Sister Ping: Living Buddha of Shengmei Village
By Zhang Huiyu, The World Journal, published in Chinese in Whitestone, New York, May 23, 2005
Sister Ping's fellow villagers in Shengmei spoke highly of her as their living Buddha. She is currently under trial in New York for human smuggling. Amid gratitude and sadness, villagers expressed their willingness to share her imprisonment each for one year, in an effort to pay back the help she has allegedly provided to get their relatives out of China.
Ping, the oldest of three children of the Zheng family, used to live at 398, a three-storied house within the village, which is now empty. She migrated to Hong Kong with her husband when she was in her early twenties.
Sister Ping on Trial, Villagers Voice Support
By Zhang Huiyu, The World Journal, published in Chinese in Whitestone, New York, May 22, 2005
Sister Ping, the notorious snakehead from mainland China, has a support group in her home village of Shengmei, Ting Jiang Township, Fuzhou, at a time when she is being tried as a criminal in the federal court in New York.
Her fellow villagers gathered on May 21 to offer moral support for Ping. A petition will be filed to the judge of this case in New York via a representative from Shengmei. They described Sister Ping as a living Buddha. Ninety percent of Shengmei villagers now residing overseas were brought out of the country with the help of Ping.
Smuggling of Immigrants Is Detailed as Trial Starts
By Julia Preston, New York Times, May 17, 2005
The notorious "Sister Ping" went on trial May 16 in the Federal District Court in Manhattan in New York City on charges of kidnapping and hostage taking.
Chen Chui Ping is the woman suspected of being responsible for masterminding the smuggling of hundreds of illegal Chinese immigrants into the United States. She allegedly purchased the Golden Venture, the freighter that caught international attention when it ran aground on a beach off Queens in 1993; 10 illegal aliens drowned while trying to swim ashore.
Federal prosecutors say Ping successfully moved hundreds of illegal immigrants in the cargo holds of ships and kept them hostage in New York warehouses until they paid her fees -- up to $40,000 each.
Ping's lawyer, Lawrence Hochheiser, argued that Ping's only involvement with people smuggling was incidental to her underground but legal banking house.
New York, NY: Cheng Chui Ping: 'Mother of snakeheads' Sentenced for 35 Years
BBC NEWS http://www.newsbbc.co.uk
Friday, 17 March 2006
US authorities say the jailing of Cheng Chui Ping for 35 years puts one of the world's most prolific human traffickers - or "snakeheads" - behind bars.
Cheng was convicted for organising the voyage of the Golden Venture, which had about 300 Chinese immigrants on board when it ran aground off New York in 1993. Ten of them died after being pitched into the sea.
Cheng, 57, is thought to have been responsible for the smuggling of many thousands of illegal immigrants.
Many new arrivals to New York's Chinatown in the 1990s would have owed their passage - and a great deal of money - to Cheng.
She became one of the most recognisable and revered figures in Chinatown - known as Sister Ping, or Big Sister Ping.
Front businesses
Cheng was an illegal immigrant herself. Born in 1949 in the poor farming village of Shengmei in Fujian province, she left her husband and family behind and set out for the West, travelling via Hong Kong and Canada before ending up in New York in 1981.
She entered business straight away, opening a grocery store, and starting on other ventures, but the US authorities say many of these became fronts for her people trafficking business.
Behind her Yeung Sun restaurant at 47 East Broadway, she ran a money-transfer service that undercut high street banks, providing fund transfers for many thousands of immigrants.
Prosecutors said her smuggling network was worth $40m (USD 23m) at its peak, and that immigrants could be charged tens of thousands of dollars for their passage.
"Aliens", as they are termed in the US, were crammed into planes, cars and trucks with fake floors, or would spend months in squalid conditions in shipping containers.
False identity
Business boomed in the early 1990s as, following the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, the US offered all Chinese students in the US the chance to stay. Thousands flooded in, using false papers to claim their place.
Court papers claimed she had been caught in connection with people smuggling and had agreed to work as an informant for the FBI, but that this did not put her off, and she only expanded her activities.
However, the tragedy of the Golden Venture raised the stakes, and US investigators were soon on her tail.
She returned to China in 1994, and with the FBI closing in she could not return to the US. At least, not under her real name. Officials estimate she made several trips under false identities until she was finally captured at Hong Kong airport in April 2000, carrying three different passports.
In a US court, she claimed she was innocent and only acted under threats from Triad gangs.
"I did not have the ability to arrange for them to be smuggled. When they were short of money, I lent it to them... I was taken advantage of a lot in Chinatown," she said.
However prosecutors dubbed her "the mother of all snakeheads", and said she was "one of the biggest... and most successful alien smugglers of all time".
Just goes to show how miserable the Chinese are and how desperate they are to get out that they would support a criminal like Ping.