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Introducing: The Chinatown Sting

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1

Pushkin In New York City in nineteen eighty eight, federal authorities laid a trap.

They'd gotten a tip that a vast amount of heroin was being mailed to the city inside boxes filled with tea.

Speaker 2

All you gotta do is we see in the package.

Don't have to open it, just accept it, and that's it.

Speaker 3

It was a slow beep.

You're listening in and you hear the beat beat beeping in.

When a rapid beap goes bet BBP beat, that means it's been open.

Speaker 1

This sting was huge.

Speaker 3

We probably had about thirty agents.

We had undercover postal agents in uniform attempt to deliver the package at each location.

Speaker 1

That day.

The Feds caught low level drug courriers, mostly women who played Majrong together and town.

Speaker 2

I would play MJ with them, Majohn and I beat them.

Speaker 3

Read her rights, you know in Cantonese, Amandarin.

I forgot exactly which one it was.

She was very upset, crying.

Speaker 2

They took my daughter's picture off the refrigerator.

They go, is this your daughter?

I said yes, They go, oh, you may not see her for like twenty five years.

Speaker 1

My name is Lidia jen Kok.

For the last few years, I've been trying to unravel what happened to a group of moms who played Majong in Chinatown.

How they got pulled into a criminal underworld.

To escape, they were forced to play the highest takes game of their lives.

Speaker 3

I couldn't trust her.

I was not going to put her on the stand.

Speaker 4

That was the moment that she realized that she was not really being paranoid, and everything she did has a consequence.

Speaker 3

Five secs white white people, you know, push in the corn.

What the hell not to take with the mafi I don't.

Speaker 5

Know they can get to any resident in Chinatown.

So that's why the fear is there, because there's no place for the residents to go.

Speaker 2

Once I saw the gon I tried to take his hand, and I saw the flash of light, and that was it.

Speaker 1

This is the Chinatown Sting.

Speaker 3

When you place money about your heartbeat, that's where it goes.

That's your adrenaline rush.

That's the worst you want.

Speaker 1

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