Leland Yee arrested for guns trafficking and corruption

Discussion in 'Ethics, Morality, & Justice' started by Kittamaru, Mar 27, 2014.

  1. Kittamaru Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Adieu, Sciforums. Valued Senior Member

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    http://www.kitguru.net/channel/gene...ames-politician-arrested-for-gun-trafficking/

    Rather interesting in my opinion... after all his blowhard cries against violence in video games and pushes for gun control, he is, in fact, a true criminal... in a way I guess it makes sense really - make guns harder to obtain, the "black market" call for them will increase and thus, his business potential would increase... basic supply and demand; here we have someone pushing to reduce the legal supply which would raise illegal demand who stands to potentially benefit from under the table dealings... *sighs* and people wonder why so many think politicians are corrupt lol...
     
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  3. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    When I saw the news yesterday, I was amazed. Leland Yee is a fixture in San Francisco local politics and has been rising in statewide Democratic party circles. His reputation has generally been squeaky-clean. He's currently a State Senator and is running for Secretary of State in this year's election, I believe.

    It isn't just dealing in illegal firearms. Yee is also allegedly associated with the SF Chinatown arm of a major Hong Kong based criminal gang and allegedly is an associate of a big-time SF criminal boss. The mobster, who was also arrested in the same FBI operation, is being charged with stuff like murder-for-hire contracts. Yee is also charged with demanding all kinds of bribes in order to connect undercover FBI agents with powerful figures, ranging from introducing and recommending them to legitimate state officeholders, to vouching for them to international gangsters and arms dealers.

    This is only the latest scandal to hit California's Democratic State Senate delegation. At least two other Senators have recently had to step down after being indicted for blatant corruption. Luckily for the Democrats, they had a big enough majority that they aren't in danger of losing it, but it still smells to high heaven.
     
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  5. Kittamaru Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Adieu, Sciforums. Valued Senior Member

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    OH fun... good grief, I have to wonder how deep this particular rabbit hole actually goes!
     
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  7. Motor Daddy Valued Senior Member

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    Another Democrat caught with their hands in the cookie jar here in NC.

    http://news.yahoo.com/charlotte-nc-mayor-facing-corruption-charges-180040130.html
     
  8. Kittamaru Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Adieu, Sciforums. Valued Senior Member

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    Nice... like any infection, there is only one real course of action - expose the disease to the light and purge it with righteous fire!
     
  9. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    I've been reading the news this morning and here's some more nuggets.

    California state Senator Leeland Yee was one of 26 arrests made yesterday. At last word, Yee was still being held on $500,000 bail. He's being charged with 6 counts of "depriving the public of honest services" (a public official demanding bribes, I guess) and one count of conspiracy to traffic in firearms without a licence.

    The FBI's criminal complaint is 137 pages long.

    The Filipino source for the weapons was reportedly a Muslim rebel group in that country.

    The whole thing came about as the result of a five-year FBI operation directed at Chinatown mobster Raymond "Shrimp Boy" Chow and his Ghee Kung Tong organization. (The opportunity to bag Chow's associate Sen. Yee was just an added extra.) Two undercover FBI agents posed as representatives of La Costa Nostra and apparently used Chow's group to launder large sums (millions of dollars) of money over several years. Chow bought into it so completely he allegedly asked the FBI agents for gangster tips.

    It seems that Chow, whose immigration status is reportedly murky, was first arrested in 1992. He was convicted then and sentenced to 25 to life for various weapons charges. He ended up serving 11 years of that. After his release, Chow cheerfully admitted to running prostitution rings, smuggling drugs and operating protection rackets that extorted large sums of money from Chinatown businesses.

    But supposedly that was all in the past. In the last few years it seems that 'Shrimp Boy' was being feted by US Sen Dianne Feinstein and SF Mayor Ed Lee as an example of successful rehabilitation and praised for his work with "at risk children" and for his "willingness to give back to the community". A politically-connected pillar of the Chinatown community, by all accounts.

    At least until his gang was taken down a second time yesterday...
     
  10. Kittamaru Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Adieu, Sciforums. Valued Senior Member

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    Ouch... lol, that's gotta be a big red mark on the whole "rehabilitation" thing... but then again, our justice system doesn't really "rehabilitate"... it's a system of punishing the result, not fixing the cause.
     
  11. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    As people might expect, the local San Francisco bay area newspapers are filled with this.

    Yee has made bail and is out of jail. The TV showed him surrounded by TV cameras and reporters shoving microphones in his face, but he didn't say anything and a car (a shiny BMW) whooshed him away.

    Shrimp Boy was declared a flight risk, no bail amount was set, and he's still in jail.

    It seems that another of the 26 arrested was a gentleman named Keith Jackson, a consultant and political fundraiser who apparently is well known in SF local government circles. Jackson was closely associated with Yee and has been charged with conspiracy to traffic in firearms without a license, trafficking in firearms without a license, six counts of honest services fraud, use of interstate commerce for the commission of murder-for-hire, and conspiracy to distribute narcotics. Oh, and Jackson is also a former SF School Board president. (You can't make this stuff up.)

    Apparently Shrimp Boy introduced one of the undercover FBI agents to Jackson. Jackson told the agent that Sen. Yee "was associated with a person who was an international arms dealer who was shipping large stockpiles of weapons into a foreign country." (The Philippines' Muslim insurgency, apparently.) At the agent's request, Jackson set up a meeting with Yee. The agent paid Jackson $1000 and Yee $5000 as a retainer. (Yee wanted his $5000 in the form of a political contribution to his campaign committee.) Then they got down to business. The agent pressed Yee and Jackson about getting access to shoulder-fired missiles. Yee asked if the agent wanted automatic weapons and the agent said yes, $2.5 million worth. Yee was apparently pleased with the whole thing and told the agent that their relationship was going to be tremendously beneficial to both of them. The agent told Yee he would pay Yee $100,000 for his services for the first shipment, and multiple hundreds of thousands for subsequent deals and forsaw them having a lucrative long-term relationship.

    When California state Senator Ronald Calderon (Yee and Calderon shared a desk on the Senate floor in Sacramento) was recently indicted on bribery charges, Yee got spooked. He told the agent, "Once things start to move, it's going to attract attention. We just got to be extra-extra careful".

    And there's Shrimp Boy (he's 5 ft 5 inches) the "Dragonhead" of the Ghee Kung Tong. We mustn't forget him. The FBI's had their eye on him since he got out of prison in 2003. The Chinatown locals call him "Dai lo", which apparently literally means 'big brother' and colloqually means 'crime boss'. He insisted that he was rehabilitated and proceeded to slip smoothly into San Francisco political circles. It seems like everybody who was anybody in San Francisco politics was giving Shrimp Boy awards, commendations and proclamations. Mayor Ed Lee praised him for "working in the trenches as a change-agent". (It's probably true, the question is what kind of change.) But it was never entirely convincing (to the FBI at least). How did Shrimp Boy get all those luxury cars and expensive clothes? Where was his money coming from?

    Another thing. The guy who was running the gang when Shrimp Boy got out of prison was subsequently found murdered. The SF police were never able to solve the murder, while Shrimp Boy slid back into being the Dragonhead. (Things that make you go "hummm...")

    Now that the shit has hit the fan, the SF politicos are backpedaling like crazy. Former SF Supervisor Aaron Peskin recalls sitting next to Shrimp Boy at a 2007 banquet (only four years after he'd been released from prison) and said "Despite his affable laugh... I just got a very scary vibe off of this guy. He can be very intimidating. When I walked away from him, I remember thinking this is a dangerous, seething, scary human being. Diabolical is exactly the word." (Easy to say now, but Peskin was sitting next to him at the banquet. How did that happen?) Peskin was scathing about Mayor Lee's praising Shrimp Boy, "Ed Lee knows who he is. That would be like the president of the United States giving a certificate to Al Capone." (The San Francisco political animals are starting to eat one another.)

    This is great stuff. If it was made into a movie, nobody would believe it. Too outlandish. No politicians, even in San Francisco, can be this clueless and corrupt. (Eat your heart out, Chicago.) And it might actually become a movie. Shrimp Boy has written an autobiography, featuring his earlier exploits, that he's been shopping to publishers and movie producers, entitled 'Son of the Underworld'. Now that it can be brought up to date with parts for Sen. Yee, his fundraiser Jackson and no end of SF politico bit parts, maybe they will make the movie. If Shrimp Boy is back behind bars, then they might not even have to pay him to use it.

    Oh, and Shrimp Boy's beginnings in crime are cinematic too. He's one of the survivors of Chinatown's infamous 1977 Golden Dragon massacre. A bunch of local gangsters were eating in this Chinatown restaurant, when a bunch of rival gangsters burst in and shot everything and everyone full of bullets. Lots of people died, including a bunch of innocent diners. But Shrimp Boy survived, and went on to bigger and better things.

    In a local TV interview several years ago, Shrimp Boy said, "When people take a shot at me, I take a shot at them. I don't see anything wrong with that." (Not unlike San Francisco politics, which is probably why they were attracted to each other. The only difference is that Shrimp Boy uses live ammunition.)
     
    Last edited: Mar 28, 2014
  12. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    Oh yeah, I heard about this. That is fucked. How blatant can one possibly be? He doesn't mind the weapons going to MILF? Wow.
     
  13. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    Update: San Francisco Chinatown organized crime boss Shrimp Boy was just sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of 167 counts, including murder, racketeering, robbery, money laundering, conspiracy and illegal sales of everything (guns, drugs, prostitution...)

    http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-shrimp-boy-sentenced-20160804-snap-story.html

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    Militant gun-control advocate and rising statewide Democratic party political figure State Sen. Leeland Yee plead guilty and was sentenced earlier to five years in prison for... illegal gun running. This was near the bottom of the federal sentencing guidelines so the judge went easy on this political figure. (Maybe it was a bargain in exchange for the guilty plea.)

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...on-heading-to-prison-for-weapons-trafficking/

    And former San Francisco Public School Board President Keith Jackson was sentenced to nine years in prison, one year less than prosecutors had asked for. He was convicted of arranging bribes, trafficking drugs and guns, and setting up a murder-for-hire scheme. The judge called him a "one man crime wave".

    http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Former-state-Sen-Leland-Yee-gets-five-years-in-6851830.php

    But other high ranking Democratic party public figures have danced away. They include Gavin Newsom, current California Lieutenant Governor, widely assumed to be running for Governor in the next election. (Pictured here with Shrimp Boy.)

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    And San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee who appears to have been in everything up to his eyebrows.

    http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slat...ecutor_gangster_shrimp_boy_chow_ensnared.html
     
    Last edited: Aug 6, 2016

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