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In this episode of Gangland Wire, Gary Jenkins, a former KCPD Intelligence Detective, is joined by Lydia Jean Kott (LJ), a producer at Pushkin Industries, the company founded by Malcolm Gladwell. LJ brings us inside the making of Chinatown Sting, a gripping new podcast that uncovers the fascinating and little-known story of Chinese organized crime, China White heroin, and characters like Machinegun Johnny in New York’s Chinatown during the 1980s.
LJ explains how her interest in the case was sparked by a personal connection—her boyfriend’s mother was a federal prosecutor involved in the original sting. That legendary case centered on heroin smuggled from Hong Kong into Chinatown, hidden in packages and distributed through a network of mahjong-playing mothers. What began with a flagged parcel at the post office unraveled into a high-stakes undercover investigation.
We explore how law enforcement managed to penetrate this tight-knit immigrant community, the risks taken by prosecutors like Beryl Howell, and the difficult moral choices faced by those caught in the middle—including a woman forced to choose between betraying a friend or saving herself.
LJ also delves into the history of Chinatowns in America, where family associations and Tongs—formed initially as mutual aid societies—became intertwined with the vice industry. She connects this legacy to gangs like the Flying Dragons and their ties back to organized crime in Hong Kong. Our discussion is not just about drugs, gangs, and federal stings—it’s about storytelling, community, and the pursuit of survival.
LJ shares how she and her co-reporter pieced the story together over the course of years of interviews and archival research, giving voice to people often overlooked in the larger mob narrative. If you’re fascinated by organized crime, hidden histories, or the way law enforcement takes on international networks, Chinatown Sting is a podcast you won’t want to miss.
Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app.
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Gary Jenkins : [00:00:00] Hey, welcome all you wire tappers. Good to be back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. This is Gary Jenkins. You know, I’m a retired Kansas City police intelligence unit detective turned podcaster.
Gary Jenkins : I did a few other things in between, but this is the love of my life here, guys. And I was just talking with our guests that I don’t do this for the money, but I do it for fun and, and it is a lot of fun and, and I can tell my guests today. Does it to earn a living, but she does it a lot for fun. She really is into it.
Gary Jenkins : So it’s Lydia Jean Kott, or we call her lj. Welcome. Lj,
L.J. : thank you so much. I’m a huge fan of the show and it’s an honor to get to be on it and to get to talk to you.
Gary Jenkins : Well, cool. Thank you for that compliment. I really appreciate that. Kind of makes it worthwhile keeping coming back. I get those nice comments on my YouTube channel quite a little bit.
Gary Jenkins : That kinda keeps me coming back when I get down a little bit. Anyhow first of all, you’re. You’re with something called Pushkin, P-U-S-H-K-I-N, which is a Malcolm Gladwell company. I think he started it and had [00:01:00] the first podcast early in the days. Mm-hmm. You know, I’m like one of the earliest I am the earliest Mafia podcast.
Gary Jenkins : I think that ever first one had ever started, I believe long before. When did you start? Oh, . 2015, I believe.
L.J. : Okay. Yeah. Early, early podcast days,
Gary Jenkins : early podcast. I listened to Serial and I thought, man, I think I could do that and tell police stories.
Gary Jenkins: Yeah.
Gary Jenkins : So tell the guys a little bit about.
Gary Jenkins : Pushkin and how this podcast industry works. We talked about this a little bit before, and I’m always kind of curious myself. You know, I’m, I’m what they call A GDI that’s a goddamn independent. If you don’t know what a GDI is, ask my son if he’s gonna join a fraternity. He said, yeah, A GDI. So I’m a GDI.
Gary Jenkins : But LJ is with a company and, but she’s been all in all areas and aspects of the business. So tell the guys a little bit about. What we talked about, how this podcasting business works.
L.J. : . So [00:02:00] Pushkin is a podcasting company in New York City and we do a whole, we produce a whole bunch of different podcasts.
L.J. : So we produce a podcast called Against the Rules, which is hosted by Michael Lewis, who wrote my Ball story. Yeah, that’s
Gary Jenkins : a great one. But guys Against the Rules with Michael Lewis, who’s a guy that wrote Moneyball. This is a great one. Go ahead.
L.J. : So yeah, so that’s the you know, that’s the podcast that I work on, so I’m a producer on that show.
L.J. : And Happiness Lab and Revisionist History. So we make a bunch of shows and we have, you know, people can come to Pushkin with ideas for shows, and then there’s producers on staff, people like myself who then would help you make the show. You know, sometimes ideas originate within the company. So I actually, as a producer, pitched this idea to the higher ups at Pushkin, and then it became a show.
Gary Jenkins : And this one here, this one here, to clarify, guys, this one here, Chinatown Sting is the name of it. We’re gonna talk about. Chinese organized crime for a change rather than the Italian organized crime or some drug organization what we call a peckerwood. Peckerwood is non [00:03:00] Italian, by the way. Lj
Gary Jenkins : yeah. I never
Gary Jenkins: heard that.
Gary Jenkins : Yeah, it’s kinda local. It’s little bit like saying hillbilly or a redneck drug association. But anyhow we use it as non Italian in Kansas City. Anyhow, she’s gonna talk about some Chinese organized crime. So it’s I’m really fascinated. I really wanna learn about this. I had just.
Gary Jenkins : I was just thinking I need to do a story about Chinese organized crime and, and I was finding a little bit of stuff on YouTube, but not a lot. So, and then this opportunity came along and, and you know, I’m, I’m kind of promoting a competing podcast, if you will, but if you guys are like me, I listen to so many different podcasts that, you know, we’re not in competition with each other.
Gary Jenkins : A, a rising ship lifts all a rising tide lifts all boats anyhow, right.
L.J. : Yeah. Yeah. You should listen to both the Gangland Wire and the Chinatown sting. You can, you can. Complimentary podcast.
Gary Jenkins : Yeah. They are, they are in many ways, a little. I they complimentary
L.J. : actually.
Gary Jenkins : Yeah. A little different aspect of organized crime.
Gary Jenkins : So LJ tell us about, you know, how’d you [00:04:00] first get interested in this story? Like I said, I was harping a hard time finding much about Chinese organized crime. So tell us how you got into it.
L.J. : So I, there isn’t, especially when I started working on this, which was like three years ago, there wasn’t very much about Chinese organized crime at all.
L.J. : But I, this is a little bit of a reveal of the podcast, but I got interested in it because my boyfriend’s mom, actually, her name is Beryl Howell, .
L.J. : But her career got started as a prosecutor, a federal prosecutor in New York City, in the eastern District. And her first big case started with this undercover sting that happened. In Brooklyn, because that’s where the eastern Eastern District of New York is. And this case is kind of legendary in my boyfriend’s family.
L.J. : And I’ve known her actually, you know, for a really long time. So I’d always heard about this case and how this was the case that, you know, it helped, et cetera. It was her first big case. She was just a baby prosecutor at the time, et cetera, off in her career. It made a [00:05:00] huge impression on her. It was kind of like family lore.
L.J. : And as a journalist, I’ve always been like. I wanna get to the bottom of it. Like I wanna find out, I’ve heard about her side of the story of this case, but I wanna find out about the people who, you know, who else was involved and kind of paint a full picture of this case. So it took me about, I think three or four years and I found a co reporter who speaks Cantonese.
L.J. : Her name is Sh Wang. And we worked on it together. And we’ve been telling the story of this case. And what was really helpful is that we barrel my boyfriend’s mom. Has this, she gave me this suitcase that was full of thousands of pages of court documents that she had saved. So it’s all public record, but since this is from the 1980s yeah, you know, it can be, you can only read the documents in the courthouse actually, or you have to pay like a dollar in actual quarters to get it home.
Gary Jenkins: Yes,
L.J. : I had the advantage of having this suitcase where I could look through and it also had, you know, her notes and things that she underlined. So that was really helpful. So I spent, you know, we started by. [00:06:00] Reading those documents and then trying to find the people who are in the documents.
Gary Jenkins : Wow.
Gary Jenkins : That’s so tell us about searching for some of these people that are in their documents. That’s really hard to do because you’re, you’re looking into a closed society, a totally closed society to outsiders for the most part, except for the cops. I’m sure you, it was easy to find some of the agents or cops.
Gary Jenkins : How did you start, when you start with the cops, how, how did that work? Was it a task force that you could find some supervisors and then they could turn you on to guys that would talk to you?
L.J. : Yeah, I mean, maybe it would be helpful, so to start with the, you know, like what the case was, the story? So yeah, basically, yeah.
L.J. : The Chinatown Sting was, what happened was there was this mail parcel that was flagged that was coming from Hong Kong to New York City, and the Customs official opened it and realized that there was. This really high grade heroin inside, it was like millions of dollars. Yeah. And they did, I’m sure you know all about this and undercover drop off, basically.
L.J. : Mm-hmm. So there was actually three [00:07:00] packages that were all exactly the same and they were going to, were going to Chinatown and one was going to Brooklyn and they had, you know. Undercover Co. They had like a undercover like postal officer.
Gary Jenkins: Oh yeah.
L.J. : Agents like all do this like undercover draw, you know, delivery of the package to find out who was going to, and they like wired it so that way when it opened, they would be alerted.
L.J. : Mm-hmm. And the package two didn’t get picked up. Who knows why not. But the third package went to this woman’s house in Brooklyn and this woman opened it and, the drugs were like hidden amongst like stuffed animals. So she opened the package, she took out the stuffed animals and all the DEA agents came and arrested her.
L.J. : . She’s put Cantonese they figured she wasn’t the one who was organizing this like multimillion dollar drug scheme. Yeah. So they wanted to know like who she was, like, you know, working for, she told them that it was a friend then they kind of pieced together that it was basically a whole group of these [00:08:00] moms who played Mahjong together in Chinatown.
L.J. : Ah, which do you uhhuh, you know about Mahjong?
Gary Jenkins : Yeah, it’s yeah, it’s like a, a Domino’s like dominoes, American Dominoes. I think
L.J. : it’s kind like Domino’s. Exactly. So there are these like Mahjong parlors in Chinatown where you can like, do a little bit of gambling but really hang out. Mm-hmm. And there was all these women who knew each other from these Mahjong parlors, and they were all, it was like one friend would bring in, another friend would bring in another friend, and they were accepting these packages of multimillion dollars worth of heroin.
L.J. : This, , federal prosecutor, Beryl Howell, who was, how I got into this story. She ended up in this situation where she had all of these young moms in custody who were accepting these packages of heroin, and she wanted to know who was at the top of the scheme. So she needed to convince them to flip, but who they were flipping on would be their
L.J. : really good friends. Mm-hmm. And the story center is on this one woman who was pulled into this scheme by her best friend. And this best friend happened to be the [00:09:00] recruiter of this whole scheme, and she had to decide whether or not to betray her friend. And the stakes were really high because at the time in Manhattan Chinatown, it was really controlled by gangs.
L.J. : So if you spoke out against the gangs, you were really risking your life. So if she decided to to speak up, she would, you know, not only lose her best friend, but probably have to like leave behind her community. So it was. On the other hand, she was facing 10 years in prison. She had a baby. So it was a really tough decision.
L.J. : Mm-hmm. But Beryl, you know, wanted to get to the person at the top. Who she knew actually this guy named Machine Gun Johnny, that was his nickname.
Gary Jenkins : Machine Gun Johnny.
L.J. : Yeah. Johnny in? Yeah.
Gary Jenkins : Oh yeah. I, I think there’s a YouTube thing about him. So I remember that name when I was looking around. Yeah, so Machine gun, Johnny there Things great name.
L.J. : Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it’s funny because in like law enforcement called him Machine Gun Johnny. But in Chinatown, he was known as Onion Head actually, because his hair stood up like an onion. So he had like less of a [00:10:00] scary nickname in his community.
Gary Jenkins : So that in that community, it’s such a closed community Of course.
Gary Jenkins : And, and you’ve got one to flip. The prosecutor has one to flip on one and another one to flip. And you get this, they, they get this name of machine gun Johnny or Onion Head, Johnny. And, and it’s really difficult because everybody speaks a foreign language, first of all, that most Americans don’t. And most people in law enforcement, there’s very few Chinese in law enforcement.
Gary Jenkins : Very few. Yeah. And, and it’s just not an a, a, a there’s no appeal for Chinese people to, to go into law enforcement. It doesn’t seem to me like now these organizations, now, was this just his organization or was he part of a bigger organization?
L.J. : Yeah. So he was the head the way, I don’t know like how much you wanna get into how this organized crime worked in Chinatown at the time, but it is really, it’s fascinating.
L.J. : So he was the head of a gang called the Flying Dragons. So the way it worked. [00:11:00] Basically, if you don’t mind, we can go back to the very beginning, which is when Chinatowns were formed, you know, in the 18 hundreds.
Gary Jenkins : I am interested in that and how that breaks down. You hear of these to societies and you hear Yeah,
L.J. : exactly.
Gary Jenkins : Those kinds of things. Then street gangs and, and is it all like a pyramid scheme up to somebody at the top and even maybe hooked back to China, mainland China itself. So tell us about that. What, what did you learn about that?
L.J. : What happened was, in the 18 hundreds Chinese immigrants came to the US ’cause the Gold Rush, they helped with the railroads.
L.J. : Then the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed in 1882, and that was a time of a lot of like anti-Chinese hate. Chinese immigrants who were on the west coast came to the East coast because they got pushed out a lot of times violently from the west coast. They formed Chinatowns, including Manhattan’s Chinatown.
L.J. : Which is actually right next to Little Italy. Another, yeah, it is
Gary Jenkins: in the Lower
L.J. : East side. And they formed these associations, like family associations. They’re kinda like mutual aid societies where they would help each other find jobs, give each other [00:12:00] loans. You know, like US society was really racist at the time, and this was a place where they, the community could, they could support each other.
L.J. : And there was one type of an association called the Tong, which did a lot, the tongs. Did a lot of good work that helped the community. You know, you would get your pick up, your mail from the tongs but they also were in charge of the illicit of the vice industries. Mm-hmm. The brothels, the gambling parlors, et cetera.
L.J. : So that’s , the background history. Mm-hmm. And then in the 1960s when the Chinese exclusion Act was finally fully repealed 1965, immigration really opened up. And then Chinatown. Went from being this like really small neighborhood that at the time was.
L.J. : Before then, it was mostly just men to a family bustling neighborhood. And there were all these teens who were coming, the tongs were oh, we have a really good idea. We wanna be respected community associations, which we are. So why don’t we have the teenagers do the dirty work for us.
L.J. : We still wanna be running the brothels and the gambling parlors and doing that stuff, but we [00:13:00] also wanna seem clean. Yeah. So they, the tongs outsourced, they used the teens as as muscle, so these teenage gangs formed. Each tong, like the hip sing tong, which this story is about, was also covertly associated with the gang.
L.J. : Which was the Flying Dragons gang, and it was like so crazy ’cause it’s like on the same street. So like if you look at Pell Street, which is a really small street in Chinatown, on one side you have the Hip Sing Tong Association, which has. Just like golden pagoda, like, you know, people’s grandparents go there to like take out lo, you know, get loans or whatever, just like a respected normal place.
L.J. : Right across the street there’s a gambling parlor that’s run by the flying dragons, which is where they get their money, which is like a seedy, smoky, very shaky space really. And these teen and these kids, these teenagers they weren’t only running the gambling parlors, they were also extorting all the small businesses.
L.J. : So in the 1980s in Chinatown. Most small businesses had a little plaque, like, you [00:14:00] know how you have your liquor license? Mm-hmm. You also would have like the plaque that says like, what tong you’re associated with. So they wouldn’t get extorted through twice. The tongs to your question, they also often had links to like triads in Hong Kong.
L.J. : ‘Cause these gangs that I’m talking about, and these tongs all tend to, they came from Hong Kong. So that’s the, so Johnny Hin and Johnny, our guy, he was the head of the Flying Dragons gang, which was linked to this to this Tong the Hip Sing Tong, which was one of the most powerful tongs in Chinatown.
L.J. : It was run by this elderly guy with a cane and named Uncle Benny, who was very smiley, but he was kinda like the godfather of Chinatown that the head of it all. So that’s kind of the, yeah. Interesting. It’s a bit like the black hand, I guess. You’re exploiting your own community.
L.J. : ’cause it all was very stayed within Chinatown.
Gary Jenkins : Oh, all this. What about the dope though? Now, now did the tongue, they wanna stay clean from a lot of stuff and, but they wanna be able to use these [00:15:00] young guys of flying dragons. Now the Flying Dragons are getting into bringing heroin in, which kinda like the mafia, they really didn’t want their guys involved in heroin because there was such a societal dis disapproval of heroin.
Gary Jenkins : And it was, it affected their own kids sometimes. So, did the, to, did they support this heroin or was that an independent operation on the part of the Flying Dragons?
L.J. : Yeah, so that is such a good question. So. Honestly, it’s not exactly clear to me what had happened. Basically what I know happened is there was, the original leader of the Flying Dragons was this guy called the Scientist, Michael Chen, and he was a very strict leader and did not let any members of the flying dragons get involved in the drug trade.
L.J. : He was like, that is too dangerous, we’re not doing that. And he ended up getting murdered and then Johnny took over.
Gary Jenkins: And
L.J. : then that was the turning point, and I think you might find it interesting is this was around the time of the pizza connection [00:16:00] trials.
Gary Jenkins : Ah, yeah. Which I know
L.J. : you did. Like a four part series.
L.J. : I did,
Gary Jenkins : yeah. A four part. I really went into that pizza connection. I yeah, that was an interesting story.
Gary Jenkins : And they were bringing heroin in. The mid east Turkey and cocaine, but a lot of heroin. So these guys where were, and their heroin was coming in from China, I suppose it was China White, or from the Golden Triangle down in Southeast Asia.
Gary Jenkins : I would assume.
L.J. : That’s exactly right. It was, so what happened was that when Johnny came to power, two years later, the Pizza Connection trials happened. So then the Italians weren’t really bringing in as much heroin as they were before.
Gary Jenkins: And
L.J. : then Johnny, so there was like a bit of a vacuum I think the vacuum was just like too tempting to resist.
L.J. : Mm-hmm. The Tong leaders. They didn’t stop him from bringing in the drugs. When he took over the gang. Also, I think another thing to remember is at this point, these teenagers are older, right? Like, yeah. Now they’re like 18, 19, like they have bills to pay.
L.J. : They’re no longer, like the money that they were getting from extorting, the shopkeepers wasn’t enough. I think [00:17:00] the temptation was too great. And also the old leader was so strict and I think people were a little bit done with that it was all street battles over , control over, like who could extort what store?
L.J. : It was just like a very violent street violence based culture underneath the old guy and the former gangsters who I talked to said that under Johnny, he was like, I don’t care about that sort of stuff. I just wanna be rich. And then he started flying to Hong Kong all the time. Building connections with people in Hong Kong who were connected to the triads, who were getting the drugs as exactly as you said from the Golden Triangle.
L.J. : And it was pretty easy to bring in heroin from Hong Kong to the United States. At that time,
Gary Jenkins: hmming
L.J. : and Johnny became, the fifth biggest heroin importer in the city. Wow. So he became, very, very successful.
Gary Jenkins : So he, he was, distributed Chinatown. Normally in Chinatown, they were only preying on their own people.
Gary Jenkins : They’re only extorting money from their own people within the group. ’cause they do, nobody was gonna [00:18:00] talk. Exactly. Now you’ve got this drugs, you, you know, if you’re gonna make a lot of money, you’re gonna have to go outside of Chinatown. You’re gonna have to go out in, to the Peckerwood world and the Italian world and the other ethnic neighborhoods.
Gary Jenkins : , Did he make connections with other drug gangs and other groups?
L.J. : Yes, he did. And I talked to other, a former, a gang member who was in the Flying Dragons, and he said, yeah, he, they had connections to the Puerto Rican, and I’ve heard he did have some connections to the Italian gang.
L.J. : So, ’cause these kids now, , they spoke English and they had been,, living in the States for a while. So they were able to make connections with, with other gangs and it started to move. Their business ventures started to move outside of Manhattan’s Chinatown, which is also, you know, why the Fed started to pay attention to what was going on in Chinatown.
L.J. : , Because up to this point, honestly, they didn’t really care. They’re just kind of like Chinatown can do Chinatown. But it was around the time, it’s, it Chinatown,
Gary Jenkins : Jake, it’s Chinatown.
L.J. : But if it’s gonna be hurting people outside of Chinatown especially, ’cause , as you know, this [00:19:00] was like the eighties war on drugs.
L.J. : Yeah. And then these congressional hearings started to happen and , federal agents were noticing that. The percentage the, the heroin was starting to come in, , it was beginning to be what they call China White. Exactly. Yeah. It seemed like it was coming through from Asian organized crime.
L.J. : So there was a mandate from Washington that was like we need to be doing something about this problem of the gangs in Chinatown. , They couldn’t ignore it any longer.
Gary Jenkins : Hmm. So I guess they did the usual things, went out and started trying to make small buys and, and from narcotics units with the New York PD narcotics units and they bought China white from somebody.
Gary Jenkins : Then they, found that person’s trying to develop, turn some people. Is that how that worked?
L.J. : I’m sure that was happening, but yeah, the story that I’m following it kind of a bit, fell into this. So, you know, my boyfriend’s mom was a prosecutor. Yeah. And I think she had only been at the job for six months and then she found out about these.
L.J. : Boxes of heroin. This, and she gave the [00:20:00] authorization for this under this undercover sting. And then that she started to try and figure out how she could get to the person at the top. She worked on that case basically almost her entire time at the Eastern District of New York.
L.J. : Wow. Like it was full of twists and turns and nothing was going as planned. There was, , a, global manhunt. These cases, as you know, are these mafia cases are really, really hard to build. And it’s kind of
Gary Jenkins: Yeah, they are.
L.J. : I was talked to one I prosecutor and she was , people don’t even really wanna do them anymore because it’s so, such painstaking work. ‘Cause you have to flip one person after another person, it’s like a slow, crescendo and requires just so much legwork, et cetera.
Gary Jenkins : Yeah. Now, now you say like Chinatown Sting, the name of it though. By a sting, we always think of as somebody then. Passes themself off as a, a buyer, for example. You bring your stolen goods or your heroin to me, and then I pop you. Is that was, was there like a final thing that they, they did it in the.
Gary Jenkins : [00:21:00] Podcast is to talk about a final thing where they, they did a sting on machine gun. Johnny, I’m assuming at the end we’re gonna get machine gun Johnny and the cops are gonna win. The good guys are gonna win. I mean, I know You gotta, you gotta listen to, you gotta listen to the I know. I know.
Gary Jenkins : I’ll listen to it. It’s not quite out yet guys, but it probably will be the time I release this.
L.J. : It’s out. It’s out, it’s out tomorrow.
Gary Jenkins : Oh, okay. All right. It will be the time I release this or whenever this,
L.J. : I don’t know. Yeah. I don’t know when this comes out, but by the time this comes out, it should be out.
L.J. : Okay. And this sting refers to the, this moment that set the whole thing off. So the undercover delivery of the packages is what you mean by the, by the sting. But that’s interesting that a sting is usually a, what you described.
Gary Jenkins : Yeah. That’s what, that’s what we think of. That’s what I think of as a sting.
Gary Jenkins : We had we’ve had several stings for buying stolen property here in Kansas City.
Gary Jenkins : that’s just a fascinating that she found all these ladies and how they were connected at the Mahjong parlor.
Gary Jenkins : So then they have an episode about how all that worked. Is that kinda how it’s laid [00:22:00] down in your podcast?
L.J. : Oh yeah. So to go back to your original question, so the way that me and my co shuu went about doing this story is we had the list of all the women from the Mahjong parlors, we had their names.
L.J. : Mm-hmm. And then we just like went door to door and just like looked, researched, any of the possible addresses, and we had no. Reason to think that they would wanna talk to us. And we just, it was literally just like knocking on doors in Manhattan’s Chinatown and Chinatown in flushing in Sunset Park. That was months. And then finally we just knocked on the right door and found the right woman she let us in. And then she said that she. None of these women had ever talked to a reporter before. But she said, yes, I wanna tell my story of what the impact that this case had on me and what happened.
L.J. : And she’s kind of our main character. So we tell the story of why she decided to accept the packages of heroin why, how she made her decision of what to do after she was [00:23:00] caught. And then the how the relationship that developed between her and my boyfriend’s mom and how she thinks about everything that happened today.
Gary Jenkins : Hmm. Well, prosecutors historically prosecutors don’t get quite that personally involved in these cases. This prosecutor has really really got into this story.
L.J. : Yeah. I think, well, I think that these women really made an impression on her
L.J. : I think the case, the case made a big impression on her because she and this woman were about the same age at the time.
L.J. : Mm-hmm. And. Actually while working on this case, she had a baby too. Like this woman was like a young mom. And my boyfriend’s mom was pregnant at the, at this case, spanned four or five years. So she basically built her family while she was working on this case as well. So I think she. Was really interested in how these women were like navigating some of the same pressures as she was starting a family, trying to figure out like how to be a good mom.
L.J. : While also they were navigating very different pressures, which was, you know, [00:24:00] the dangerous world of the gangs. Also the very confusing legal system and trying to like make their way in the United States.
Gary Jenkins : Now were they able to link anything back to Southeast Asia or mainland China that able to draw any of those people into it?
L.J. : Unfortunately, unfortunately, no. I think that wish, I think it’s hard. I know that they wish they had, but I think that is quite hard. It.
Gary Jenkins : It’s quite hard. Especially over, I mean, those
L.J. : people got got away
Gary Jenkins : for sure. It’s a little different going into New Mexico or South America, Columbia or something. But going into China, man, that’s a whole nother ballgame there.
L.J. : Yeah, yeah, yeah. And yeah, and this was interesting ’cause this was happening, the case started when Hong Kong. Was under British control. Oh, yeah. So it was a few years, it was a few years before the handoff. And that’s kind of an interesting thing in and of itself because like at the, you know, when, I don’t know if you know about this, but when Hong Kong was under British Control, the, they basically had the exact same [00:25:00] legal system as like the British legal system, right?
Gary Jenkins: Yeah. But
L.J. : I talked to this one lawyer who was saying that, there’s a lot of like British and like Australian and New Zealand lawyers from New Zealand who were in Hong Kong and one of these lawyers who is now in London, he told me that they call lawyers who went to Hong Kong filth failed in London, try Hong Kong because it’s lawyers who like had, you know.
L.J. : Messed up in various ways. Had gone through divorces, had criminal records, had drinking problems, had gambling problems. They tended to leave London and then go to Hong Kong. So there’s a lot of, a lot of mob lawyers, a lot of kind of like. Outlaw lawyers in Hong Kong. .
Gary Jenkins : They’re not there now. They’re not there now, that’s for sure. No, no. Everything changed.
L.J. : No, this was, everything changed, but this was back in the before. This was back in the 1980s. So I think that was another complication of the case because of when Johnny realized that there was a case being built against him, he just got on a plane and went to Hong Kong.
L.J. : Mm-hmm.
Gary Jenkins : Wow. [00:26:00] So and, and during this whole investigation, was there one and I mentioned this early one, like task force in which the prosecutor was kinda like the lead on the, the, for the task force made up of, you know, your customs and, and IRS and DEA and, and people like that. Is that how that worked?
Gary Jenkins : And maybe local narcotics people.
L.J. : Yeah, so there was, she worked closely with a customs agent and a DEA agent. There was a task force, I believe it was called Group 41. Mm-hmm. That was specifically created to go after Asian organized crime. And the history of the task force is really interesting, and I think if you get someone who was on it who could talk about it, it would be really cool.
L.J. : Mm-hmm. I heard about how it was kind of like viewed as like. The cool thing was to go after like the Italian mobsters. Yeah, yeah. , That’s where the task force everyone wanted to be in, but then it act, you know, the Asian organized crime was bringing in more drugs.
L.J. : Mm-hmm. So this kind of like ragtag group that like no one took seriously [00:27:00] actually for a period of time became like. This really important, one of the most important task forces. So their story is is pretty fascinating. They, this was since this case started, I think at the time that this case started, since it was such a long case the task force wasn’t involved in it.
L.J. : So they didn’t come in until like a little bit later on this case and that they were working on like a bunch of other cases and they were, that task force made a really big difference. I think in Chinatown. They took down a lot of gangsters.
Gary Jenkins : Sounds like a pretty cool case. I wouldn’t mind getting hold of of somebody from that task force.
Gary Jenkins : I’ll have to start looking around to see if I can find anybody to approach. Yeah. Has anybody written a book on it? Has anybody written a book on it?
L.J. : I don’t think there’s been a book about the task force, but you know what, it’s interesting because I think for a long time the you know, Chinatown.
L.J. : Former gangsters. You know how like the Italians, there’s all these like former gangsters and former Mafia member, there’s all these books, there’s all these movies. Yes. You know, they have podcasts. I know. [00:28:00] My biggest
Gary Jenkins : competition, they’re my, they’re, they’re, they’re against me again. Still they’re against me.
L.J. : Well, but often you have them on your show.
Gary Jenkins : Yes. That some of ’em I do.
L.J. : Yeah. So, but when I started working on this podcast, there was, you know. Basically no former gangsters who were in the Chinatown gangs who were Yeah. Who like spoke about their experiences. Like there was really nothing out there. As I was working on this series, that started to change and now it’s kind of like we’re in a moment, I think, where, I don’t know why, whether it’s been like enough time has passed or whatever or maybe there is this one guy who is a former gangster who was kind of like.
L.J. : If we don’t start talking about our experiences, it’ll be like, it’ll never happen. It’ll actually be this whole history disappeared. Mm-hmm. So he started doing these interviews and he was able to convince other former gangsters to talk. And he wrote a book his name is Mike Moy. And he convinced this other former gangster named [00:29:00] Peter Tin to write a book.
L.J. : So now I think. These former gangsters are starting to come out and I’ve been able to interview one cowboy and he was kind of like, yeah, always talk about the Italian mafia, but like we were a very strong mafia as well, and we just, ’cause we were more like subtle about it, doesn’t mean we should be forgotten.
L.J. : Interesting. So for that reason, so you have
Gary Jenkins : some of those interviews on the podcast, right?
L.J. : I have some of those and I have some of those interviews on the podcast.
Gary Jenkins : Cool. All right.
L.J. : It was really interesting , these former gangsters who wrote books, they had a book reading in Chinatown where they read from their books and people who live in, you know, it was a lot of their family and friends, but it was still really interesting to see this thing that hadn’t really been talked about.
L.J. : Publicly before was, you know, and these gangsters who used to be so feared in Chinatown were now like in the public library above like, you know, by where the children’s books are, like talking about their stories and people were asking them questions like, why did you extort the shopkeepers? Why did you do this?
Gary Jenkins: Yeah.
L.J. : So that was pretty, pretty [00:30:00] fascinating.
Gary Jenkins : Yeah, that’s such an interesting little segment of history. The, of the immigrant story really start the Italians Jewish people of the, all the minorities that came here. Irish probably some German, but. All those minorities that came here, they start off the, the young guys who are criminals who don’t have much opportunity in the larger society.
Gary Jenkins : Start off by extorting money from the shopkeepers and the people have to create a shop. They can’t get a job. So they start a store of some kind, a, a little grocery store, a restaurant or big, and you can use family members to get it going. And then these other gangsters of their own ilk then extort some money from ’em for them to be able to survive.
Gary Jenkins : And they’re all just wanting to be a part of the American pie. That’s all they want is to be you know, be successful, to be an American.
L.J. : Yeah, no, exactly. I think TJ English on your podcast was saying that it’s the most American story of Yeah. Immigrants [00:31:00] come and then they can’t, you know, and until they can’t, you know, opportunities aren’t open to them towards, to make the American dream come true and then being a gangster is a way to be able to make that happen.
L.J. : And then, yeah, once immigrant groups get, are accepted. You know, the gangsters don’t need to be gangsters anymore. And I think, you know, now these Chinatown gangsters who I interviewed, they work in construction and they own restaurants like their kids are, one of their kids is like a police officer, you know?
Gary Jenkins : Interesting, interesting. Well. Lydia, Jean Cott, lj, I really appreciate you coming on the show. This is, I mean, I’m excited looking forward to this podcast and I’m gonna reach out and see if I can snag one of these guys and get even to give me an interview and, and do a show with him. Kind of hear the down and dirty part of it too.
L.J. : Oh, they would love to talk to you and I hope that your listeners listen to the Chinatown Sting.
Gary Jenkins : All right. They will. It’s a Chinatown sting. It’s on the Pushkin network, and Pushkin has a whole bunch of other [00:32:00] shows out there, so don’t get too lost in it, but I highly recommend the one with Michael Lewis.
Gary Jenkins : And Ari lost the name of it. What’s the name of it that you work on Against the rules? Against the Rules? I highly recommend that. I really like that guy. Thanks a lot, lj.
L.J. : Thank you so much. It was a pleasure talking to you.
Gary Jenkins : Okay let me ask you a question here. You said, Mike, what was you, you said his last name, but I didn’t quite pick it up.
Gary Jenkins : What was it?
L.J. : Oh, you should look up Mike Moy. MOY.
Gary Jenkins : Oh, okay. MOY and and Peter Chang. C-H-A-N-G.
L.J. : Yeah. Mike will connect you with everyone. He’s kind of like the hub of like the Chinatown gang stories.
Gary Jenkins: Okay. And he’s a
L.J. : good interview. And if you look at Chinatown gang stories, they have a YouTube channel. Yeah.
L.J. : These, those would all be good guys for you to get. I think you guys would have a good,
Gary Jenkins : okay. Lj, thanks a lot. I will I’ll go ahead and I’ve got a couple others already done, but since you guys are getting started up, probably within the next two to three weeks, and I will send links when I get [00:33:00] this out to whoever I need.
Gary Jenkins : Okay, cool. I’ve got, I got two or three people. I guess. I have your, your email and some of those I think there’s three different people on that where I deal with those companies. I never know who I’m dealing with until I sit down here with you. It’s always kind of hard to figure out. Yeah.
L.J. : It was so fun talking to you.
L.J. : And it was fun learning. My mom’s from Kansas City, so it was when I told you, oh, really? I was like, I had no idea that organized crime was such a thing in Kansas City. And she was like, of course. It’s so, it was funny say that she,
Gary Jenkins : she came from Kansas City.
L.J. : Yeah, she grew up in Kansas City. Yeah. Oh, really?
L.J. : And she was saying that that’s why there’s so many, there’s so much concrete, because the mafia used to control that concrete.
Gary Jenkins : Well, the the, actually he was Irish, the Irish politician Tom Pendergast. Who, who worked. Had a glove with the mafia in the political arena especially. He had a concrete company called Ready Mix Concrete, and they, they poured a lot of concrete in the 1930s.
L.J. : Yeah, that’s what she was saying. That’s, that was the, the origin of all that concrete. Yeah, that, which again.
Gary Jenkins : Irish immigrants and Italian [00:34:00] immigrants and they’re just trying to get a piece of the American pie.
L.J. : Exactly. Exactly. It’s the same story over and over again. It’s almost like maybe we should just be more accepting of immigrants, really.
L.J. : Our problems would be solved.
Gary Jenkins : I know. I know. I don’t know have crime. Oh, well, okay, lj, anything I can ever do for you here in Kansas City, why don’t hesitate to get a hold of me.
L.J. : Okay. And if you’re ever in New York, let me know. It was a pleasure talking to you.
L.J. : Okay, pleasure talking to you.
Speaker: Don’t forget, I like to ride motorcycles. So when you’re out on the streets there and you’re big F-150, watch out for those little motorcycles when you’re out. If you have a problem with ptsd, TSD and you’ve been in the service, be sure to go to the VA website and they’ll help with your drugs and alcohol problem if you got that problem or gambling.
Speaker: If not, you can go to Anthony Ruano. He is a counselor down in Florida. He’s, uh, got a hotline on his, his website. You got a problem with, uh, gambling. Most states will have, if you have gambling, you most states will have a hotline number to call. Just have to search around [00:35:00] for it. You know, I’ve always got stuff to sell.
Speaker: I got my books, I got my movies that are all on Amazon. Just go and, uh, I got links down below in the show notes and just go to my Amazon, uh, sales page and you can figure out what to do. Uh, I really appreciate y’all tuning in and, uh, we’ll keep coming back and doing this. Thanks guys.