The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 40

40 THE BOSTON SUNDAY GLOBE AUGUST 19, 1990 Pointing to the godfathers of Chinatown's rackets the Italian community exclusively, namese gangs began floating into Boston, robbing gambling dens and jewelry stores, then fleeing to other big cities. The Ping On gang, allegedly headed by Stephen Tse, a former Chinatown restaurateur and Harry Mook protege, has been the dominant force in Chinatown for the last two decades, according to law enforcement officials. The POs, as they are known on Chinatown streets, control much of its gambling, extortion and drug distribution. They shake down pimps so hookers can walk the streets, they shake down restaurateurs with thinly veiled threats about how bad they can make business. And according to the US Drug Enforcement Administration, the Ping On have direct access to some of the highest-quality heroin in the world, from Asia's Golden Triangle.

Older than the Italian Mafia, with their origins in 17th-century China, the triads will probably outlast La Cosa Nostra because of the Asian community's cultural insularity, according to most organized crime authorities. Law enforcement officials find language and cultural barriers difficult to overcome. In that light, last week's money-laundering indictments are viewed as a significant foray into Asian organized crime. The Mafia, which burgeoned during Prohibition, originally exploited CHINATOWN Continued from Page 29 day charges that Mook is anything but legitimate. It alleges that he laundered more than $1.6 million in profits from heroin and gambling operations.

Mook, if guilty as charged, is not alone. There are several other supposedly respectable businessmen in Boston's Chinatown who in fact control the criminal activity there. I While the street gangs may be thought of as the most ruthless incarnation of crime in Chinatown, dispensing beatings and shootings as routinely as they sometimes do meals in their daytime jobs as waiters, it is a handful of businessmen, sojrie thought of as pillars in their community, who manipulate them. In the smoky gambling dens along Tyler and Beach streets, one can find many of the middle class of Chinatown. The vast majority are fine, upstanding members of the community.

In their midst, however, afe the godfathers of Asian orga-ned crime. While the Mafia, in books, movies and television images, has become of the American idiom, considerably less is known about the triads, Asian criminal societies. In recent years, it has been harder to pigeonhole Asian organized crime, especially after roving Viet but as Sicilian Mafiosi assimilated American culture, they moved outside their community and became more vulnerable to the law. In Boston, by the time the FBI busted the Mafia family headed by the Angiulos, the North End had become home to as many yuppies as Italian immigrants. Chinatown, however, remains more culturally insulated than any other Boston neighborhood, and Asian gangsters have exploited that insularity.

Even when triad members venture outside Chinatown, it is usually to rob or extort money from Asian merchants in other communities. Law enforcement also finds a populace intimidated by the gangs and not entirely confident in the justice system. "Please," said one community leader, "why are you asking me about that? That could hurt me." Like residents of South Boston or East Boston, where gangsters of Irish and Italian ancestry abound, those in Chinatown know organized crime is among them, but fear acknowledging it. "I live here," one community activist said. "You don't." Tse allegedly rose to power in the 1970s by defying the traditional authority of elders inside the On Leong tong, whose members form the Chinese Merchants Association.

The tong contends it is a civic group, Heights restaurant last August. According to sources both in law enforcement and Chinatown," the two Kwongs had argued inside a restaurant, ending with Michael Kwong, 30, belting Wayne Kwong in the head with a portable cellular telephone he was carrying. On Aug. 11, 1989, Kwong's body was riddled by a hail of bullets fired by a gunman who walked into the New Dragon Chef. Investigators say there has been no retaliation for Michael Kwong's murder.

Just what that mean? is unclear. Tse, meanwhile, did not return from Hong Kong for the funeral of his friend. Wayne Kwong, who has an unlisted telephone number, could not be reached for comment. In the past, Kwong has refused comment Thomas May, an attorney who has represented Kwong, said he has not heard from him in months. Today begins the August Moon festival in Chinatown.

It is a festive, happy time. But it is also a time when competing criminals sometimes cross each other's paths. Consequently, investigators who track Asian organized crime will attend the festivities, taking note of those in the crowd. Investigators believe that among those in the crowd could be the men who killed Dick Leung in his Newport home nine days ago. Newport Police Capt.

William Burns is investigating the Leung murder. It is his first look into the murky world of Asian organized crime. There is more than just a professional interest at hand; Leung's restaurant, the Canton, is located next door to the city's police station, and Leung had been a well-liked fixture in the affluent seacoast community for 27 years. Burns says he suspects that gang members operating out of Boston came to rob Leung. He does not believe that Leung was preyed upon randomly.

"I think," Burns said, "somebody sent them down here." Proving that, Bill Burns will! find, is easier said than done. I have' to kill you." The young man then pulled a knife across the 55-year-old Yee's throat. Blood gushed from the wound like a fountain and Harry Yee pretended he was dead. Yee survived to testify at the trial of his would-be assassins, one of whom was convicted. The other hanged himself in jail awaiting trial.

An alleged accomplice, John K. Chan, who resigned as a loan officer at the Shawmut Bank branch in Chinatown after allegations of impropriety about his work arose, was acquitted. Chan, who lives in Weston, said he had given the two hitmen a lift to Yee's house in his Mercedes-Benz, but did not know their intentions. Kwong's falling out with Yee was mentioned at the trial, according to the prosecutor, Assistant Norfolk District Attorney Judith Cowin, but despite what Yee quoted his assailants as saying, there was not enough to charge Kwong. Naturally, Cowin's curiosity, and that of many who track Asian organized crime, was piqued two months ago when three young Vietnamese men were stopped a few doors down from Kwong's Randolph home.

When a police officer asked what the men were doing in the area, one of them pointed to Kwong's house and said they were visiting a friend. But when the officer asked them to get the friend, the men began walking away. The car the three men were in turned out to be stolen, and they were arrested. During a search, police allegedly found two loaded submachine guns under its front seat. Cowin says the three men, two of whom gave Chelsea addresses, the other from Brighton, were members of a roving hit squad that does contract killings across the United States.

Why they were visiting Wayne Kwong's house is unknown. And then there was the demise of Michael Kwong, Stephen Tse's right-hand man, who had several run-ins with Wayne Kwong. The last took place shortly before Michael Kwong, no relation to Wayne, was shot to death inside his Arlington but law enforcement officials say its leaders control the gambling and other rackets in Chinatown. One of the mentors Tse spurned was Harry Mook, whose Four Seas was next door to Tse's Kung Fu restaurant on Tyler Street. Tse gained power by recruiting a "Hong Kong influx" of young men who came to Boston following the 1965 change in immigration laws.

Tse, however, has not been seen around Boston for more than a year. Law enforcement sources say he is in Hong Kong, where he has remained except for an occasional trip to mainland China to tend to his bean sprout business. Tse's lawyer, Morris Goldings, said he does not know whether Tse intends to return to the area. Because of Tse's absence, and because of the current level of para-, noia in Chinatown, the rackets there are basically up for grabs, according to some who monitor its criminal activity. Some believe a group of local businessmen may be doing the grabbing, following a pattern successfully employed by Tse two decades ago.

Law enforcement officials say they have seen a young, ambitious restaurateur named Wayne Kwong with On Leong leaders. They say he, like Stephen Tse years ago, has a following of young men. People who cross Wayne Kwong have the curious habit of ending up dead, or close to it. Consider what happened to Harry Yee four years ago, when he decided to throw Kweng and Kwong's brother off the board of directors of his Golden Kai restaurant in Abing-ton. Two days later, Yee returned to his Braintree home and found two men waiting for him.

They tied him up and blindfolded him. "How come you kick your partner out?" one of the intruders asked, Yee recalled in an interview. Yee denied he had. "Your partner gave me $30,000 to kill you," the man replied. After pinching at Yee's neck, as someone would pluck at a turkey ready for slaughter, one of the men said, rather nobly, "I'm sorry, but I I F3 rnfirfnl IT UUUo SAVE 33-43 ON OUR HOST POPULAR STYLES South Shore Bank! xu -jUi You can do something constructive with our Home Equity Credit Line.

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