NEW YORK prosecutors were yesterday celebrating netting their biggest ever fish from the world of Chinatown crime - a Hong Kong-born businessman convicted of a vicious trail of murder and extortion.
Clifford Wong Chi-fai, 40, president of the Tung On Association and also, a jury heard, a member of the territory's Sun Yee On triad, faces life in jail after being found guilty of ordering the 1992 pool hall murder of a 17-year-old schoolboy who was mistaken for a member of a rival gang.
Another former Sun Yee On member, who worked with Wong in New York, was among five other defendants facing long jail terms.
Lam Kin-ming, the Brooklyn court was told, helped plan the cold-blooded shooting of two rival Sun Yee On members in 1987.
Both Lam and Wong were also convicted of various racketeering and extortion charges related to the Tung On's violent protection of its Chinatown turf against rival gangs.
After a three-month trial, and 10 days of jury deliberations, Assistant US Attorney Leslie Caldwell welcomed the convictions, saying they could pave the way for successful prosecutions in forthcoming high-profile cases, including the leaders of two other tongs, the On Leong and the Tsung Tsin.
Wong's case was crucial in that he was the first head of a tong - a local community association - to be found guilty of serious gang-related crimes using federal 'RICO' anti-racketeering statutes.
Wong, who never took the stand and called no defence witnesses, claimed he was a legitimate businessman who had no control over the Tung On Boys, a violent gang which used the association's facilities.
But New York Eastern District Attorney Zachary Carter said: 'This conviction confirms the symbiotic relationship between the Tung On so-called 'business association' and the street gangs that enforced its dominion over a substantial portion of the Chinatown community.
'We hope that as a result of these convictions, members of the Asian-American community will have greater confidence in the ability of law enforcement to protect them from illicit tongs and the street gangs that support them.' The court heard that Wong, who is thought to have left Hong Kong in the 1970s, established working links with the Sun Yee On in the mid-1980s, when he was already Tung On chairman.
He brought triad enforcers from Hong Kong to manage and provide security for an illegal gambling house.
However, an internal dispute erupted between Sun Yee On members, and one faction turned to Wong for help.
In 1987, prosecutors said, Lam helped organise an operation in which two men working for him and Wong posed as passengers in a limousine service operated by the rival faction.
The men ordered the car to a remote area of Brooklyn, where they shot two of their rivals in the head from the back seat.
The jury acquitted Wong of involvement in the killings, but convicted Lam.
However, Wong was convicted of murder and conspiracy in connection with ordering an attack on members of the Ghost Shadows gang, which had encroached on Tung On turf.
In the 1992 attack, three hooded men entered a Greenwich Village pool hall and fired more than 15 shots at a crowd of Chinese teenagers, killing a 17-year-old high school student, James Rou, and wounding four others.
None of the victims was connected with the gangs, but it was the gunmen's co-operation with the authorities that led to Wong's arrest.
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