Feds Take Down Asian Gang That Cast 'Shadow of Violence' Over Brooklyn

SUNSET PARK, BROOKLYN — The Zheng Organization, a violent New York City gang allegedly run by a group of 25- to 45-year-old Asian-American men, was busted this week by the Joint Asian Organized Crime Task Force (comprised of investigators from the FBI, NYPD and IRS).

For years, the gang has cast ”a shadow of violence” over the heavily Chinese neighborhoods of Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and Flushing, Queens, according to U.S. Attorney Robert Capers, head of Brooklyn’s federal court.

Eight members of the gang were indicted Tuesday for a slew of crimes including racketeering, drug trafficking, extortion, illegal gambling and “soliciting assaults” on people who owed them money or otherwise crossed them.

Below, their names — and nicknames — via the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

• QIAN ZHENG, 44, also known as “Cash”

• GUIFU GAO, 35, also known as “Chicken Feather”

• XIN LIN, 33, also known as “Blackie”

• ALLEN HUI CHEN, 43, also known as “Yi Hui”

• KAI HUAN HUANG, 25, also known as “Shen Shen”

• BILLY CHEN, 42, also known as “Lo Di”

• JIAYO JIANG, 45, also known as “Yi Qiang”

• XUE JIANG GAO, 30, also known as “Xue Zhang”

“Cash,” along with some accomplices, has been dealing MDMA and Ketamine in Brooklyn and Queens since 2007, according to the criminal complaint against them.

The gangsters also allegedly hosted illegal poker games at 5917 7th Avenue, a three-story brick building in Sunset Park with a hair salon on the ground floor. (See below.)

The gambling operation “involved five or more persons who conducted, financed, managed, supervised, directed and owned all or part of such business, and had a gross revenue of at least $2,000 in any single day,” the complaint says.

If a person owed the gang money or was perceived to have slighted them in some way, the complaint says,
that person was in danger of being violently assaulted on orders from Zheng Organization leadership.

Some examples, again via the U.S. Attorney’s Office:

• In the summer of 2013, Cash allegedly hired two individuals to break a target’s leg and scar another target’s face.

• Later that fall, Shen Shen and Lo Di allegedly hired two individuals to beat a target and fire gunshots into another target’s restaurant ”so he would pay an alleged debt.”

• In October 2014, Cash and Chicken Feather allegedly hired more hitmen to beat another victim, saying that the victim “needed to be crippled and that he should be beaten until he was half dead.”

• In May of this year, Cash allegedly sent his “underlings” — including Blackie, Shen Shen and Xue Zhang — to collect money from a man who he said owed him money at his gambling parlor. The attackers allegedly ”beat him with their fists and wooden stools, breaking a bone in [the victim’s] hand.”

If convicted of all the charges against him in the Zheng Organization indictment, Cash could spend up to 164 years behind bars. His associates each face anywhere from 16 to 40 years imprisonment.