wow. You wouldn't know unless you look for it. So different street gangs

were associated with different Tong associations? Yes. Wow. You got the Flying Dragons associated with the Hipsing Association. You have the Gold Shadows associated with the On Lung Association and the Donglan gang on East Broadway and Division Street.

They're associated with, with the Dongwan Association. The Fuk Ching is associated with the Fugian Association. That's fascinating. So these Tong organizations, even though they tried to go legitimate, they still had very real ties to street gangs. Did the street gangs pay the tongs? Did they pay a percentage of what they made from illegal rackets to the tongs?

No, the tongs get their cut. and the gangs get their cut. For example, you have a gambling house. The tongs, you have connection to the tongues to open the gambling house. So you already pay your fees to the tongues. And sometimes you may have a tongue member open the gambling house or a friend of the tongue board member or whoever open the gambling house. you have to pay the tongue.

And then after that, you have to pay a cut to the gangs. So when you pay the, usually the tongue gets more money. They're basically setting everything up. And then the gangs get less. For example, like the gold shadows. At that time in the 70s, each gambling house was paying $10,000 a week to the gold shattles. shadows. And that's a week. And there was about a dozen, about a dozen gambling house at that time. 120,000 a week? About, yeah, over 100,000 a week in cash. And that's just to the gold shadow.

Right. Okay. And then, of course, the tongues, the tongues, they get more. So whatever they get, I don't know, but that's what the gold shallers get. Just to protect the establishment. Now, people think like, okay, Now, if Ghost Shadows protecting this gambling house, does that mean you have an actual Ghost Shadow member there carrying a gun

standing at the door, protecting it? No, you're just going to have an old man over there, letting people in, you know, buzz people in or whatever. They're protecting it by name.

It's just like if you have a nightclub or a bar in Bay Ridge or Bensonhurst and you got the Gambino and you know Gambino Crime family has a stake in that.

Does that mean you got a Gambino captain or associate standing there with a gun protecting the place? You know, who's going to rob the place? You know, they don't need to be there. But then sometimes they'll be there. Like sometimes, you know, they'll be there. So when things go wrong, what happens? Because there's only a small minority of criminals out there that's doing all the dirty work. You can have 80 gang members.

It's just a handful of people doing the dirty work. And they'll find out who it is. You know, they'll find out. So with that, like the Italians, for instance, we obviously know that organization, those organizations are murderous. If they need to, they can firebomb your store. They can beat you up.

They can make you disappear. Did the Chinese gangs, the enforcers, when things did go wrong, did they have the ability to take it there? Of course. But they're very selective. They're very selective. If the Tong Association

once one of the gang members do a hit, it's really up to the gang member. It's really up to the gang member if they're going to take on that job or not. The tongues can really don't have that kind of power over the gangs like people think. But Tongs would order a hit like that

Or at least Request one Many times If you read the book in the ghost showers by Peter Chin He speaks about Some of the hits that Tongs ordered Okay And just imagine how many hits are out there

Let me take you back to the 70s and 80s And up until the The early 90s Chinatown was like The Wild Wild West. A lot of shootings, a lot of gang activity. Someone your age is not going to know that these things happen in Chinatown. If you go into the newspapers, archives,

and just look up some of those streets where there were shootings with the Chinatown gangs on Mar Street, Eastboro Way, plenty of shootings in the movie theaters. Then you're just going to get a small glimpse of what went on in Chinatown back then. Someone, a young kid nowadays, him is like,

no, what gangs? There's no Chinese gangs? Yeah, you're right. We're living in a different era now. Right? There is no more gold shadows, no flying dragons,

and don't want gang. No, the tongue associations all went legit. They're like senior centers now. Right. these elderly to play Marja.

Right. Because the feds cracked down on them not only once, but twice. When they made that sweep in 84 and then later on

around 92, that was it. That was the nail in the coffin for these gangs. It's like you're a kid. You're playing under the table and you bump your head once. You learn your lesson.

Maybe you, might bump your head again a second time, but you'd be an idiot if you're still going to carry on the ghost shadow name after the feds hit you twice. After that, it was over. For the flying dragons, ghost shadow, it's done. Well, let's talk about before that happened. Tell us about the law enforcement with these gambling houses, the prostitution that was going on. you know, massage parlors and things like that. Did the NYPD have any ability to crack down on that stuff?

Would they have a rate a place, anything like that? Of course. The NYPD, they had the power to do anything they want. That's where the power is in the NYPD. If they don't want you there, it's not going to be there. I'll tell you that right now. Okay. Look at the, look at Mun Bun Li, the unofficial mayor of Chinatown.

The ghost shelters put a hit on him, right? Because he was talking to the reporters too much negative things about the gangs. They stabbed him. He didn't die. He was friends with the CEO, commanding officer of the fifth precinct at that time. He flew back from vacation just for him. After that, he, had the cops shut down all the gambling houses in Chinatown except for Uncle Seven's gambling

house, right? Every gambling house was shut down for one year. You know how much money? They lost, the ghost shadows during that one year. Multi-millions. Yeah. They had to move the gambling house outside of Chinatown. So the cops knew what was going on, always. The cops always know what's going on. With the NYPD, how we're not going to know what's going on? We have intel, we have informants out there. All right. It's if they allow you to exist.

So are these cops who did allow it? Are they getting paid off? What do you think? It's public information. Look up John Gore, NYPD. Tell us about him. Him and another detective. They work in vice.

They were getting tipped off. you know, and made it bad for me because when I became a cop, I was stereotyped. It wasn't one of too many Asian cops back then. And when I came on the job, and when I was in the police academy, that was around the time that he made the papers. And everyone see me as, you know, a corrupt cop.

And eventually, you know that movie, The Corruptor, which I even fought? They nicknamed me the corruptor some of the cops It's just for fun But It's yeah that's the way it is It was probably when I came on the job Probably about 500 Asians on the job back then

And out of 500 Now Asians which include You know The Which includes not only Chinese But you can include the Pakistani the Korean Japanese

and I believe there was only like maybe about two dozen who speaks the language because most of them were ABC American-born Chinese who didn't speak

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This should be tons of fun. Marvel television's Daredevil. Born again. Now streaming only on Disney Plus. Okay, so heroin and drugs that came in later, I know that, just from this show that people used to get a lot of hair. I want a lot of Puerto Rican drug dealers and guys from the Bronx and Harlem.

A lot of their connects came out of Chinatown. There was China White being moved through the associations back then. Could you go into that a little bit? Okay, let's go back to the late 1980s in New York City's Chinatown. A lot of heroin was coming in a lot. It was available. And even I was offered. bricks of heroin.

They were smuggling in. And if you read the papers, they did a drug bust in Chinatown that was valued over a billion dollars. And that's a lot of money. Even today, you don't get that kind of bust.

So just imagine that kind of money flowing around Chinatown in that fuel block radius. everyone was flushed with money. From the cab drivers to the waiters, to the store owners, gang members. So each gang had their stake in how many bricks they get. So through the tongs.

So there were some people who were dealing in heroin who weren't even gang members. They weren't even associated with gang members. Okay? That's how much heroin is coming in. Johnny Eng from the Flying Dragons You got

Fu Zhao Paul From the Fuk Ching Eventually he became the leader of the Green Dragons He branched off These two made it big With the drug business And also dice

From the Dong'an He was like the founder of the Dongwan gang That he was before Clifford Wong These three guys made it really big in the drug business. So the heroin was coming in and the flying dragons

were dealing with the Puerto Ricans. They were supplying boy George. If you ever heard of boy George. Of course. We talk about him in the show all the time. Puerto Rican young, young heroin kingpin from the South Bronx.

Chinatown has a lot of respect for this guy, Boy George. The story behind that is he was getting the her in from the Flying Dragons. What happened is, if you listen to some of the interviews that I posted on my channel,

Chinatown Gang Stories, I interviewed Cowboy. Cowboy was known to Boy George crew as fried rice. He was the supplier. What happened was originally he wasn't supplying Boy George.

He was supplying another Puerto Rican kid but as the numbers got bigger and the quantity got bigger

that kid couldn't handle it so passed on the contact the boy George and that's how him and cowboy

got connected so they were doing business you know brick here brick there eventually there was a time

when they had a dry period where the heroin wasn't coming in for whatever reason and

but they had the customer base so they now had to look for another source and they found the Colombians who had the their version of their heroin not to China White and there was a transaction

that was supposed to be made so him boy George and Cowboy went to do the transaction while they were waiting in the car the person went inside the building

they thought it was just one way in and one way out they didn't know there was a hidden passage behind to leave so what happened was

they got beat for that money okay they got beat for that money and there was a lot of money back then a couple hundred thousand dollars and there was some tension

between those two at the time like okay so who's going to be responsible it was boy George contact right so now Cowboy got beat of the money Boy George got beat of his money after they got beat

Boy George came down with his crew to Chinatown and met up with Cowboy and told him that he'll be responsible for that money and he lived up to it he owned up to it so ever since then when the Flying Dragons got their shipment back of the China White,

they were giving it to Boy George on consignment. Wow. And each of these... And you're talking about big numbers. You're talking about like five, ten bricks at a clip on consignment. Wow. Yeah. Because now...

On credit. Yeah. So that's how Boy George gets so big. Right. And one of those... And the China White was the best heroin. It's better than the Colombian heroin. And each kilo wholesale was worth, could be worth $100,000.

So breaking it down, man, you make like a million dollars on a brick. I remember I was able to get it for around. I was probably like the last. So, I mean, I wasn't no high-ranking gang member. I was able to get it for like $80,000, $70,000 around there. I'm thinking those gang members were probably picking up for like maybe $60,000. And if they go overseas in Hong Kong, I think when it lands in Hong Kong, it was somewhere around the $10,000 range. But Hong Kong had a big demand for cocaine at that time, for coke.

So some of the gang members were trading it. Coke for heroin, but they were making so much more money with heroin. and cocaine in Hong Kong and they're selling for a lot more than what they were selling for US. Wow. That's crazy. That's crazy.

That was the pre, that was when Hong Kong was still free. Yes. It was not under the CCP like it is now. Yes. So the route for China white heroin was Burma to Hong Kong and it sounds like in Hong Kong

is where the deals were made with. Probably Burma, the Thailand maybe. Uh-huh. Around there. And then from Hong Kong it comes to the U.S. And so the gangs, either the Tongue Associations or the street gangs in Chinatown, are making the deals in Hong Kong, either with connects that they know, family, whoever, and they set up the shipments to the U.S. Yes. Wow.

A lot of the triad members were involved, so they would fly over, meet up with the gang members. Can you explain to people? Everybody's heard of triad gang members. but when you say triads, what do you mean exactly by that? Triad is just like another gang, but they're based overseas. Like you have the Sun Yon Triad,

then you have the 14K triad. They're based in Hong Kong, but they have their factions all over the world. Right. Then you have the bamboo triad in Taiwan. So many different triads. Right. You have the Gongloch triad,

which is in Canada. there's a lot of different triads. They're more international-based with different factions. But when you're talking about the gangs, the Chinese gangs, you're talking about like the Gold Shadows Flying Dragons and Dong'an back in those days, there's three gangs. Control one or two blocks in New York City's Chinatown. And then you have the Tongs, which is the association,

which is the connection to the triads and the gangs. So whenever the triad need to hook up with the gangs, right, they would look for the Tong members to do that connection, the meeting. Right, right. For us together. Right. So you have the triads, you have the tongs, and then you have the gangs. Wow. And people think that it's one of the same, but it's not.

So the triads were almost like the drug cartels and the Tong associations were the middlemen and the Chinatowns' tracts. and the Chinatown street gangs were the ones, the customers receiving the product. They're like the enforcer. Yeah, more like the enforcer and the gangs. It's just a typical gang, just like any street gang. But it's just more organized, structured, you know, than the regular gangs you have in the streets because they have the connections overseas. Today's episode is sponsored by my favorite online dispensary, Bay Smoke. based out of Miami, Florida, this is the country's number one online dispensary with everything you need shipped safely and federally legal to your door.

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All right, let's get back into the episode. Now, was any heroin sold retail in Chinatown? Or was it just simply supplying drug dealers from other neighborhoods? I don't know of any Chinese gang member that use heroin. They know what they can do. They'll use coke, but heroin, they stay away from that. You know, maybe the BTK, I know, some of them use heroin, but the Chinese gang members, like the Flying Dragons,

go shadows, no. So they didn't allow any like... No, it's not that they don't allow it. They know what it can do to you. But in Chinatown, there were not any trap spots, any blocks, any blocks selling to junkies. No, not retail. No, they don't deal in retail like that, the Chinese.

Yeah. The Chinese don't deal in the retail. Smart. They don't deal with it like that. Okay, so. Back then, yeah, there was a lot of shootings and a lot of killings, you know, over drug money. I mean, people nowadays, they're not going to understand. They're not going to, they're going to think, oh, Chinatown was like that.

Yeah, look in the newspaper, right? Look at all the shootings. And that's just the ones that they covered. Imagine, right? how many shootings they were because the news don't cover everything. And if you look back then, there's so many articles about it

in Chinatown, a lot of killings. A lot of them, just imagine how many killings and shootings and shootings they were. If you look at, there's about, during that era, there was about maybe 38 open cases, cold cases, homicide. unsolved.

So just that'll give you an idea of what was going on in Chinatown. And that's just in the confines of the fifth prison in Chinatown. Then you have the gang members killing people outside of Chinatown. That's unsolved.

Even the prison where I worked, 6'6 precinct, there was a homicide, I think it was a double homicide on Ocean Parkway and Church Avenue. They killed an associate of the ghost shadows back then in the Lincoln. He died inside the Lincoln. And that's unsolved. So how many unsolved cases are there? A lot.

All right. So your fifth grade, sixth grade young ABC. Chinese guy, but you barely speak any English. And how do you get into, how do you fall into the street? Take us through your journey up and, you know, until you become a cop, all that's so fascinating. Just take us through how you started getting deeper and deeper into the streets. I went to elementary school in Brooklyn, and I was the only Asian kid in my class. Throughout all those years, I was like, I was like the only Asian kid.

So of course, you know, picture this in the 70s, 80s, the teachers, they really didn't have that type of training to identify bullying or maybe they took a blind eye to it. Who knows? But it was bad, you know, I didn't have good memories back then growing up as a kid in public school. you know, getting bullied. You know, you got kids calling me communists. I didn't even know what communists. How do kids know what communists mean? I'm like, what does that mean?

You know, like back then, I'm like in the third grade, fourth grade, they called me a communist. Like, what does that mean? Yeah, how do kids know what communist mean? And they'll pull back their eyes and they'll make some Chinese undertone. There's all kinds of, it's just I just have to deal with that all the time. Right.

And I wasn't a big kid. It was a small kid. You know, and it's just not easy for me to talk about, you know, how the type of bullying I went through. It's easier for me to write about it, you know. So it's in my book. You know, you can read it. It's bad to blue. And then later on, the bullying gets worse.

It doesn't get any better, you know. Just imagine, like, from third grade up until the sixth grade, okay. And now I go to junior high school, which is called middle school now, right? It gets worse, you know. And then later on, high school, it just progresses in the bullying. You know, I guess kids are kids, you know. Then get into fights and that and everything. And then later on, I see this kid, he's a Cambodian kid.

Call him Cambodian Peter in my book. Back then, in the 80s. if you see him, he had all the telltale signs of a gang member. I see him all the time, and generally he's either alone or he's with his friend, I'll call Big Chicken. But most of the time he's alone. And me and this white kid, my study partner, after school, we would go play some video games in the pool hall before we go home.

I would see this kid Cambodon and Peter in the pool hall by himself, you know. The way he carry himself, his demeanor, the way he dress, like caught my attention. Like, you know, this guy is by himself. Doesn't seem like he has any fear of being picked on. And you know the shady characters that hang out in the pool hall. You have all different races and, but he was by himself. You know, and he wasn't afraid of showing his tattoos. All right.

Because unlike now, if you see an Asian kid with a tattoo, it's a fashion statement. Back then in the 80s, if you weren't a gang member, you better not have a tattoo. Okay. Times are different now. You have a tattoo back then. You're going to get stepped up. You're getting stepped up to. If you have a tattoo back.

in those days and you're Chinese, you're getting stepped up. We're going to want to know who you follow, where you're from, what gang you with. Unlike nowadays. I think that all ended during that time

when the tribal tattoos came out. Okay? Remember those tribal tattoos? That was like in the 90s. It all ended that at that time because it became more like a fashion statement. Yeah. So before that, no, you better not have a tattoo

and if you show it, you're going to get stepped up to. So Campbell and Peter was there and I guess I got attracted to that how he was that type of life. I was fascinated, you know, so because I was bullied. So of course, you know, like what are my options to stop the bullying, you know, like, it wasn't a good feeling. You know, I didn't want to be at the bottom of the totem pole now.

You know, I wanted to, like, have some protection, sort of, you know. Some power. Some power. And that's what attracted me to this guy. And I didn't think I was going to, I wasn't actually. I wasn't actively looking to join the gang No I just noticed him and that's it

And I went on my way And one day I was walking alone To the Pujo Hall Called Triangles in Brooklyn To meet up with my friend And he was happening to be walking The same way

And he asked me if I'm going to the Pujah because he's seen me around with my white friend playing video games. And that's how we connected. Yeah, I'm going over there too. So during that walk, we became friends. And then if you read my book, I tell you how I got accepted by him. And then later on, I found out that he was in Brooklyn to do recruiting. he was he had the rank of a daima so he was there to do recruiting for his dailo can tell us what a

dilo is a dailo if you translate dailo in chinese is big brother so you refer to anyone above your rank as a dailo nobody's going to call themselves a daima a daima a daima a daima is one rank above a soldier, a street soldier. Then you have above the Daimah, which is the recruiter, or the person who have a handful of soldiers under him, the person above the Daimah is ranked as a Daïar. But we, for example, a street soldier would not call a Daimah,

they'll call that person a Daimah. It's out of respect you always call a person above you a Daïlo. So you will never hear the term in the streets Oh, he's a daima Yeah So after a dialogue above that Are you, is that a boss level? So after, okay, so you got the street soldier

You have the daima And then you have the dialo And then above the dialo You have the boss And that boss Under him could have Some gangs could have Three, four, five, six dialo

but only one boss and that boss is the person who's connected to the tongues and whenever the tongues need to deal with something the tongues will look for the

boss so to speak and he's also known as the dialogue so the boss would look at his dialogue almost as like lieutenants

sort of like yeah captains captains yeah five or six captains out there and those captains who would get their best guys to do recruiting, and those people will be sort of daima,

meaning they... Daimah, if you translate into Chinese, is more like Ma means horse. Dai means like you're hurting, like a horse herder, so maybe that's where it came from. Like you're hurting, you're hurting a bunch of horse, which is supposed to mean the soldiers that you have

by you. So that's why we don't say oh, he's my daima. No, we say he's my dail. Always give the respect of the bank above us

the term dail. Okay. So this is very much set up like an Italian mafia structure. Boss, captain, lieutenant,

soldier, maybe yeah, maybe something even lower than a soldier, you know, a new recruit. And so did you come in

as you came in as a foot soldier, a street soldier. More like an associate. Someone would just hang around the gangs. Right. I would say the soldier is later on when you get initiated. I believe it was 1989 or 90. I got initiated and went to the whole ceremony with the General Kwan and, you know, the wine and the incense.

Wow. So I went to that. Wow. That was late on. What did you have to do to prove yourself as an associate? It's not like the Italians way you're going to put in work or whatever. And then, okay, you put in work and then you're going to be a mate man. They, it goes according to your dialogue.

They see the potential in you. You're making money. You're carrying yourself on your own. And you've been with the gang for so long. And they have an eye for it. I mean, to be a dialogue, you're going to have to have an eye for certain people. You're going to know who's who, you know, who's has the potential to rat, who has the potential to jump from one gang to another.

So they see me as, you know, someone who's loyal, not a threat to them, making money, carry my own. So all these factors come into play. And if they ask me to do anything, they think I'm going to get it done, you know. Did you already, you were already earning at this time? Oh, yeah. By that time, I, that was, at that time I had my car service business.

I had my own car service business. It was called on-time car service. And, yeah, I was making money with that. I built it up from a two-car business into a 12-car operation. Wow. So I had my car service. was running at the time. Okay.

And they were holding meetings in my office. In my office, they were holding meetings, you know, where to do the certain home invasions and whatnot. Wow. And some of the deals, you know, counterfeit money, gun deals, you know, is, that was like a meeting place. Wow. You know, we'll do the walk talks outside, you know, but we'll meet up in my office.

Yeah. And then we'll go out and we'll put deals together. What kind of guns were these gangs carrying around back then? They love the guns. The Chinese people, they love 9mm, Glock. Not only Glock, but I think the best one is the Smith and Western. That was the bestseller because they used that in the movie, The Killer with Zhang Yom Fat and also what, the Harboil, you know,

a better tomorrow, you know, like the guns that the Zhang Yom Fat used, the 9mm. They love that. But revolvers, you can't get enough of that. They love revolvers because you don't leave nothing behind. Right. You don't leave anything behind. They don't jam.

Nope, they don't jam. And a lot of people, they don't know how to clean their gun. You know, I didn't know that until I became a cop. You know, that's why if you're going to get into a gun battle with a cop and you're a gang member, more than likely, cop's going to win because they go do training. and they keep their gun clean. Meanwhile, a lot of people from the streets, they don't know how to take apart a gun.

I could take apart my gun in a couple of seconds into a couple of pieces. And then they don't know how to take the dirt out, you get dust balls in there. So it jams on them. Right. That's why, like, the Chinese, they love the revolvers.

They love it. A lot of the hits were they carried out as, like, because the streets, of Chinatown are so dense. There's so many people just stacked on top of each other like rats. A lot of these hits or they walk bys,

people walking up to you, shooting you and then running off, or they drive bys? Like, how do you plan a hit in Chinatown? There's no drive-by. Once in a while there's a drive-by. Once in a while. But there's so much traffic in Chinatown,

it's not like... Right. You can't even imagine how much traffic in China. time. You can't do a drive-by there. But once in a while, once in a while, I know

a couple of drive, I know one drive-by I can't even talk about. But yeah, mostly, they'll do a hit anyway. They don't care. You could be right next to the prison. They don't care.

They'll do a hit. Look at Nikki Louis. Precincts right across the street. Look at, he got shot. War Hop, right? The case, with the battle between the ghost shadows and the eagles. Wintermelon, I believe, with kids ice crew,

saw two eagles inside War Hop, grabbed one of them out, put him on his knees, captain right there, in the busy street, right in the middle of the afternoon. Then went inside, took the other one out, capped them. to kill two people right in the busy street. Imagine how busy Chinatown was, how crowded it was. They don't care.

You know what? Because everyone's afraid of the gangs back then. Who's going to, like, rat them out, you know? So when you finally get, become a made man, tell us about the gang. Tell us about the association that you were with. I was with the Fuxing gang. And during that time, Fuk Ching was a new gang.

Nobody ever heard of the Fuk Ching. It was during the early days. It was during the 80s. And that's when they first tried to make a name for themselves. The established gangs were the Flying Dragons, Dong'an and the Gold Shadows. And then you had the white tigers in Queens. Fuk Ching, nobody heard of. So when my

Daimah told me that he was in the Fuk Ching gang I'm like I never heard of Fuk Ching Fuk Ching was predominantly

at the top level is almost all Fuggenese they were the new immigrants coming into this country and they didn't fit in with the Cantonese so

the people at the lower level like me and the soldiers and the Daimah, they were doing all the dirty work. Because the Fugianese, they weren't too familiar with Chinatown. They were still trying to fill everything out during that time. That's when they first started immigrating to the U.S. And they started taking over. More and more of them started coming into the territory

and they started moving into East Broadway. And that's how they got into the wall with the Dong'an gang. And you can ask big head about that. So the dirty work was done. Most of the things that made the newspaper was from our crew that hit the papers. So basically, whatever our crew did, enhance their reputation, the people at the top. you know

I mean they made some headlines also with RK and you know his thing with sister Ping but a lot of like the low level crimes

it came from our our crew and different factions of our crew as well so they weren't Fujanese they were like

Cambodian Vietnamese, ABC we had Cantonese, Taiwanese, Taiwanese, all different various ethnic background, even Laotian, you know?

Wow. How did, when you got in, did you see your your money improve? Like what was the benefit to you economically from from joining up with the gang? Oh.

In the beginning, the dialogue would take care of the food, the apartment that we live in, the money trickles down. So the dialogue had, meaning, the dialogue meaning

Cambod and Peter's boss. Okay. So I guess the boss at the top would give him money and he'll take care of us by giving Campbell and Peter money and he'll take care of us by taking us out to eat,

shoot pool, back then, roller skating, was a thing, take us to clubs, like that. Eventually, we would branch off on our own and do street robberies. We're kids, we young, 15, 16-year-old. Some of them, gang members are 14, doing street robberies, extortion, small money. Then later on, as I got older, through the connection,

was dealing with other things like getting guns so getting marijuana getting counterfeit money different things like that so as I got older then we moved away from the street robberies

and then as I got older in my 20s then I started opening my own business so I had three retail stores I had the car service business and then I had the the pool hall at the junction and that opened the doors for other opportunities

because right there in the heart of Flatbush you know I had access to more business I was selling the bootleg tapes I was getting the marijuana from the Jamaicans I was getting the handguns from the American blacks so that opened the door

for other business opportunities for me. And, yeah, so, and I was getting counterfeit money from the Israeli and also from my dialogue's boss. Can you tell us about counterfeit money? How do you make money out of... I don't know how they make them money. But how do you make money out of buying and selling counterfeit money? Oh, that's in my book.

Tease it. Tease it for us. This is fascinating. Okay. buying it is not a problem. Getting rid of it is a problem, especially in bulk. You know, like,

what I'm going to spend $100 here and there? No, I want to spend a big chunk of it and be able to convert whatever into real money. So check it out in my book. How much does it cost? It depends on the quality. It depends, like, 30 cents on a dollar for some, 50 cents on a dollar for a high quality,

$100 bill with the dread. So it depends. Right. And if you can get a good batch, you can make a lot of money. Yeah. What about the heroin? When did that come into play? Oh, that.

I had access to it. I remember I had access in 1989 to heroin in 1989. I turned that down right away. Oh, you did? Yeah. I'm not going to get involved with something like that. It was, when I was off of it, I was thinking, you know, especially like during that time, the war on drugs, you get, you know, big numbers if you get caught with heroin, dealing with heroin. You know, you kill somebody, you don't get that kind of jail time, prison time.

Right. Did the bosses of the Chinese gangs, did they have a policy against dealing heroin? like the Italians said they did, even though in practice they didn't. The Chinese? Yeah. No. No. Okay.

So you could... Up to the individual. Oh, I see. You know, nobody's going to say, no, you can't deal in heaven. But I thought in my mind, I'm like, you know what? If I ever get stopped by the cops with her in my mind, what I'm going to do? I'm going to shoot that out with the cops. You know?

So I'm like, you know what? I don't want to make that kind of decision, especially. you know in those days you know the prison time was heavy so I'm like okay go to prison

or shoot out with the cops I didn't want to make a decision like that you know like you can cap somebody and you won't even get that that kind of prison time you could claim self-defense or you could claim

you know whatever or manslaughter anything but murder you get a good lawyer but with her in, it's a whole different ballgame. Were a lot of Chinese gang members going to prison? Yeah.

Yeah. When the FBI came down, they were all out. When you make money in, you're a member of an organization, you're a maid man, say this guy's into guns, this guy's into counterfeit money, this guy's into weed, whatever. Do you then have to kick a percentage of your profits up to the boss? Or how does that work? How does the collection of money work? No, I don't have to kick it up.

See, it's different with the Chinese gangs. That's a good deal. Yeah. They get their reputation on me. Oh, you're at Dai Loh? You got this guy in your crew? Oh, they build a reputation. It's all about the reputation of the gang.

I don't have to kick it up. But I take care of my guys under me. Yeah. You know, everything they, you know, they eat, whatever, it's on me, you know. That's fascinating. It's a complete opposite in Italian organizations. Italians, everything moves to the top. The soldier pays for dinner. The boss never touches his wallet. The Chinese culture is very much more communal, I think. Yeah. You know why? Because you want the cream of the crop. You want the best in your crew.

You know, you want the people who is able to make it independently in your crew. You want the best. Just like Julius Caesar, right? You know, he takes care of his legions. That's right. Right. And he gets the loyalty from them. So the dialogue takes care of us.

He gets the loyalty from us. You know, it's how he, it's like a big brother thing, you know. Just like the Italians, right, it's different because we're kids we're early teens right to like early 20s we're kids and we're basically

like living together in an apartment like sometimes like 10 15 to an apartment where the dialogue would secure as a place wow you know so that brotherhood is built you know

to being together all that time in a place where we live together. Unlike the other ethnic groups, right? If you see like the BTK, there would be a whole crew. Living together in an apartment, it could be like 10 of them. They're living together. That's the brotherhood. They don't have parents, right?

Some of these guys that I was with, they didn't have any parents. They had nothing. If you look at the timeline, that was during the time of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. That was during the time of the Vietnam War. You know how many families were disrupted? these kids came over with nothing. They were like orphans. Yes.

They came over with nothing. They came from an orphanage. A plane flew over here. And then people from the church sponsor them or whatever. And then next thing you know, they're abandoned in the streets. So they have nothing. And then that's why you don't, like, rarely you get them to rat. because they don't have anything

all they have is the brotherhood that's why the canal boys later known as the BTK so many people were following David Dai the leader of the BTK and that's the same thing with the Chinese the gang members were dirt poor

back then now you see the Chinese boys they got money no it wasn't like that for them back then. How far, did you have ambitions to become a boss or a captain when you got into,

when you eventually joined up with the gang? I had zero ambition to be anything above a street soldier. So when you call me a maid man, no, I don't consider myself a maid man. A street soldier. And that's all I was, and that's all I ever wanted to be

just to be part of this brotherhood, this organization. Okay. I never aspire to. to be anything bigger than my boss, you know, but my boss always took my advice, you know. And even my boss's boss, even respected my advice and certain views. What kind of advice would you give? Depends, depends, you know. Sometimes, for example,

We went on a revenge shooting for something that happened to one of our guys. He got stabbed, and then we went to hunt them down. So I would tell him, like, when we have the meeting, I would say, okay, we'll split up into like two crews and one crew go here, one crew go there. And at the planning stage, he would listen to what I said. you know, like he would take my advice. Okay, so this crew likes to hang out in this location. And sometimes they'll hang out in that location.

And then we'll split up on two crews and we'll take which guns to use and, you know, they take my advice. So that's like certain advice, like planning. When it comes to planning, he'll take my advice. And like, for example, like my daimaz, dilo, he has access to a lot of things. even a grenade yeah a military

style grenade at that time I remember and he was selling for like 2,500 one grenade I don't know how he got it but I think he had one or two available

to sell at the time and then I was going to sell it to the Italians and he trusted me enough to put that deal together so they respected me were there any grenade attacks in the Chinatown gang wars or firebombing or anything like that? It made the news.

The BTK bombed the police van. Yeah. Say that again? The BTK. Bombed? They bombed the police van. Wow. The 5th prison police van, they bombed it.

It's because they were waiting the place and I believe they took all their fireworks at that time. and they weren't too happy with it, the cops. But they were wild. They didn't follow the unwritten street rules that the Chinese had back then. You know, something that the Chinese and the Italians wouldn't do. But the Vietnamese, remember, it was a whole different level of violence with them

because, like I said, they came from the war. Vietnam, refugees, and also with the Cambodians during that time, it was like, you're talking about it's totally different. These kids grew up quick, let's put it that way. You get a 14, 15-year-old Vietnamese kid, they're survivors.

You know, if you take them compared to a 19, 20-year-old Chinese kid or a Italian kid, you know, it was different. Different back then. Now, we're living in a different world now, But back then, they took violence to a whole new level. I mean, the shooting that they did with the don't on, it was over like 30-something shots fired in front of the gambling house on the East Broadway.

Then you had the shooting in the cemetery where over 100 shots were fired between the ghost shadows and the BTK. It made the papers. I mean, that's the level of violence that was happening back then. Wow. So you're in the gang and you're earning. What happens next? What do you mean? What happened? No. Tell us how, you know, lead us through basically when the feds came down in 92, hit everybody. And then eventually what led you to become a cop? The feds came down on a K and sister ping. Do the humans, people's people's smuggling the snakehead business that they were doing. Oh yeah. Tell us about the snakehead business.

That's wild. Snakehead? So gross. Yeah. They call them snakehead because they have their contacts in China. Yeah. They make a deal with the person in China to smuggle them over into the U.S. And when they smuggle them over, they'll pay when they get here. Because they're so poor.

Hang on, but they don't have any money. Tell us about the snakehead business. Like actual. Okay, got it. in China and you're poor and you have nothing going on there for you and you take any risk just to

come over here to get a job and send money home to your family you're going to go to a snakehead. A snakehead is the middle person who has contact with the people in the US in Chinatown to get

smuggle you here. Got it. So now if they're so poor that they don't have money to pay So they're going to have to work it off. Right. So who's going to make sure that they're going to work and paying their payment, right? So they come over here and Sister Ping and a K,

which is the Fuk Ching's Dailo, the big boss, was running that operation. Wow. And when the first crack down, they took down the whole crew. How much would it cost to be smuggled? over here. Like, what is that? If you don't have any money and you become like an indentured servant, how much would that cost like a Chinese immigrant? At that time, it was somewhere around 30,000. Wow. At that time.

Huge money. Yeah. At that time. So that was a million, multi-million dollar a year racket for some of these gangs. Yeah. So they'll make the deal. Say, okay, we're going to get you here. You're going to pay 30,000? Yeah. Okay. So now they bring them here. And now they work in the kitchen. Oh, they don't feel like working no more. Oh, this is too hard.

I don't want to work. Then what happens? Are they going to get beat for that $30,000? You know? No, they're going to find somebody beat the shit out of you. Right. You know, or kill you. Or your family in China.

Wow. So most of the time, that don't happen. Right. Because they know what they're in for. Right. It's like you're borrowing money from me. You're going to. You're going to pay me, right?

Wow. Yeah, it's like it's the, it's the Chinese version of like what the coyotes who work for the Mexican cartels do, smuggling people in from Mexico. But don't forget, the Fucheng had different factions, different dialogues. I had so many dialogues. So my dialogue didn't deal with that part of the business. Right. You know. What was your dialogue's main racket?

Dampling. gambling. So that's why our crew avoided all the federal scrutiny because my Dailo made most of his money to gambling.

He had gambling houses all over. He had one near Main Street in Queens, Chinatown, some in Brooklyn, some in New York City's

Chinatown. And one of his customers was Sister Ping's relative. Wow. And hundreds of thousands and just drop it in the night and next day he'll come back and pay off the loan and gamble again. Wow.

So that's his main market. That's why he didn't even need to get involved with the heroin business. So our crew will shielded from that too. We had access to it if we wanted. But he personally didn't dabble in that. Wow. You know, he said one day the boss called him in and he went into the office and there were maybe about six, seven, eight bricks of heroin there, whatever.

and he told my dialogue, help me move it. Then he goes, with all due respect, boss, if you ask me to go kill somebody for you, consider taking care of, but please don't ask me to do this

because this is going to kill a lot of innocent people, harm a lot of innocent lives. But if you ask me to do a hit, I'll take care of it. So he, He was okay with that answer. Right.

So that's why our crew never got involved with that heroin business. Right. So then the big bust in 92 happens. And Sister Ping and the snakehead operation gets busted and goes down. Who else went down? His inner circle. My case, in the circle. Don't forget, we were a different faction.

We were one of the faction of the Fuk Ching. and we were doing all the low-level crimes that was hitting the papers, right? The shootings and the killings and the gang war, the beatings,

the extortion, the robberies. If you read in the papers, the jewelry store robbery, the, the 3BTK that was executed in the parking lot of the bar. Like, we made headlines.

Like, we made all these headlines and the shooting. of the white kid near King's Highway in Brooklyn. So we were making headlines and it benefited the boss. Because people were like,

damn, the fortune is wild. Right. You know? So it benefited him. But he shielded us from his money-making operation with the snakehead business. So his money was trickling down to

his captains, which trickled down to our boss Daimah and then to us so that's where the money would you know that's how he gets the loyalty

of the gang members but then the captains would and the Daimah would pick and choose who they spend the money on and that's why some of the people left the gang and joined another gang so that's why back then there were a lot of people jumping from one gang to another right

you know but they always look like me so I stuck with them because I made money on my own Right. Right. How did that evolve into the 90s? How long did that go for? Oh, once, there's so many things happening in the 90s, you know, especially with the innocent tourists that got shot and killed, and then the bombing of the police ran by the BTK and then the Fed's eventually dropped the hammer on the Dong-Long gang, Flying Dragons, and then the Fook-Tang. The writing was on the wall. Right. This is the end of the Asian gangs as we know it.

Wow. You're never going to hear about them ever again. Wow. And nobody ever spoke about them because they had such a tight grip on the community and the residents of Chinatown. Right. That even to this day, they're afraid to even mention their names and even talk about them. So it's people your age, the kids, they would hear whispers from their parents or their grandparents,

but they're not going to get the whole story because the fear is still embedded in them. Wow. That's the type of, you know, they think that we're still active. Right. We're not. It's over. So there's old Chinese people in Chinatown that remember those days vividly and still remember who the flying dragons were and the BTK.

That's incredible. You ask anyone who lived in Chinatown around my age or older, they know. Wow. They will know. And none of them ever spoke about it. And that's why I came. forward. I see. And took this step to write a book. So when did you get out of the game? What year? It was around, it was towards the end around 94, 95. Yeah. And why?

There's a number of reasons why. You know, a number of reasons why. One thing that stuck to my head that's always on my mind was this police officer, his name is Stephen McDowell. and he was shot by a teenage kid and left him a quadriplegic. I followed his story because I was reading the newspaper every day to keep track of see if any of my guys or the other gang members made the papers or whatever. So I'm reading a newspaper every day whenever I'm at the office or at my store. And I follow the story. and during that time when

I guess it was going to trial it was being covered in the media all the time he forgave the kid who shot him when he forgave the kid who shot him it left me like wondering like why would he forgive him after what he did to you how can you forgive someone like that

and he made a statement on why he forgave him and saying that the kid was a part of his environment and I was a young kid at that time I didn't understand what that statement meant so I'm like thinking in my mind like what does he mean by that

so I started questioning my own beliefs because the way I grew up if you look at the show of the movies and that's why I grew up with everything is about revenge right okay and it didn't fit with my way of thinking and the life I was living and the people I was around.

And I started questioning my own beliefs. Like, am I a product of my environment? I mean, that was the first time I ever heard that time. And I was too young to understand, but it's just that statement stuck in my mind. And after all those years, I keep thinking, like, I need to get out of this environment in order to make that change. So in order To make a change

You need to realize You're making a mistake Or you're doing something wrong If you don't realize it You never take that step To make that change So it was always in my mind Like how do I get out

Right I couldn't find the answer Like I was so engrossed in that life Like I didn't know how to get out So So Stephen McDonnell gave me I guess planted a seed

Okay, maybe I'll take the police test And so I took the police test And maybe that'll be a way out, you know And I was so close And joining the military Right, just to get out of that life Wow But then the police department called me

They sent me a letter And that's what stopped me from Belling out and going to the military So So you go out of the gang by becoming a cop. That's crazy. That's so ironic.

I guess the timing was right because at that time, everybody was locked up, dead or in prison. Right. Or trying to find ways to make a living. Right. The legitimate way. Yeah. You know, some of these gang members, they open their own business.

Some of them just got a regular job. Right. And it was over. You know, once the feds get you, that's it. you're going to continue. You're going to continue and say, oh, I'm a Fook Ching member, I'm a Gold Shadow member.

Right. It's over. Wow. And you did never take any, you didn't have a police record, you didn't have a criminal record? Came so close to getting arrested. Yeah.

But I never got arrested. Wow. So on paper, what do you see? You beat the odds, man. Yeah. Was your name in a file anywhere from being associated with any of these guys?

Probably had my picture in the fifth precinct, or maybe the 6-1 precinct or maybe the 7-2 precinct because there's a lot of back then the plainclothes cops they would take pictures of the gang members in the streets and then where did you serve as a cop

I served as a cop in the 6-6 precinct and it covers Brooklyn's Chinatown so you're policing the same streets he used to make money out of. Yes. Wow. Yeah. Wow.

And you were caught. I mean, and that's the story, man. And now you're retired. Now I'm retired. Now, is that why you chose to write the book after you retired? Or why now are you coming out? You know, in the recent years, why have you chosen to come out with all these stories? Why not earlier?

I decided to come out with this book in 2015. In 2015, I hit my 20th year in the police. department and I was able to retire and come out with this book. The reason why is because nobody ever told this story. Nobody. So I wanted to basically set the record straight, like, okay, this is what happened and this is what the type of mistakes that they made in the media about the Chinese gangs. In my book and some of the interviews on you.

YouTube, it points out all the mistakes that was made in the newspaper. Okay. And there's plenty more coming on my channel that I haven't spoke about yet because I haven't had time. This book was supposed to come out around 2015, but I decided not to retire until 2021. I just hung in there. Something happened, you know, in the middle of that, around 2019, which postponed my retirement.

And, yeah, so I wanted to give my perspective of what happened because everything that was written about the Asian gangs came from a non-Asian. Or someone who interviewed those gang members. Right. So it didn't come from the horse's mouth. That's right. Right. So I see both sides of it.

I see the law enforcement side and I see the side of the gang members. So I want to bring that story out. Fascinating. And Chinatown Gang Stories is a great YouTube channel. It's a great Instagram, TikTok follow. I catch your videos all the time. Really, really well done. But let's plug your book. Let's plug your book. This is where people can get everything that we've talked about, which is fascinating, the underworld, the Chinese underworld that is so secretive by your guys' nature. The stories that you told, you go into far greater detail in the book.

Tell people the name of it and where they can get it. We'll have a link to the book in the description of the episode. Sometimes people call the Chinese gangs, the Chinese mafia. The mafia, that term applies to Italians, right? I don't know, man. You guys ran it pretty similar. You guys had the structure, the same rackets, pretty much. It sounds like a mafia to me.

And I'm sure that the feds applied the same RICO cases to take down the bosses that they would have with the wise guys. Yeah, they went after the Italians first. Once they're done with the Italians, then they came after the Chinese. Yep. And we have a lot of respect for the Italians. a lot. I mean, my mentor was Italian. Even Kitzai's godfather was Italian, and he was the leader of the Ghost Shadows. But it's just like the old Italians, the mob guys, they're really cool stand-up guys.

It's just the young Italian kids that we were at war with in those times. It's like they're so immature for their age. You know, like you're dealing with these teenagers, 17, 18, 19-year-old teenage Italian kids. They're troublemakers. you know. Yeah, they're Italians. What do you want? They go home to their mom and dad.

But meanwhile, you know, you're dealing with these guys who came from this third world country. It has nothing to lose. And they don't go home to the mom and dad. They don't have a mom and dad. They live in an apartment supplied by the dialogue. So you're dealing with a different level of violence, you know. It's just the young Italian kids. They're not out there to make money.

Like the older Italian mob guys, they're out there to make trouble. But meanwhile, these kids are. Out there they make money, you know, because they're starving. And, you know, like, we grew up poor, right? Like, I grew up poor. My family was poor. There's nothing. First World country poor is nothing compared to third world country poor.

Like Cambodian Peter. He was running, him and his family was running away from the war between the Khmer Rouge and the Vietnamese. They lived in the jungle. they tracked their way in the jungle all the way to the border of Thailand for two years eating whatever they can find in the jungle or whatever village they pass by

that will help them out you know can some of these kids relate to that now try to pick up like a worm and eat it or right and he has no shoes all that time

in the jungle for two years only wearing a pair of shorts. No wonder they weren't scared of prison, man. No. Prison in the U.S.? Oh, three meals a day? Exactly. What do you guys complaining about? They're not complaining. Prison? They're not complaining.

They're not complaining during that time. Now it's different. I remember I arrested this person probably about more than 10 years ago. And I'm for shoplifting. And I'm putting to charge on the report. And, you know, she's very interested in what charge I'm putting on.

Is there a felony or a misdemeanor? I told her, you pass that threshold. It's going to be a felony. And she was so happy. It's like, I said, why are you so happy? You can charge with a felony. Oh, because I get my three meals a day. I get to shower.

I get a clean bed to sleep in, right? Instead of being homeless. in the homeless shelter, they rather be arrested. And sad, man. Get fed in there. Michael,

great interview, man. Really appreciate you coming on. Thank you. Yeah, shout the book out and where people can find you on social media and on YouTube. Maybe there'll be part two. Yeah, I'd like that.

Take a tour of Chinatown. Yeah, I would love that. Let's plan. on that because it is fascinating. Shout the book out, man. Where can they find it? Bad to blue. Bad to blue. You can order it on Amazon. Amazon, we'll have the link in the description and then follow your YouTube page. Yes. Plenty of interviews over there and plenty more coming. Chinatown gang stories on YouTube, on social media, Instagram. And yeah, look out for a part too, man. Thank you. Appreciate it, buddy. Thanks, guys.

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