The Underworld Podcast - NY’s Chinatown Wars: Ghost Shadows, Hong Kong Triads, Tongs, and the China White Heroin Connection

Episode Date: October 11, 2021

When Nicky Louie stalked the streets in the 1970's, he was the first gangster to scare Chinatown in decades. At only 22-years-old, he led his gang of gun-toting teen hitmen known as the Ghost Shadows in countless shootouts against the Flying Dragons. Both street gangs were linked up with the established and secretive community groups known as Tongs that had been operating and controlling Chinatown since the 1890's. Together, the gangs and tongs ran the protection and gambling rackets, getting a piece of every single business in the neighborhood. But when the tongs linked up with Hong Kong Triads, who themselves had linked up with Burmese opium growers churning out the 95% pure heroin known as China White, things really got interesting. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Book direct and save at bestwester.com. How many discounts does USAA auto insurance offer? Too many to say here. Multi-vehicle discount. Safe driver discount? New vehicle discount. Storage discount. Legacy How many discounts will you stack up? Tap the banner or visit usaa.com slash auto discounts. Restrictions apply. This is Monsters is a true crime podcast and YouTube channel where I tell the stories of the worst people on the planet. Though the stories of the victims are told, we focus on the monster who carried out the evil act. The show is split into seasons and each season has a theme. In season one, we covered cases of phyllicide, which is the

act of a parent killing their own child. In season two, we covered cases of people killing for love. We recently finished up season three where we covered cases of parasite, which is the act of someone killing their parents. Tune in now as we start season four, where we dive into the minds of family annihilators. Sick individuals who decide to do that. to destroy their entire families. Check us out anywhere that you listen to podcasts or on YouTube by searching this is Monsters. They say Nikki Louie is the first gangster to scare New York's Chinatown in decades. He's the leader of this out-of-control street gang called The Ghost Shadows, and he's a wild one.

He runs his mouth and he runs his gun. He's small, though, maybe 125 pounds soaking wet. And actually soft-spoken, charming, he's oppressed darling too. Tonight, it's August 1978, and he's playing Majong with his friends in the back of a barbershop. There's a war going on in the streets, but he's safely on his turf. Him and his crew took it four years ago from the White Eagles, chased them off with guns blazing, and then they got backed by the powerful Omliang Tong. He's dodged plenty of metaphorical and actual bullets and attempted assassinations.

It hit a few times, too. Safe to say the guy, only 24 years old at this point, had a rep. But he makes a mistake. He sits with his back to the door, and a 17-year-old kid, from his own gang and part of a rebel faction, gets the drop on him. He puts a 38 to Nicky Louis's face and pulls the trigger. Louis gets shot in the cheek, but he's not dead. He runs from the barbershop, and the kid keeps firing, hitting Louis a bunch more times. The kid then catches him and starts beating his head in with a gun when he's out of bullets.

But Louis wrestles the kid off him, staggers a few blocks, trailing blood the whole way, and finally collapses outside the NYPD's fifth precinct. He survives. And this is only one incident at a hundreds in the brutal gang wars that turned New York City's Chinatown into a bloodbath in the 1970s and 1980s. But it wasn't just gambling rackets and brothels. These rag-tag gangs are teen killers

and their more respectable community leader Tong bosses had everything to do with the emergence of the super potent China white heroin from Burma that tore through New York City streets. This is the Underworld podcast. Go back, everyone. This is Danny Gold. I am here with Sean Williams.

We are two journalists, and we make the Underworld podcast where we take you into the worlds of international organized crime. And where we encourage you not to end up betting your kidney on a Pai Gau game in a basement in Chinatown. Yeah, and that was the worst assassination attempt we've ever, ever covered on this. That was pathetic. Like, it surely can't get worse than that. Nikki Louie can hold his own. It was where we're going to find out. Yeah, we are coming up on 50 episodes.

So we just want to let you guys know. For that, we're going to do a Q&A. So email us at the Underworld Podcasts at gmail.com. If you have any questions about any episodes we've done or our careers and reporting in general. And, you know, it's really cool to be getting a lot of support, especially people coming to us from like both sides of the law telling us they want to clue us in on things and tip us off the stuff. So I think we're going to have some really interesting potentially reporting trips and stories coming up pretty soon. You know what I'm saying? Special thanks to the guy who's been telling me all about drug mansions.

in the Rift Mountains in Morocco as well. If you guys want to show where me and Danny sit purple tea with we billionaires, just keep jumping on the Patreon, guys. Yeah, patreon.com for bonuses or just to support us. You know, we could,

if all of our dedicated listeners just gave us the minimum donation, we'd have enough money to, actually, you know, that probably wouldn't work out well. We'd probably get into some trouble. So if just half of you guys, we were already in trouble.

Half of you guys. Yeah, if half of you guys can donate, I think it'd be a lot safer for all of us. And maybe our parents, wouldn't be so ashamed of us. Anyway, moving on, you know, I'm really excited about this episode. There's nothing I like better than like old New York stories of gritty 1970s and 1980s action with a bunch of just wild teenagers shooting up the streets and broad daylight. You mix in a giant

international heroin connection involving a Burmese warlord and the infamous Hong Kong triads. You know, what's not to like. Yeah, and Dale put something great over that intro as well because that was like, that was your best, like Raymond Chandler, Goodfellows. writing, yeah, that was cool. It's really interesting, too, this dynamic that emerges in Chinatown in New York City, but also, I guess, in other Chinatowns, San Francisco, Toronto, that sort of thing, in the 60s and 70s, right? You had these community leader groups, the tongs that had been around for generations. They had controlled the vice rackets for just as long. They were moving into this air of respectability at the time. I mean, you know, they're meeting

with mayors, high-ranking politicians, city business leaders. They were business leaders themselves, like respectable. And they link up with these newly formed brutal street gangs made up of roughneck immigrant teenagers from a new wave of immigration coming from Hong Kong and later Vietnam. And both, you know, they sort of fed off each other

just sort of thriving in Chinatown's insular underground economy. So the Tongs, we got into them with the Boston show's sister Ping. Like, I still don't fully get how they were kind of running this type road between the white and black markets. How are these things tolerated?

Yeah, we're going to get into that. It's kind of a lengthy explanation, but it has to do a lot with Chinatown being insular, with their controls over the community, because they really, I mean, I think more so than almost any organized crime faction we've covered had control and had relationships with everyone in the community.

But yeah, we do need to go back a bit to sort of stuff out so everyone knows what I'm talking about. And like you said, I got into this a bit, And I think episode eight about the white devil, a Boston townie who rose up high in the organized crime, you know, Chinese scene in Boston. But a quick refresher, the triads are typically the name that comes up when you think of Chinese organized crime and with good reason. There are these massive groups, like tens of thousands of members spread all over the worlds and they're heavy in Hong Kong. I actually don't know what's happened to them since everything in Hong Kong changed a year or two ago.

So that'd be interesting to look into. They started out as secret societies in the 70th century, and they form as an act of rebellion against the Qing dynasty, I think sometimes known as the Manchu dynasty, who had just taken over China. The Qing dynasty were seen as illegitimate leaders and all these tongs, all these people wanted to bring them down. Are you sure it doesn't start with Alexander's a great this one? Is we just going to start in the 70th century? We're starting the 70th century, yeah.

And again, I'm just going to tell this supposed origin story because it involves Shaolin monks and like, you know, if you're my age and you grew up listening to early 90s rap, it's obligated to tell stories about Shaolin monks whenever they pop up, like real Jizzah album intro stuff. The legend goes that in 1674, the second emperor of the dynasty reaches out to some Shaolin monks to help him fight off a challenge. They do it and they do it well. They refuse payment and their popularity and the reputation as these fierce,

honorable warriors. It just grows and grows after they finish the job. I hate guys who do things on spec. really not good for the industry. Yeah, it screws the rest of us over. Yeah, don't do it. So this whole thing, it worries the emperor who sends his men to their monastery to kill them. Only five out of 130 of the monks survive. And those five swear revenge and that they'll overthrow the emperor and reestablish the previous dynasty. Each of the five starts a secret group dedicated to the goal and they operate in the shadows against their feudal overlords. It's actually

Europeans who start calling them the triads because their symbol is a triangle with a three-sides represent heaven, earth, and man. Others call it the Hongamun Society. And apparently all Hong Kong triads trace their origin story to this story right here. And then you have, obviously, in the future, the emcees come to live out the name. Wow. I mean, this is God's tier origin story. This is like the cus of this. I love it. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, you can see why Jizzah was super into it, you know. These societies, they fight the empire and they kind of act as the unofficial government where the actual government couldn't rule or wasn't active. It kind of strikes me as this similar vibe to how you hear about the origins of the Sicilian mafia

when it came to the lack of government oversight in Sicily. Every time these secret societies tried to rebel over the next few centuries, they fail. And after each failure, these triads would flee the country going to Hong Kong, Indochina, and North America, especially in the 19th century. By the 1900s, though, most of these groups had pretty much done away with all the politics and we're focused on the fun stuff, like running giant criminal enterprises. Chinese immigration into the U.S., it really starts going in the mid-19th century as the immigrants come to work as laborers, minors, you know, railroad tracks, all that sort of stuff, often working

in seriously bad conditions and facing horrible racism. The first Tongue is established in 1816, California. And the Tongs, you know, they're these civic organizations, right? Like the Rotary Club or like a merchant organization set up so that they could all look out for each other, you know, also serve as protectors and also as courts because the Chinese didn't trust the official American ones, usually wouldn't get the time of day there. So they're modeled after the triads, and there were some triads who were in them, you know, they were triad affiliated, but they were at first legitimate, like mutual aid societies,

and they drew their memberships from the railway workers and the gold miners, some of whom had been triads, like I said, who had fled crackdowns and famines back in China. Of course, as the amount of Chinese immigrants continue to grow, and China-touching foreign cities, like any insular ethnic community during that time from the Italians to the Jews to the Irish, someone needs to control the vice rackets. And Tongs step up to do that. You know, gambling houses, prostitution, opium, there's money to be made here, like a lot. And still, though, to reiterate, the Tongs were necessary structures when Chinese immigrants and communities were treated like shit neglected, and someone needed to be a voice for them.

And Chinatowns back then, you know, there were all these rules. So they were mostly men, something insane like 10 to 1. They called them Bachelor societies because the women weren't really allowed to immigrate. And of course, you know, when you have that many men, it's going to lead to some shit. I think, you know, you've seen those stories about like the oil, oil worker compounds in like South Dakota and all that sort of stuff

where you have like strippers showing up and making like $400,000 over a summer. So I think it kind of, that vibe, but a lot, a lot shadier. Yeah. You know, these Chinatowns, they had a rep by then. This is a quote from Jacob Rees in 1890. From the teeming tenements to the right and left of Chinatown come the white slaves of its dens of vice and their infernal drug.

There are houses, dozens of them, in Mott and Pell Streets that are literally jammed from the joint in the cellar to the attic with these hapless victims of a passion which, once acquired, demands the sacrifice of every instinct of decency to its insensate desire. Is this that Dickhead Senator, that we spoke about on the Sister Ping episode, that guy who just got like all Chinese women banned from the States, because he said they'd all be sex workers or something?

I don't think so. There's an awesome beach named after him. But I don't know. I'm not sure if that was Jacob Rees or not. I really should know the answer to that with New York history. But yeah, I think they were, yeah, they were all banned, but they were still, you know, a lot of women, a lot of Chinese women were brought in as slaves by these organizations

to serve in prostitution houses. It's really, really dark. There's actually, what's that show? I think it's on Showtime or stars. It's like a Bruce Lee thing he wrote. I think it's called Warriors. No, it's not HBO. That's actually about that era in San Francisco. It's pretty interesting. Cool. You know, and where, of course, there's hookers and drugs, organized crime follows.

The Tong wars break out in the 1890s and Chinatowns across the country. Boston, San Francisco, New York, as various Tongs try to seize territory and control. New York's Chinatown had their Tong wars from 1890 until about 1930. But the Tongs still maintain their holds in Chinatown long after. A 1988 paper by the Justice Department described it like this, quote, During and after this transition, Tong leadership retained a powerful hold on the business and politics of American Chinatowns. Today, some Tongue sponsor a complex mixture of legal and illegal activities and remain essential to Chinese organized crime leaders because of their influence within the Chinese community. Moreover, a few Tong leaders are themselves deeply involved in criminal conspiracies.

New York's Tong wars were mainly fought between the two most powerful ones, the Hip Sing and the On Leong. There were 30 years of killings, especially when the infamous mock duck shows up and took control of the hip sing. A lot of the killings were ignored at first by, you know, New York in general and the mainstream media and mainstream in general because it was, you know, Chinese against Chinese. Judges stepped in and tried to try to comment.

Even the country of China at the time tried to get involved in making peace. Well, what? I mean, how did they do that? I think they were like sent representatives. They tried to have sit downs and just like try to, because we're talking about hundreds of people dying. And these tongues are like around now as well, right? They're going strong still. Yeah, the same one.

Well, you'll see Hipsing and On the Yang are still around now. Mark Jacobson, who wrote some incredible articles for the village voids in the 1970s about the gangs of Chinatown that I'm using a lot in everything I'm talking about here, said this, quote, determined to survive, they, the Chinese, built an extra legal society based on furtive alliances, police bribes, creative bookkeeping, and immigration scams. The aim was to remain invisible and separate. To this day, few people in Chinatown are known by their real names. Most receive new identities such as the Li's, Chin's, and Wongs from the family associations, who declared them cousins to get them into the country. That's how the

hip-s Singh and on the Yongtongs came up. And now, by the 1930s, right, things that calm down and the Chinatown leaders do this massive about face. And they try to give the neighborhood a new image in the eyes of the world. No more gang killings, drugs and hookers. Now it's businessman and law-abiding, non-troublesome, upstanding people. And it was mostly. I mean, this stuff was still underground, some of that stuff. But until the 1960s, it was pretty safe, but we'll get back to that. Now, right before the Tong Wars actually broke out in the 1890s, the U.S. had passed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which is a deeply racist immigration policy that severely restricted Chinese immigrants. This was followed by the 1924 National Origins Act, which also restricted Asian

immigration heavily. All that changes in 1965 with the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965, which let the Chinese come in the country again. And all of a sudden, immigrants jump from something like super low. I think 100 a year in some years to 20,000. Yeah, super low. I mean, it's 100 of the year legally, right? Many of the new Chinese immigrants, though, they're different, right? They're from Hong Kong, and they're not like the previous types that came in that were more rural, farmers from mainland China and all that. These are people from the slums of Hong Kong. You know, tough kids, poor families. Here's Jacobson in the village voice. Quote, some of the young arrivals from Hong Kong have cost Chinatown its first difficulty with

Chinese delinquency in years. They are much cockier, much more interested in women and dancing and drinking than we were ever allowed to be, says a 25-year-old man who was brought up in Chinatown. I guess you could call them sort of oriental teddy boys. They have their own clubhouses here, and I hate to think of what goes on behind those doors. Still, they're real go-getters. I like the idea of Chinese teddy boys. It sounds really, really cool. What are Chinese teddy boys? Like, that's like an English thing, right? Teddy boys are like the kind of like moddy rockers from the 50s and 60s. They got like the massive curly quiffs and like zoot suits and all this kind of shit. They look really cool. Yeah, these dudes that,

too. I mean, they had style. You know, they had, like, those awesome black, like thin black suits and, like, crazy tattoos and pompadors and all that. So, you know, there's this culture clash in a way. You have the old guard of Chinese immigrants and their kids who are very, like, work hard, keep your head down, respect the elders. But these new Hong Kong kids, they take a look around and they don't like what they see. The American-born Chinese kids, they give them a hard time.

The only jobs available to them when they get older are working as waiters or garment workers and laundry, things like that, something like 30 to 40% of the men in Chinatown were waiters at this time. And maybe, maybe if they bust their asses for 20, 25 years, six, seven days a week of long work days, they could open up a small business. But these kids, they don't want to wait. And they said, you know what? Fuck that. And that's where the gangs come in. One of the street gangs, I think I mentioned them in the intro of the White Eagle, is they have this origin story. There's a group of Hong Kong Chinese kids 15, 16 years old. They're sitting in the park and the American-born kids won't let them play basketball.

You know, these kids, their parents had come. Some actually had decent jobs in Hong Kong, maybe, but now they're waiters, they're living in shitty tenements, they're getting sick. You know, tuberculosis was the thing back then. The kids are reflecting on how they don't even have enough money to get pork buns. So they get all fired up, they get heated, and they decide they've had enough. Things were going to change. So they go to a restaurant and they rob it and they steal all these pork buns and they eat enough

until they get sick. And after that day, those eight or nine kids, they become one of the same. of the first new street gangs called the White Eagles. I'm just saying pork buns, pork buns is a better gang name. I just think White Eagles is a bit same, same. Yeah, pork buns would be a cool gang name, and they're also delicious. So I empathize with the kids and where they were coming from. Soon enough, the White Eagles, they have guns, you know, they're extorting, they're fighting,

they're stealing, even robbing gambling halls, right? And that's not good, yeah, because the Tongs, they run those rackets. And these wild Hong Kong teenagers, they're shaking up. the natural order of things in Chinatown that had been there for decades. Just as the population was booming, I think it's up to 75,000 people in Chinatown in that era in the early 70s. Now, it wasn't like there was in crime there, right? The Talong still run these massive gambling halls.

They still did their protection rack extortion plays. But there wasn't a wild west atmosphere like there had been. The Tongues used to be hatchet men, right? They would go out and they would kill people with hatchets. But for decades now, they put on suits, they weren't looking to get their hands dirty, and they needed to rain in these kids. So now we're talking like late 60s, early 70s, Chinatown changing massively,

and the powerful tongs they have an idea. Jacobson again, quote, within weeks of the first extortion report, several white eagles and representatives of the On Leong Tong were sitting in a Mott Street restaurant talking it over. When they were done, a pact was sealed that would establish the youth gang as a permanent fixture of New Chinatown.

The On Leongs and Hip Sings no longer strut. fear in the heart of Chinatown. Ponchi middle-aged businessman, they spent most of their time competing for black mushroom contracts. Tong warriors like Sing Doc were just misty reminiscences for bent over guys playing away their last dollar at Fantan. Fonton, I don't know. The Eagles brought them muscle they felt they would need in changing times. And the kids fulfilled vicariously a longing for the past. This was like having your own private army again, just like the good old is. Okay, so am I missing something here? What's a black mushroom deal? I mean, I assume it's, it's like produce coming in because a lot of these guys were involved in like the shellfish

market. Like they controlled the shrimp industry and things like that. And you see, Chinatown now is famous for produce and food coming in and stuff like that. So I think that's his just cute way of saying they were more proper and respectful businessmen going after big money stuff, even though they still controlled some brothels and some gambling rackets. Also, I don't, did I say reminiscences, reminiscences? Whatever, man. We'll keep it going. Reminiscences? It's good. Yeah. So the egos go to work for the tongs. They guard the gambling halls. They protect the restaurants paying extortion fees. They pump the other restaurants that won't pay extortion fees.

And both groups kind of get what they want. The tongs get muscle, someone to do their dirty work, some fear in their community again. And the gangs get validation, money, because they get cuts of everything and guidance. And these gangs, they're different than the old way of doing things. They were brash. They were louder. They were reckless. They borrowed from black and Puerto Rican and Italian youth culture. They had those wild 50-style pompadour haircuts, tattoos, slim suits.

They kind of look like hipster gangsters, you know. They had fatigues and haircuts like Rod Stort, and they actually loved Rod Stort. Wait, this is just Bill and Ted. No, they thought, I mean, I think Rod Stort was pretty cool in the 70s. I like Rod Stort now, so I don't, I don't know. I do as well, but, I mean, I think we've, I think we've, like, it's standing. that neither else is that cool, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I think if you look at, like, old-school Chinese gangster haircuts and Rod Stewart's haircuts, like they align, you know, one-to-one. Finger in the socket. Own it all. Pay off your home, travel for life, drive a Ferrari. In celebration of the world premiere of the Monopoly Big Board Buckslot Machine by Aristocrat Gaming, Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is giving one person a $1.6 million dream package. The biggest prize in Yamaba's history.

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And the way they recruit newer members, it's actually really interesting, or I guess pretty brutal. And this is from an NYPD detective who in the 80s and 90s would go undercover and infiltrate the flying dragons, which is another gang we're going to talk about. He rose up so high in the gang. He became a street lieutenant at 12 men under him and drove a Corvette around Chinatown. To recruit, he would send his younger goons to the local schools and they'd find some recent immigrant, start roughing him up. You know, they're maybe 13, 14 years old. The kids were around that age too. And then he would show up, you know, he's got like women on both his arms in the Corvette. His young goons are messing with this kid. He snaps his fingers, very

Fonzie-like, stops the whole thing. Saves the kid from a beating. You know, it's an 80s movie scene, basically. Then he takes the kid for a ride, goes and gets him like a big lobster or a steak, you know, afterwards takes him to the safe house where the kid sees the guns and the drugs and the women, and they just kind of break him in like that. Is this also Rufus from Bill and Ted, or just like all 80s movies, the same thing? I got to be honest with you, man. I haven't seen Bill and 10 in a while, so I've no idea what you're talking about, but I assume our audience will. Will they? Yeah.

I mean, are they all like mid-30s, absolutely cool guys? I don't know. Yeah, definitely. But yeah, back to the early 70s, right? The Eagles emerge on the scene. They click up with the On the Yong, and they're running around terrorizing Chinatown. They're led by their gang leader. They call him the big brother.

I think Dai Lowe is how you pronounce it, Paul Ma. Ma's known for being a little showy, like he shows up to court wearing a silk shirt unbutting to show off the bullet scars on his chest. But he's not doing a good enough job toning things down for the tongue. His little soldiers, they're kidnapping shopkeeper's daughters for ransom, they're running around shooting up alleyways with big guns, says a cop to the village voice, quote, you know, I've been on the force for 22 years,

and I never saw nothing that gave me nightmares, like watching a 15-year-old kid run down Bayard Street, carrying a Thompson submachine gun. It's like it always like completely blows my mind how feral New Yorkers back then. Like, I feel like the Warriors was a documentary or something. It's crazy. It kind of was, man. The 70s and 80s were just not. There are so many good stories. It's insane. The Eagles are getting too bold. You know, they're disrespecting their elders and the tongs. They're mugging gamblers who win in the protected gambling halls. They're fucking with the

restaurants under protection. Heroin is starting to trickle in now from Burma through the triad Tong connection, which again, I'm going to get to later on. And the Eagles are selling it in Chinatown, too, which is a big no-no. They're even using it themselves. and one night they robbed their own Tong's gambling hall and later one eagle dumps tea on a Tong elder which is the last straw. You see the Eagles, they're not the only street gang of wayward youths kicking around Chinatown.

Nikki Louis shows up and Nicky's the kind of person that journalists dream about. I mean, in the Village Voice article, Jacobson is just hanging out with Louis as he patrols the streets with a gun on him. There's another where he's like lying in a hospital bed after being shot a bunch and he's just making charming jokes to different reporters.

Like I said, good looking, charming, charming, soft-spoken, and just completely fucking bonkers. They say he survived numerous assassination attempts, including a bunch of teenage hitmen, coming over from San Francisco to kill him in 1975, just shooting up the streets. What's some West Coast guy got going on with Chinatown's smoothest operator?

I think it was the watching. So, you know, the Tongs are national. And these street gangs start to bridge out nationally as well. So I think, you know, they're not just operating in New York. They're everywhere. So I'm sure they pissed off the wrong people. And San Francisco had really powerful gangst which is, I think a topic we'll get into for another episode because we got to talk about

shrimp boy just for the nickname alone. Yeah, I mean, was San Francisco's bigger than New York's, the Chinatown? No, no, New York's is bigger, but I think Chinatown started out bigger. Louis's born around 1954 in the slums of Hong Kong. He comes to the states in the mid-60s, like so many others, and he lives in a tenement building, his parents worked back baking jobs. He starts his own gang in 1970 with his friends. By 1971, they call themselves the ghost shadows. Yes. Okay. I mean, it doesn't make sense at all, but that's a way better name that the White Eagles. It's a pretty good name, dude. Yeah.

You know, he's 5' 5'5 pounds, boyish features, but tough and organized. He starts structuring the gang to emulate the tongs. And he gets known for being sharp, for dodging enemy bullets, and tricking the cops, getting charged, but never convicted. Legend has it once, the cops went into a restaurant looking for him, so he slips into the kitchen, puts on an apron, and starts frying up stuff in a walk. and the cops look around, don't see him and leave. Jacobson again in the voice, quote, he was the gun-wielding wild man, always up for action,

willing to do anything to get attention. It paid off. Nikki's been the top shadow ever since 1973, when the gang's former big boss, Nai Wong, got caught with a Hong Kong cop's girlfriend. The cop, in New York for a surprise visit, ran across Wong at his patrol in the Chinese Quarter Night Club, beneath the approach ramp to the Manhattan Bridge,

and blew off both their heads with his police revolver. Jesus Christ. And this story, this Jacobson story is on the reading list. Yeah, I want to like read this straight after we do the record. Yeah. Yeah, it's up there. And there's a couple other really big articles that I draw from from the New York or from the early 90s that I'll talk about too. But yeah, I mean, it just makes me jealous. You know, these guys have insane access. They're probably getting paid more than we get paid now for writing these like 5,000 word features on just the gangs of Chinatown. And, you know, you can't pitch that anywhere right now. Nobody cares. Do you not think like pitching crypto hacks is as interesting as this? I think that is actually as interesting. I just mean like now you've got to do some nonsense about whatever. We won't get into it. Anyway, Louie and his crew, you know, they're doing nickel and dime shit at first. His first attempt at a big score.

He robs a restaurant, but he robs the wrong guy, some guy who's connected. And he has to come back later and give the guy's money back in a red envelope, which is humiliating. When he gets going, these guys, the shadows are just street punks. They do a little like starting on East Broadway, a couple of fights, but nothing really big. And I want to point out to something, you know, we talk about this a lot, especially with these immigrant gangs that start up. And whether it's, again, Italian mafias, Jewish mafias, Irish mafias, MS-13, everyone always starts out by praying on their own people who are usually poor, you know, and just like can barely afford it. Or, I mean, I guess they factor in like a little bit of protecting them as well because these gangs do stick up for their own. But at the same time, they're extorting,

they're not going and extorting people in Little Italy. They're not going on extorting white people, right? They're extorting other poor people in Chinatown. And the shadows, they start getting this rep soon, right? Cousin Nikki. And they're taking on the White Eagles. And remember, the On the Yong is pissed because of the white egos being too reckless,

so they pull their support. And Nikki and his crew, they just run them off the block, a bunch of shootout, stuff like that. And now they're the muscle for the On Leong, which then is the most powerful organization now in Chinatown. And the wars are just kicking off like crazy in Chinatown at that point.

You have other gangs, everyone's fighting for territory, wild shootouts, pool hall fights, it's just nuts. Nikki and the guys, they're just out in the open. Isn't China Town just like a few blocks? I mean, what the hell is going on? I mean, it's, I don't think it's just a few, you know? It's probably like eight by eight blocks maybe, which is New York. You know, you're still talking about upwards of 75, 80,000 people at that time.

Yeah, yeah. That in itself is like a small, it's a small city in most places. You know, there's definitely a market there. Yeah, it's not. So when I say they're out in the open and why they can do that, right, here's the thing. In the 70s, the NYPD isn't really focused too much on Chinatown. Like, they don't know what, notice what's really going on even as the bodies start dropping. The city's already a wild place.

Remember, crack wars, 70s gang stuff. Well, I guess the crack wars come a little later, but all sorts of gang stuff in the 70s. The murder rate was out of control. And Chinatown is so insular, right? It wasn't just that Chinese immigrants suffered tons of racism. They were also kind of like standoffish towards outsiders. You could even say they're a little racist towards outsiders. They didn't let anyone in, not even the police.

Though Jacobson tags along with this one cop, and he just sounds classic, right? This detective Neil Marillo. Quote, but Neil knows all the faces on Mott Street. He memorizes gang members' names and birthdays, walks down the street and says, Hey, happy birthday pipe knows. Seen dice around? That blows minds. Sometimes Nikki Louis calls Neil up just to shoot the breeze.

Neil says, That kid is okay, really. But I've been chasing him for five years and I'll nail him. He knows it too. We talk about it all the time. Neil remembers the time he came upon Nikki lying face down in a pool of blood near the Bowery. He said, Nikki, come on, you're going to die. Tell me you shot you.

Nicky looked up at Neil, his eyes blazing arrogance, and said, Fuck you. Of course, Nikki pulled through in fine shape and the two had a good laugh about it later. I mean, I'm guessing that guy's actual nickname was pipe nose, right? Otherwise, your boy, Neil's got caught on this. Yeah, I think so. I mean, this is just like, you know,

this classic character stuff that I just don't think you find as much anymore. But it makes for some really good articles. And, you know, as we've said before with immigrant communities, the language issue is a huge thing before NYPD can hire the right guys, right? There's the cutoffness,

the lack of understanding. And with a lot of these communities, they don't talk to police at all. They prefer to keep things on the inside of the community, solve it themselves. The people in Chinatown during that time, And even up to the 90s, they get known for never testifying, never IDing gang members. There's a story with the DA in the 90s who says that they can't understand a system where the police know who the gang members are but can't lock them up or shoot them.

Because remember, you know, they're coming from communist China or the wild west of Hong Kong where things got extrajudicial, I would say. And we've talked about this a lot. This isn't just the Chinese thing, right? A lot of groups that have come over here in recent years, whether it was the Russians, the Albanians, the Jamaicans, basically any ethnicity that's come to New York since the beginning of time, you know, their standoffish towards authority. They don't want to get police involved. And we've talked about this before. You know, they bring their whole history from their countries, their collective trauma, if you will. And I'm not talking about like trauma,

how people describe someone making a root comment at work. I mean like secret police, purges, state sponsored violence, genocide, dictatorship, authoritarianism, you know, the kind of things that bring a natural aversion. to law enforcement and the state. That's about the most political you've ever got on this show. I mean, you can kiss that gig with the young Turks goodbye. Yeah, I don't even know if it's political, man. It's just being aware of the realities that if people come here

and they've been living in a messed up place for 30 or 40 years, you know, that sort of trauma, it comes with them and that distrust of the system comes with them. And also, a big thing, too, is they know and expect retribution will come from the gang members who have a history of killing witnesses. and, you know, destroying people who speak out against them. Gwen Kincaid wrote this other great series.

It's for the New Yorker in the early 90s. They gave her like 25 pages, two inches in a row. It's fantastic. Anyway. She says, quote, the crimes that take place here are often so serious and so bizarre that the area sometimes resembles Hong Kong at its wildest. In Chinatown, there was a social order so ruthless.

Its very existence seems to be against the law. But because the area is so isolated from the rest of society, most of the people who live here accept it as normal. And she also has this great quote from one small shop owner. She's interviewing him and asking why anyone pays the gangs

and things like that. And when she asked the shop owner, he goes, quote, the IRS enslaves me, not the gangs. And I don't think it gets, doesn't get much more American than that. And the police, they either don't know shit

or they take bribes or they just don't do shit even if they know it. T.J. English, writing in 1995 in the Village Voice, he says that, and he says this thing, it's in the 90s.

but I think it really only applies to the 70s and 80s, because after that, in the early 90s, you start seeing massive arrests, Ricos, prosecutions that come hard. Anyway, the quote is, like many of the city's non-Asian residents, cops have long subscribed to the theory that Chinatown is a hopelessly enigmatic netherworld

that can never be understood by anyone who is in Chinese. In the past, this resulted in allowing designated Tong leaders to resolve sometimes violent gang disputes without the interference of outside forces. It might even have meant certain officers would be paid to stay away through cash payoffs or gratuities. Meanwhile, Chinatown is a bloodbath

just hits left and right. You know, the palm on his boys, they come back, they try to set up a gambling parlor in Nicky's territory. Him and his crew shoot up the whole thing. They're running into restaurants in broad daylight,

stabbing up rivals with meat cleavers in front of like restaurant patrons and stuff like that. Ah, this is totally normal behavior. I mean, but if the NYP don't speak Cantonese, what can they do? I mean, what are these guys doing? Like, how is this happening? You know, from what it says, like, they did make arrest on occasion. They just couldn't prosecute ever. You know, Nikki got arrested a bunch. Paul got arrested a bunch. But that's going to

change, right? And Nikki and crew, they're also fighting off another powerful crew, the flying dragons. They're aligned with the hip-sing tong, the other powerful tongue besides on the yang. So they have major backing. And the dragons are led by Michael Chen, who they called the scientist. Because he was like cool and collected. Unlike Nikki, he looked like a gangster too. It was tough. He was unkempt. And he was connected.

He had police on the take informing him. He even had a press badge that said he worked for a Chinese radio station. One time he set a building on fire because rival gang members were in there. And he planned on shooting them right as they all came out. He's born in mainland China in 1950, but his family moves to Hong Kong where he grew up before coming to the U.S. in 1963. And he works as a delivery guy for a restaurant. His father's a taxi driver

and he just gets tired of it, right? He gets involved with the gangs and he takes over the dragons in the mid-70s where he promptly gets arrested a bunch of times for murder. How do you get arrested

a bunch of times for murder? You get off a bunch of times too. Okay, cool. So he's calm, patient, said to be polite and not wild like Nikki, doesn't drink, doesn't gamble, but he owns sports cars and war designer suits,

ran his money through a bunch businesses across the city. And Chen's arrest record, it can kind of show you how crazy the city was back then for these gangs. He gets pinched in Queens for homicide in 1976, but the charges are dismissed. The following year, he's arrested for killing two ghost shadows members in a shootout in a crowded theater in Chinatown, but he gets found not guilty. And he also gets arrested at one point, a separate time for having a shotgun and 150 rounds of ammunition. In the midst of all this, the gangs decide they're going to have a truce. So there you go. There's your Warriors plot line. They hold a press conference with the Chinese press to announce it.

You got Paul Ma, Michael Chen, Nikki Louis. They're all like under 25, if I remember correctly. They meet up. They shake hands. They make a bunch of statements about it. There's some reports of it being for real that the leaders were sick of all the running and gunning and wanting to focus on legal businesses with illegal money. But others say that they had noticed that a bunch of youth organizations in Harlem had announced the truce earlier and got a bunch of grants packed for a cast. So they figured they'd try the same thing, even though they keep doing the same stuff they were doing. So they give a joint statement. They say they don't expect to be forgiven. They're not apologizing. They just want to change. And there's three weeks apiece and then two months

of just like the worst bloodshed they've seen. And at this point, the big boss of Chinatown, Ben Yong, who later is called the godfather of Chinatown and is the advisor for life of the hip-sing tongue, he steps in, he tells everyone to cool it that there's too much heat in Chinatown. and they need to take the violence elsewhere. All right, this has to be a movie. I've got John Cho, scientist, Kevin James is a cop. Yeah, I mean, I'm making a comedy Chinatown gang series. Like, please, yeah, I think people should just sign up to the Patreon, actually.

I mean, if you think I'm not pitching this stuff, you're wrong. So I should intro Benny, right? They call him Uncle Seven. And in 1991, a Senate subcommittee would describe him as the godfather of Chinatown. He ran Hipsing, and he took a cut of nearly all the gambling rackets in Chinatown. He had done time for murder before. He's the type of guy, though, who was honored at community banquets. He would get a new immigrant a job.

He would get another alone. Once, one of his Tong members tried to start his own thing in the early 80s, the Chinese freemasons. The guy even hired away some members of the Flying Dragons. He starts up his own parallel street gang. But mass gummen show up to his gang hideout. They shoot it up. They kill three of them. They wound eight of them.

they couldn't pin anything on Benny because he was just too slick. But when a reporter asked him, he told the press, quote, 60 years I build up respect. And he think he knocked me down in one day. So, I mean, Benny wasn't messing around. And, you know, every time we do these quotes, whether it was the Russia episode or this, like, I'm always tempted to do an accent. I was going to say. Yeah, but it just, it won't, it won't end well for either one of us, you know?

Like, you just can't, you can't do accents. Go ahead. Go ahead. No, not going to do it. Benny is just a really good example of how deeply woven into the fabric of the community these guys were, you know, the tongues, more so than the Italian mob, than the Russians than anyone really. It's the cross-pollination with the civic organizations, the community leaders. And I mean, think of another organized crime operation that had their fingers in literally every business in a community. Benny was this duality, right, politician and gangster.

Sort of like how tourists view Chinatown versus what's really happening behind closed doors, Benny's in on both those things. And another good example of that is Benny's counterpart in the On the Young, Eddie Chan. Eddie was actually more powerful in the 70s and early 80s before Benny came in, really. He ran things then. He's a former Hong Kong police staff sergeant who fled the country during a corruption investigation that was looking into him. So apparently Hong Kong was just nuts back then, which is something I didn't know what I want to look into now. But in 1975, Eddie arrives. He said to have millions already stashed away.

He starts opening businesses, a jade store, funeral parlor, restaurants come out of these companies, and he hires a political consultant who starts getting him meetings with congressmen, senators, mayors, all that. And they call him fast Eddie because he rose so high so quickly and then became the On Leong national president. Eddie, of course, since he's on Leone, he controls Nicky in the go shadows, but things are kind of starting to fall apart for them in the late 70s. Nicky's brother was leading a Toronto chapter and he starts recruiting in Boston and Chicago. And he's sending these recruits to New York City. And Nicky's guys who, they're formerly loyal and close-knit lieutenants,

they start rebelling because they feel like they're threatened by outsiders, they're losing their cuts and all that. Two of them, nicknamed Mongo and Applehead, they form another Ghost Shadow's faction. And they're muscling in at the same time as the police, which are now actually cracking down hard on the gangs. So on this Monday night, Nikki's playing a friendly game of Mahjong

in the dimly lit basement of the Jin Beck restaurant on Mott Street. It's supposed to be a safe haven, but that kid, the 17-year-old, walks in with a 38 pistol, goes all the way downstairs into the kitchen, blast Louis four times in the head and in the back. Louis crawls, he runs the police station around the corner, blood everywhere. When he regains consciousness two days later, he declines the comment on the crime.

Quote, Nikki's already too old for the youth gangs, commented one of the investigating detectives. I'd say it's time for him to retire. So Nikki at that point, he kind of disappears for a bit. He pops up a little bit here and there, and the ghost shadows get taken over by someone else. You know, the violence doesn't stop. 75 gang members in Chinatown are sent the jail in 1982 alone.

From Washington Post article from the same year, quote, two weeks ago in what's characterized as your typical incident between youth gangsters, members of the rival ghost shadows and flying dragons crashed a party at New York University given by the school's Oriental Culture Club. When the fighting stopped, 14-year-old Kinfong men,

a member of the ghost shadows, lay dead, and 16 years old, James Lee, a member of the dragons, suffered bullet wounds in the chest. that a 14-year-old had been carrying a pistol was no surprise to McVeety,

a Chinatown detective. In our experience, it's the 14 and 13-year-olds who carry the guns when they leave Chinatown, he said. They do that for two reasons. No one is going to think

that sweet little 85-pound 4-foot-eight sunshine is carrying a weapon, and if he's caught, he's treated like a juvenile. Also in 1982, the ghost shadows make a fatal mistake. They're under the control

of this real psycho, this guy Michael Chin, who replaced Nikki, and his only claim to fame as just being super violent. The dragons at one point, they're partying. They pick up a random woman in a bar. I think it's a tourist, but either way, it's a white woman, non-Chinantown resident.

They gang rape and murder her, and they dump the body, but it gets found. And it's a big scandal. We're talking front-page tabloid fodder. It ramps things into high gear with the feds. And by 1984, there's finally a successful prosecution of the ghost shadows. Yeah, that is grim. Yeah. Apparently gang rape was like a thing they did of a lot.

It was like a known, unknown thing. But they're charged with 85 crimes in a RICO case, including 13 murders, going back into the 70s. Dozens are arrested. Eddie Chan, that on the young boss, he flees the country. Three months earlier, a president's commission on organized crime had ID him as the leader of organized crime in Chinatown. 21 go shadows plead guilty. Chin gets 60 years. Louis gets nine years.

Eddie would end up getting arrested in 1990 on additional RICO charges in Chicago. And that's actually the first time a Chinese Tong, not a gang, Tong, had a case brought by the U.S. government, according to Gwen Kincaid. Meanwhile, the hip-sing and Flying Dragons, led by Michael the scientist Chen, they're moving in on even more of Chinatown, and a major change is coming. See, Chen, he wants

to stick to gambling and the protection rackets and the prostitution, even though gambling halls are being closed, Atlantic City is up and running, so it's taking their customers, and business is just not booming. What is booming, though, is heroin. From Burma, the Golden Triangle, to Hong Kong, to New York, through the triad

connections. Chen doesn't want to get involved with it, but his second in command, Johnny Eng, who they call machine gun Johnny or Onion Head, he does. So he has Michael killed and he takes over as the leader of the flying dragons, and he starts moving away. I wonder when we get to that guy. Yeah, he comes up a bunch in the sister pink stuff as well. Yeah, he's got a, he was like a terror. He's got a reputation. Exima is unpredictable, but you can flare less with Epglis, a once monthly treatment for moderate disappear eczema. After an initial four-month or longer dosing phase, about four and 10 people taking ebbglis achieved itch relief and clear or almost clear skin at 16 weeks.

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Pluto TV, stream now, pay never. At this point, opium crops, they're growing like crazy in Burma at the time, right? This is pre-Afghanistan dominating the market. post-Turkey, post-Tacstan, post-Pakistan. And the total amount produced worldwide in 1985 is 1,500 metric tens. But by 1989, production in Southeast Asia alone is 3,000 tons.

The Chinatown gangs, they start having meetings with the Italians, with the Dominicans, the Puerto Rican, and the black gangs. They'd always dabbled in heroin, but it wasn't much compared to the French connection or the pizza connection. Both those get busted up, so there's this giant void in the market.

And the Hong Kong triads, they link up with the growers in Burma, who I think are also of Chinese, you know, ethnicity. Yeah, yeah. Also with the Tongues in New York. And Gwen Kincaid, she says that at one point, half the heroin brought into the US at this time

is controlled by the Chinatown bosses. Oh, man. I've been, like, doing some research into this myself for something that's coming up for us soon. But I just found out of some mad Nepali hill tribe that processed all that smacked a day through the mountains as well. I think I'm going to do a show on them at some point. that's not a joke.

But then are any other things I say on there a joke? I don't know. No, but that also sounds like a good episode too. Yeah, yeah. From the Village Voice articles, you know, Jacobson breaks down the actual start of it. Again, this was written in 1977, so it doesn't fully capture the madness

and the growth in the 80s, but, you know, it gives you some insight. Quote, The Chinatown heroin connection dates back to the 1949 expulsion of the nationalist government from the mainland. It's no secret that many of the Kuomintang generals, including almost,

certainly Shanghai Shack, were hooked up with a notorious green gang, part of an ancient smuggling ring with access to potent poppy patches in the Golden Triangle. Yeah, I mean, this is all segwaying really neatly into next week's show, right? I'm going to be doing an episode on someone that's pretty important in that world. Yeah, you can say it. You're going to do Kun Sa, which I think is a pretty awesome episode. Yeah, I'll be cool. But yeah, continuing on, quote, at first there were problems.

The Chinese could move the stuff through the Commonwealth circuit, Hong Kong to London, into Toronto, but they had no street distribution network here. It was then, according to the federal drug enforcement agency, that the only young people went across Canal Street to deal with Italian organized crime. While most of the country is flooded with Mexican smack, in New York, the percentage of Golden Triangle Poppy runs high. The dope money is the lucrative tip of Chinatown's pyramid crime structure. The take and extortion kickbacks of many gambling houses provide seed money for the dope trade. With the gang kids around, business could get even better. people say the gangs are used as runners to pick up dope in the Chinese community in Toronto and then

body carry it across the border. But they may play a greater role. Chinese dope hustlers have always felt on uneasy ground when dealing with flashy uptown pushers. Now, however, street sources say that gutter-wise gangs are dealing directly with black and Puerto Rican dealers. Some stats brought around say that a keel of heroin is bought for 7K in Burma and sold for 90K in New York. So it's not as good as NFT money, but it's still pretty good margins, you know? I hate you would not believe what I wrote this. I mean, I wrote pretty much this line this morning when I was doing research for the next episode, but I saw some like Mother Jones piece from 802 or something.

It said the Golden Triangle Puppies would be sold by farmers for $250, and that same amount of poppies would make heroin with a street value of $640,000. So, I mean, yeah, try getting rid of that industry. Yeah, you know, with drugs in general, you see a lot of, number is banding it around. I think the main takeaway, though, is that they buy it for very little and they sell it for quite a lot. And that's pretty much all you have to understand when it comes to that. But yeah, fast forward to the mid-80s, heroin is flowing into New York, so much so that the DA is getting really concerned after noticing a substantial rise in Harlem, the Bronx, and the

Lower East Side. And this is different heroin, again, right? China White is like 85% pure, sometimes more. The street stuff, the Mexican heroin, it was usually 5% to 10% pure. And the China White is cut to 30 to 50% purity, but it still ends up killing a lot of people who just don't know how to handle dope that's that potent. And the opium, it's grown in Burma by ethnic Chinese. They sell it to the Chinese brokers in Hong Kong who deal with the Chinese Americans in in Chinatown. And it goes from a Bangkok trawler to a Hong Kong trawler to a Hong Kong speedboat to the harbor

in Hong Kong, where it branches out into flights, ships, all that. And it can also go through Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines. even getting mail. The gang kids would wait and empty apartments for packages to come, sign, and just leave. And Dominicans back then, they ended up being the major buyers for distribution in the 80s. Beautiful, globalized economy.

I think even Kansai was like making, I think he developed some kind of like, was it number four and number five heroin that the guys used, the GAs used in the GIs, even used in Vietnam. And that's what kind of got America hooked in the first place, I think.

Yeah, he oversees the whole thing. get more details next week. The feds at first, when it comes to the drug stuff, they're mostly focused on the Sicilian mobsters and the crack war gangs, the possees. So they're not really up on the Chinese moving all this weight. But the Chinese, you know, they're moving heroin. They're pushing heroin into all these other neighborhoods,

and they're getting attention. By the late 80s, the feds start making cases, including 6,500 pounds of China White that moved into New York between 1987 and 1991. And they're starting to make big seizures. I'm talking 800 pounds. and up. And the infamous French connection that we talked about, they topped out at 220 pounds seizures. So you can see how much heroin is flowing in. Yeah. Machine gunjani at this point,

he's flying to Hong Kong all the time to organize his heroin shipments. He's a major importer. He's moving hundreds of pounds all throughout the 80s. One of his lieutenants, he gets careless on smotherming rungs. He is a girlfriend that's a gambler. She had major debts. So they start doing too many runs without enough precaution taking. And this actually brought down a big part to the organization. Johnny ran off to Hong Kong in 89, but he gets extradited back to the US 91 and sent it to 24 years in 1992 for drug trafficking. Things calm down a bit, but there's still some action in the early 90s, including Born to Kill, but we'll get to that in another episode. There's just so many good episodes here and so many amazing topics. The gangs, they keep chugging

along. The New York Times says a solid article in 1991 about a 20-year-old science major at college in Queens called the Hong Kong boy, who carries a 357 magnum he bought and a Roy Rogers in Queens for $400. That's a bad nickname. But yeah. Yeah. But I mean, I don't think there's ever been a better place to buy or sell contraband than the parking lot of a Roy Rogers in Queens.

Am I missing something? Because, like, I looked up their website and is it nice? I kind of thought it was cool, but is it super... Roy Rogers? Yeah. I mean, it's fast food. It's delicious. but they only really exist in like

unlike the New Jersey Turnpike now. I think they're pretty much shut down. But it's like, it's the equivalent of like a lower than McDonald's. Oh, okay, cool. Yeah. I mean, I love Roy Rogers. Yeah, we could probably afford that just about with another.

We should get them to sponsor us. I'll plug them every episode. But this kid, Hong Kong boy, he's a ghost shadow. You know, he's doing the same thing patrolling his territory. It's already got scars on his legs from shotgun blasts and from the article, quote, boy eats, sleeps, and lives, whom he dates. Almost his entire life is dictated by the gang and by his leader, his die low. The die low loosely translated the phrase means elder brother,

paid for his college tuition, gave him money for a girlfriend's abortion, gave him, gives him gang-related jobs to do, and provides him with as much cash as he wants, Hong Kong boy said. Which like, I mean, the tuition thing is kind of nice and the abortion thing, like, it's nice that he's getting that level of support. Yeah, yeah. Hong Kong boy also says, says that, like, in his two years in the gang, he's been involved with nine shootings. Quote, Hong Kong boy also describes his introduction to gang life. Two years ago, two girls whom he called his god's sisters, were raped by members of a gang in Queens.

I went crazy, he said, adding that he began attacking the other use one by one and beating them. One day, a guy beat the hell out of me and put a gun to my head. He was approached by a ghost shadow in a shopping mall and asked if he needed protection. He accepted. Man, I can see why you're putting all these quotes into this episode. Something about the Chinatown gangs is bringing out these insane stories, like all of these almost Pulp Fiction. I mean, this one is grim as hell, but like these stories are unbelievable.

Is everyone just all the best writers in New York just heading down to Chinatown back then? I don't know. I mean, like, the quotes are just so good. I don't, I'm quote heavy this episode, but they're really, that's really good work. I want to make sure these people get credit. By the mid-90s, though, the feds, they're just running wild on the RICO charges. 33 members of the Flying Dragons are arrested in November of 94

on multiple counts of murder, heroin trafficking, arson, illegal gambling, extortion, robberies that stretch from Manhattan to Brooklyn and Queens. The Fuk Ching, who I think Sean talked about in this naked sister ping episode, they get pinched, the white tigers, Tungan, born to kill,

gets brought down around the same time. Like most of these gangs, at least the official ones, kind of peter out. I think, you know, they're still around in some ways, but that's kind of where we leave off. There are actually some gangs in Queens that we're going to talk about.

Again, another episode later on. In Chinatown these days, in Manhattan, in Flushing in Queens, in Sunset Park, in Brooklyn, they're still going really strong. They still have huge tourist draws. And there's still some shady shit there, too. You know, definitely gambling halls, massage, pallor brothels, but nothing compared to what it was. And neither is the violence. I guess that's kind of true all over New York City.

You know, I asked someone in the know if any of these gangs are still around and they said, There's different variations of them still. And of course, there's still the big picture organized crime as well. But it definitely isn't what it once was in the 70s, 80s and early 90s. Are the Tongues still going strong then? Like, what's their kind of deal now? I think they're still there. You know, I didn't look into it because this one kind of cut off in the mid-90s.

But I think there's still organizations that exist. I'm sure there's a lot more scrutiny into how they're involved with anything. And I can assume that they're not involved too much with organized crime. You know, a big thing about the Tongues, too, was that I think to join you just have to pay $20. And it wasn't like everyone in the Tongs was involved in crime. I think most people really weren't. You know, it was a small percentage of people that were involved, including the leadership. All right.

So if someone gives us 20 bucks from the Patreon, we can get in the Tong as well. Yeah, we should start our own tongue. That's not a bad idea. But yeah. So these groups, and again, there's episodes I want to do definitely on Born to Kill because they're fascinating. On the Queens gangs as well, because the Queens gangs, I think, came on later. later in the 2000s. And they had some gnarly,

gnarly battles in Queens, too. It's a little different. But yeah, it's just a fascinating, fascinating world. And it kind of, there was just some great reporting on it that I thought we wanted to highlight.

Yeah, it's cool. So I really enjoyed it. It's so much interesting stories. I mean, that one about the guy who goes after the guys who raped the friends of his daughters. That's,

that's a movie in its own right. I mean, everything's a movie. A lot of movies there. And a lot of Netflix series. So holler at us if you're Netflix and you're listening. Thank you guys again for tuning in and for all the support that we're getting.

We really appreciate it. Patreon.com slash the Underworld Podcasts. If you want bonus episodes, if you want to see the reading list where all these sources are up, if you want to read the scripts too. But yeah, let me just give some thank you to the folks that are supporting us, especially our dude P. Thomas, who really came through. Will Wintercross, Trey Nance, Matthew Cutler, Chris Cousamano, Ross Clark, Jeremy Rich, Doug Prendiville, Jared Levy.

Hit us up. You know, anything you guys want to talk about, the Underworld Podcast at Gmail.com, and patreon.com slash underworldpodcast for bonus episodes. And thanks again for your time. Until next week. See you guys. Some follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money.

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