Chinese TransnationalOrganized Crime: The Fuk Ching

The organizational structureof Chinese organized crime in the United States is quite complex. Broadlydefined, there are a great variety of Chinese criminal organizations thatinclude gangs, secret societies, triads, tongs, Taiwanese organized crimegroups, and strictly US-based tongs and gangs. According to Ko-lin Chin, aleading academic expert in the United States on Chinese organized crime, thereis no empirical support for the belief that there is a well-organized,monolithic, hierarchical criminal cartel called the “Chinese Mafia.” Otheranalyses have had similar findings. Chin's analysis concentrated on the FukChing gang, active in New York City, generally regarded as one of the mostpowerful Chinese organized crime groups in the United States. When the Chinesewoman who is regarded as one of the most successful human smugglers ofmoderntimes—Cheng Chui Ping, better known as “Sister Ping”—was smugglingthousands of undocumented Chinese into the United States in the 1990s, shehired armed thugs from the Fuk Ching to transport her customers and ensure theypaid their smuggling fees.

Other gangs in New York Cityinclude the Ghost Shadows, Flying Dragons, Tung On, and Born-to-Kill. The NewYork City gangs, like the Fuk Ching, mainly operate extortion and protectionrackets in defined neighborhoods in New York's Chinatown. Their victims aremostly businesses in Chinatown. In California, where there is also a largeChinese community, the Chinese organized crime presence and problem is quitedifferent from that in New York. In California, the dominant groups are the WoHop To and the Wah Ching.

One of the structuralcharacteristics that make Chinese organized crime different from other forms isthe relationship between some of the street gangs and certain adultorganizations, or tongs. The Fuk Ching, for example, is affiliated with theFukien American Association. The Fukien American Association—as with othertongs and their relationships with gangs—provides the Fuk Ching with a physicalplace to gather and hang out. They allow the gang to operate on their (thetong's) territory, thus legitimizing them with the community. They also providecriminal opportunities (such as protecting gambling operations), as well assupplying money and guns. The Fuk Ching originally emerged in New York in themid-1980s, and as with other gangs, their main criminal activity in Chinatownwas extortion. They were founded by a collection of young men (youths in theirlate teens and early 20s) from Fujian province in China—many if not all of whomhad criminal records in China. Fuk Ching recruitment today continues to beamong Fujianese teenagers.

Violence

Use of violence within thegroup and against other organized crime groups is very prevalent. Disputes overterritory and criminal markets among the gangs are typically resolved using kong so,a process of peacefulnegotiation. When this does not occur, however, the resolution is usually aviolent one, in which guns are used against rival gang members. Law enforcementauthorities believe that an escalation of gang violence has taken place inrecent years, due in part to the advent of the Fuk Ching and to ganginvolvement in alien smuggling activities. Based on his research, Chin concludesthe following with respect to Chinese gang violence in general: The capacityfor violence appears to be one of the key defining characteristics of streetgang culture. Its employment, however, is shaped and determined by a cluster ofconstraints related to profit-generating goals. Violence between and amonggangs is regulated through an agent or ah kung who attempts to channelaggressive behavior in ways that effectively maintain gang coherence. Gangcoherence in turn supports the gang's involvement in extortion activities andin the provision of protection services to organized vice industries in thecommunity.

The Fuk Ching are violent, buttheir use of violence has not been very sophisticated or specialized. It is notthe systematic use of violence (including threats) to protect and gain monopolycontrol of criminal markets associated with more mature forms of organizedcrime. Instead, the Fuk Ching violence is more likely to be random street-levelviolence, with guns, employed by anyone in the gang. Sometimes this violence issanctioned by superiors, and sometimes not.

Criminal Activities

Alien smuggling is the illegalmovement of migrants across national borders, and human trafficking is migrantsmuggling that includes coercion and exploitation. As exemplified by the SisterPing case, the Fuk Ching have been extensively involved in both types ofactivities. Indeed, these criminal activities, along with kidnapping, are themain transnational crimes of the Fuk Ching. Their dominance is related toFujian Province being the principal source of Chinese people smuggled andtrafficked into North America. On the domestic scene, their main criminalactivities in New York City's Chinatown are extortion and gambling. EachChinese gang dominates these crimes in their particular Chinatownneighborhoods. This includes the Fuk Ching.

The professionalism andsophistication of the Fuk Ching has been quite low, again compared with moretraditional forms of organized crime. The same has been true of other Chinesecriminal gangs operating in the United States. This may be due to theirgenerally being much younger than LCN or ROC figures. Also, their criminalactivities have not been particularly sophisticated, although the Fuk Ching maybe becoming more complex in their organizational structure as they become moreheavily engaged in human trafficking, which requires a greater degree ofplanning and organization.

That this characteristic maybe changing somewhat is illustrated in two major cases involving other Chinesecriminal groups in recent years—Operation Royal Charm in New Jersey andOperation Smoking Dragon in Los Angeles. The investigations into these casesuncovered a criminal organization that was smuggling numerous forms ofcontraband. The investigations resulted in the indictment of 87 individuals whowere involved in smuggling goods into the ports of Newark, New Jersey, and LosAngeles and Long Beach, California, by using shipping containers with bills oflading that falsely identified the contents as toys and furniture from China.Instead, the smugglers brought in high-quality counterfeit US currency that hadreportedly been produced in North Korea, as well as contraband from China. Thecontraband included counterfeit cigarettes, ecstasy, methamphetamine, and counterfeitpharmaceuticals. In addition, two of the defendants had entered into a deal toprovide various weapons, including silenced pistols, rocket launchers, silencedsubmachine guns, and automatic rifles.

Political Connections

The expert consensus is that theFuk Ching, like other Chinese gangs, does not have the connections and statureto make them capable of corrupting US police and judges. There have been onlyone or two cases of police corruption (none in recent years) and no cases ofjudicial corruption involving Fuk Ching.

Law EnforcementResponse

The New York City PoliceDepartment (NYPD), which polices the neighborhood in which the Fuk Ching areactive, uses all the standard law enforcement practices commonly used to combatorganized crime. These include informants, undercover investigators, andelectronic surveillance. In addition, both the police and the FBI support andencourage extortion victims to use telephone hot lines to report theirvictimization. The NYPD has also created an Asian Gang Intelligence Unit thatemploys street patrols to monitor street gangs.

On the international level, USlaw enforcement has undertaken a number of initiatives to improve internationalcooperation against Chinese organized crime groups. These include the creationof the International Law Enforcement Academy (ILEA) in Bangkok, Thailand, andsponsorship of numerous international meetings on Asian organized crime. Annualmeetings of the International Asian Organized Crime Conference attract morethan a 1,000 law enforcement officials from dozens of countries. Both the ILEAand the conferences promote interaction among officials of affected countriesand lead to better cooperation and more reliable information.

Many crimes inChinese-American communities—especially drug trafficking, money laundering, andhuman trafficking—are linkedto China. Chinese gang members flee to China when sought by American law enforcement.Ko-lin Chin recommends that deportation, extradition, joint operations, andintelligence sharing among law enforcement authorities from various countriesbe carried out routinely, extradition treaties be instituted and that USauthorities be more culturally sensitive in dealing with foreign lawenforcement agencies.

Because of thecompartmentalized nature of Chinese organized crime in the United States, thepublic at large is little aware of and little concerned about what is going onin Chinatowns in US cities. National media pay relatively little attention tothese problems. Chinese involvement in human smuggling, however, may be theexception to this rule, because Chinese human smuggling has receivedconsiderable attention. Human-trafficking activities by Chinese gangs such asthe Fuk Ching are contributing to this higher profile.

Mexican Drug Cartels

For years, the border betweenMexico and the United States has been crossed by millions of Mexican nationalsgoing north in search of work. Most are hard-working, law-abiding citizens,looking for legitimate opportunities to better socioeconomic circumstances forthemselves and their families. But some are criminals. And during the decade ofthe 1990s especially, those criminals became more organized, moresophisticated, and more violent, as they sought and gained considerable controlover the lucrative drug business in North America.

In Mexico, the violencegenerated by drug-trafficking organizations in recent years has beenunprecedented. It is estimated that some 50,000 lives have been lost inMexico's drug wars since 2006. Violence has long been an inherent feature ofthe trade in illicit drugs, but the character of the drug-trafficking-relatedviolence in Mexico has changed over the past half-dozen years—exhibitingincreasing brutality. For example, a number of public servants, includingmayors and a gubernatorial candidate, have been killed. According to a USCongressional Research Service report,

The massacres of young peopleand migrants, the killing and disappearance of Mexican journalists, the use oftorture, and the phenomena of car bombs have received wide media coverage andhave led some analysts to question if the violence has been transformed intosomething new, beyond the typical violence that has characterized the trade.For instance, some observers have raised the concern that the Mexican DTOs[drug-trafficking organizations] may be acting more like domestic terrorists.Others maintain that the DTOs are transnational organized crime organizationsat times using terrorist tactics. Still others believe the DTOs may be similarto insurgents attempting to infiltrate the Mexican state by penetrating thegovernment and police.

That the transnationaldirection of this crime wave is not all one way is evident in the inputs fromthe United States that fuel the violence in Mexico—namely, high-powered gunsand illicit profits. For example, the Mexican government reported that over a4-year period between 2006 and 2010, approximately 80,000 illegal firearms wereseized. The US Department of Justice's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms,and Explosives determined that approximately 80% (62,800 firearms) came fromthe United States. This lends considerable credence to Mexican complaints thatthe United States is not justified in simply pointing the finger at Mexico as thesole source of the crime problems affecting both countries.

In the recent past, it wascriminal groups with names like the Juarez cartel, and the Cardenas-Guillen,Valencia-Cornelio, and Caro-Quintero organizations that operated in and fromMexico. Now, the two most dangerous of the Mexican cartels are the SinaloaFederation and a group known as Los Zetas.

Although drug-traffickinggroups have operated in Mexico for more than a century, the size and scope oftheir operations (along with the violence) have increased dramatically inrecent years. Today, they are the major wholesalers of illegal drugs in theUnited States, and have increasingly gained control of US retail-leveldistribution through alliances with local US gangs. According to the USgovernment, more than 95% of cocaine destined for the US market now flowsthrough Mexico. Mexican-related drug operations are said to be present in some230 US cities as well as in Canada.

The various criminal groupsoperating in and from Mexico have largely become both poly-drug (dealing inheroin, methamphetamine, and marijuana as well as cocaine), and poly-criminal(engaging in kidnapping, assassination for hire, auto theft, prostitution,extortion, money laundering, and human smuggling and trafficking). The major groupsin Mexico itself are said by US law enforcement to be fairly centrallyorganized. The distribution networks in the United States and Canada, on theother hand, are more fragmented. The core criminal organizations and theirextended networks are composed of Mexican nationals living in Mexico, MexicanAmericans, and Mexican immigrants living in the United States. The vastmajority (estimated at about 85%) is male. To get a sense of the size of thesecriminal operations, it is estimated that in Ciudad Juarez alone [bordering ElPaso, Texas] there are some 500 gangs with a combined membership of between15,000 to 25,000 persons.

The drug cartels in Mexicoshould not be confused with the Mexican mafia, which is the oldest prison gangin the United States. It consisted originally of young Mexican-American gangmembers who organized in a California prison in 1957. Its name was chosen toimitate Italian-American Cosa Nostra groups. Also called EME (Spanish for theletter M), members of the Mexican mafia come from the barrios of East LosAngeles, expanding from a self-protection racket to the control of drugtrafficking and extortionate debt collection. The threat posed by the Mexicanmafia is high in southern California, the southwestern United States, and in areaswhere local drug trafficking is controlled by Hispanic gangs. In some of theseareas, the Mexican mafia controls the illegal activity from behind the scenesby collecting a percentage of the profits of drug-trafficking activities. Butthe activities of the Mexican mafia, based in the United States, are distinctfrom the drug-trafficking groups based on Mexico.

The main drug customers are,not surprisingly, in the United States and, to a lesser extent, in Canada. Butthe transnational nature of Mexican organized crime is not limited to NorthAmerica in that, for example, their cocaine comes from Colombia, the precursorchemicals for producing methamphetamine come from various countries, and theylaunder money in the Caribbean and certain Latin American countries.

As suggested above, thecriminal activities in which these Mexican criminal organizations are involvedhave expanded beyond drugs and drug-related crimes. That extended list includesarmed robbery, extortion, and illegal dealing in firearms. Money laundering ofthe illegal proceeds from drug trafficking is a dominant criminal activity. Forthe most part, any other criminal activities in which the Mexicans becomeengaged are for purposes of furthering their drug business. Their annualaverage income from all these illicit activities is estimated to be in thebillions of dollars.

The extensive use ofviolence—more so in Mexico itself than in the United States—is said to be theresult of a desire to avoid attracting undue attention. Violence is employedboth internally—for discipline and to quell power struggles—and externallyagainst other organized crime groups. The increasing level of violence inMexico has been linked to the current government attempts to take on the drug cartelsmore forcefully. There has been some success in this effort, but obviously manymurders have occurred, as the cartels have challenged the institutionalcapacity of the state to respond effectively.

With respect to cocaine, theMexican drug traffickers have business arrangements with the Colombians whogrant the Mexicans a portion of the cocaine shipments they transport. Thismeans they both traffic for the Colombians and also deal on their own. Withheroin, it is estimated that Mexico is now the second largest source of the heroinused in the United States. The cartels are the predominant foreign source ofmarijuana in the United States, and their labs in Mexico and California areestimated to produce about 85% of the methamphetamine distributed in the UnitedStates.

The various Mexican criminalorganizations also make extensive use of corruption in Mexico. The targets ofthis widespread corruption range all the way from poorly paid local policeofficers to high-ranking elected and appointed officials. The combination ofviolence and intimidation and the vast sums of money have effectivelyundermined efforts by Mexican law enforcement to combat these criminals andhave also made collaborative efforts between Mexican and US law enforcementvery problematic.

The SinaloaFederation. Sinaloa,which is actually a network of smaller organizations including theaforementioned Juarez cartel, has clearly become the dominant drug carteloperating in Mexico today. It is estimated that they control 45% of the drugtrade in Mexico. In addition to its operations in North America, Sinaloareportedly has a substantial international presence in South America, Europe,and West Africa as well. Its earnings are estimated to be on the order of USD 3billion per year. Some claim that given its longevity, profitability, andscope, Sinaloa may be the most successful criminal enterprise in history, andits head, Joaquin Guzman, known as El Chapo, may well be the world's mostpowerful drug trafficker.

Sinaloa uses many of the traditional modes for moving its drugsnorth but has raised its use to new levels of sophistication and added wrinklesof its own. For example, Sinaloa Federation drugs come into the United Statesand some eventually to Canada, by means of cars, dune buggies, trucks, trains,buses, underground trolleys (via tunnels under the US/Mexico border), fishingboats, and ultralight airplanes.

Los Zetas. This group was originallycomposed of former elite airborne special force members of the Mexican Army whofirst defected to the Gulf cartel and became their hired assassins. Since goinginto business for themselves, the Zetas have expanded their operations toCentral America to collaborate with their Guatemalan equivalent, Los Kaibiles,and with Central American gangs in an effort to take control of cocaineshipments from Guatemala to Mexico. It is considered to be among the mostviolent, if indeed not the most violent, of the organized crime groupsoperating in Mexico today. In addition to drugs, the Zetas are also engaged inkidnapping, extortion, and human trafficking.

According to a report by TheNational Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism(START),The military skill and spirit, the brutal tactics used to enforce agreements,their sophisticated layered network, and their rapid expansion throughoutMexico, Central and South America, some U.S cities and Europe, has led to theZetas Organization being labeled as one of the most dangerous criminalorganizations in the world…. three common denominators for the members of theZetas Organization, which reflect its uniqueness [are]: a) reckless violence asa means to enlarge profits for them and the organization, b) no long-termexpectations for their future and c) military training.

The following were cited as“common denominators” of the Zetas by different law enforcement expertsinterviewed for the START study: Violence and money is the common denominatoramong Zetas. They are very pragmatic since they are willing to use as muchviolence as necessary to enlarge money and profits. The common denominator isthe absolute loss of values. Zetas perform their criminal activities for theprofit, without caring for anything or anyone. The organization attracts youngpeople who see themselves without a future (going to school to become anengineer or forming a family) who are living day-to-day and willing to engagein any activity. The common denominator among Zetas is that many members wereoriginally military personnel. This makes it that much harder for lawenforcement agencies to combat them since the Zetas members know what actionsto expect. Furthermore, because they once were part of the government militarystructure, they know how it works and what its capabilities are. It thenbecomes a doubly difficult task for the authorities, since the Zetas know wherethe major weaknesses of the state are and plan accordingly as if planning formilitary engagement.

Canadian Organized Crime

Canada also has a long historyof organized crime activity over many years, although at not nearly the levelof that in the United States and Mexico. The primary organized crime groups inCanada have been identified as four types: Asian groups, East European groups,Italian groups, and outlaw motorcycle gangs. Like the United States and Mexico,Canada is a large country, so there is tremendous variation within itsborders—from a number of very large metropolitan areas to expanses of ruralareas that are hundreds of miles across.

Asian organized crime groupshave been identified in British Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec, the provincesthat contain Canada's largest cities: Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal. Some ofthe Asian groups are actually street gangs that engage in drug trafficking orperform criminal activities for more sophisticated organized crime groups.Asian groups on Canada's west coast have been found to be involved intrafficking drugs, firearms, and human beings. The primary drugs trafficked areheroin, cocaine, and ecstasy. Some of these drugs have been found to have beensmuggled by individuals of Chinese descent. Vietnamese-based groups have alsobeen found to be extensively involved in large-scale cultivation of marijuanaacross Canada. In one operation, organized crime members of Chinese descentbought marijuana from Vietnamese-based drug-trafficking gangs to transport inthe United States. In another case, two Chinese-Canadian citizens were caughttrying to smuggle four Chinese nationals across the Niagara River into theUnited States. The Chinese nationals had arrived in Canada through Vancouverairport.

More recently, multiethniccriminal groups are being detected by Canadian law enforcement. These groupsare not hierarchical but, rather, loosely structured networks with changinglinkages among members and associates as criminal enterprises come and go. Thenumber of known groups/networks in Canada has fluctuated between 600 to 900.Canadian law enforcement undertakes an annual survey of criminal organizations,finding 800 in 2006, approximately 950 in 2007, about 900 in 2008, and about750 in 2009. The changes in these numbers over time are said to reflect adegree of fluidity in the criminal marketplace, disruptions by law enforcement,changes in intelligence collection practices, or a combination of thesefactors.

A study interviewed 50high-level drug traffickers in Canada who were serving prison sentences. Theseoffenders represented a number of different racial and ethnic categories and,surprisingly, 60% had operated small, legal businesses prior to becoming drugdealers. This suggests that market demand and opportunities, as well asentrepreneurial skills, are factors in the expansion and contraction of theillicit drug industry. Drug monies fuel a variety of activities, possiblyincluding terrorism. According to a report by the Royal Canadian MountedPolice, heroin arriving through Montreal and Toronto comes from Pakistan andAfghanistan, and about USD 20 million annually finds its way back to thosesource countries, helping to fund terrorism.

Significant law enforcementefforts have been made in Canada. One of them was the Anti-Smuggling Initiativethat focused on alcohol and tobacco smuggling and on the profits from it thatare used to fund other illegal activities. An evaluation of that programconcluded that a substantial reduction was achieved in the contraband tobaccomarket, but it is unclear whether a simultaneous reduction in Canadiancigarette taxes also played a role in this decline. There was evidence as wellthat the law enforcement effort had the effect of displacing smuggling groupsto use other locations and methods. This experience indicates the need forcontinued and varied enforcement efforts combined with demand-reduction effortsto offset the adaptability of criminal organizations to changes in risk.

Similar to other countries,Canada has witnessed organized crime involvement in new kinds of activitiesinvolving the exploitation of technology, identity fraud, and money laundering.Examples of these activities include mortgage frauds, securities fraud, counterfeitgoods, and street gangs engaging in crimes as ongoing organized crimeactivity—all of which have occurred in Canada in recent years.

The Royal Canadian MountedPolice have linked the leaders of telemarketing fraud rings operating out ofso-called boiler rooms with traditional organized crime groups in Canada.Estimates are that 500 to 1,000 criminal telemarketing boiler room operationsare conducted on any given day in Canada, grossing about $1 billion a year. Forexample, one Montreal-based telemarketing ring, broken up in a US-Canadianjoint operation in December 2006, victimized as many as 500 people per week,many of them US citizens. The criminals used two different telemarketingschemes to swindle unsuspecting victims, netting USD 8 to 13 million annually.In the first, a lottery scheme, victims were persuaded they had won thelottery, but needed to send check payments ranging from $1,500 to $60,000 tocover various costs. Approximately 90 percent of the victims in this case weremore than 60 years old. The second scheme, a mass telemarketing fraud, usedseveral approaches, including telling victims they were eligible to receive a$7,000 grant, selling victims health care kits, or billing victims for servicesnever rendered. In each instance, victims were told to send money via certifiedcheck or money order. These examples illustrate both the expansion andincreasing sophistication of organized crime activities and the ease with whichadvanced communication technology facilitates transnational organized crime. 

Conclusion

Organized crime in NorthAmerica is shaped by the presence of three geographically large countries thatshare very long land borders as well as extensive coastlines along both theAtlantic and Pacific Oceans. The economic disparities between Canada and theUnited States on one hand, and Mexico on the other, create a lucrativesupply-and-demand environment, and the land and water access facilitatestrafficking routes for illicit goods, services, and human smuggling /trafficking.

Organized crime historicallyhas been shaped by the presence of Cosa Nostra groups, composed primarily ofItalian-Americans whose influence was concentrated in major eastern US cities.An unprecedented massive prosecution effort beginning during the 1980s severelyreduced the strength of the Cosa Nostra groups. These prosecutions in theUnited States corresponded with global political changes that included the fallof the Soviet Union, the emergence of the newly independent states of EasternEurope, and a growing ease of international travel and communication.

What might have been localizedorganized crime problems just a generation ago have become manifestations oftransnational organized crime as criminal groups from Eastern Europe and Asiahave also found North America to be a desirable market for the provision ofillicit goods and services that support organized crime enterprises. Criminalgroups within North America also have exploited new opportunities for crime.The growing recognition of the size and importance of organized crimeoperations that emanate from a variety of foreign countries distinguishesconcern about organized crime today from the more local concerns about CosaNostra groups and other city-based gangs in years past.

It remains to be seen whether North America can reduce its high demand for illicit products and services(especially drugs), secure its borders from outsiders interested in exploitingthe region, and prosecute those individuals and organized crime groups alreadyin Canada, Mexico, and/or the United States. The long-term solution toorganized crime is a reduction in the demand for the products and services thatsupport it, but in the short-term, greater collaborative efforts at detectionand prosecution will be necessary to disrupt more effectively both foreign andNorth American organized crime groups.