By Chris Fuchs
The U.S. attorney’s office in Seattle unsealed an indictment last week that charges a Flushing resident and two other men with illegally smuggling Chinese immigrants into the United States, including one who died in New York.
Jin Ma, a permanent U.S. resident living in Flushing, along with Kam Hung Chan and Chao Kang Lin, both citizens of China, were charged in early May with bringing in 18 people from China who were stowed inside the shipping container of a vessel, said Lawrence Lincoln, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Seattle, said in a statement. Each man faces up to life in prison, if convicted, and a fine of up to $250,000, he said.
The ship, known as the M/V Cape May, arrived off the Port of Seattle in early January 2000 with the immigrants aboard, prosecutors said. Each of the 18 people, who were from China, agreed to pay the men $38,000 in exchange for being brought into the United States, prosecutors maintain.
Upon arriving, the immigrants were to be brought from Seattle to New York state, prosecutors said. But during the trip from China, three of them died and a fourth later on at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, the U.S. attorney’s office said.
It was unclear when and where the defendants were arrested. James Lord,the assistant U.S. attorney prosecuting the case, said he could not comment on the death at Mt. Sinai because it was not public information.
In a phone interview, Lincoln said an indictment is unsealed, or made public, only after there is no longer a threat that a defendant would abscond.
“When a grand jury authorizes the issuing of an indictment, sometimes it is not immediately made a part of the record,” he said, “the reason being that if there is an individual who is a fugitive and you don’t want them to know that they’ve been charged with a crime, then you’ll seal it so that the existence of the indictment will not become known and scare them off.”
Reach reporter Chris Fuchs by e-mail at Timesledgr@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 156.
