Illegally transported Chinese immigrants stand on the Rockaway shore looking out at their grounded vessel.
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Golden Venture Spills Its Human Cargo
By LIZ GOFF
Rockaway -JUNE 6, 1993: Early in the morning of June 6, The Golden Venture, a cargo ship not licensed to carry passengers, ran aground on a sandbar off Jacob Riis Park, spilling its illegal cargo of human chattel into the waters of the Atlantic Ocean.
The ship carried nearly 300 illegal Chinese immigrants – most of whom had paid upward of $30,000 each to be smuggled into the United States.
Authorities said the vessel was deliberately grounded by the smugglers, who then told their illegal passengers to jump or swim to shore. Ten people were found dead in the offshore waters, authorities said.
The Golden Venture crew and its passengers were arrested and detained by U.S. officials, who said the illegals survived on a diet of rice and dirty water during their four-month voyage, from Thailand to Africa – and then to the United States.
Images of the illegal passengers jumping off the ship and huddling on the beach covered with blankets flashed a warning of the hazards of human trafficking to the United States.
Resolution At Last
Almost 13-years after the Golden Venture tragedy struck the shores of Queens, a federal judge slammed the architect of the smuggling operation with a 35-year sentence for her role in the multimillion-dollar enterprise.
Chinatown businesswoman Cheng Chui Ping, 57, aka “Sister Ping,” was sentenced March 16, 2006 for running the massive illegal immigrant smuggling empire.
In a last-ditch bid for leniency, Ping delivered a rambling, hour-long plea to Manhattan federal Judge Michael Mukasey, saying she was a poor, hard-working immigrant who had been terrorized by Chinatown gangs.
Ping said she operated a clothing store in Chinatown – and had no connection with the smugglers on the Golden Venture. She ranted about her love of America – and how she lived in this country from 1981 until 1994, when she fled to avoid arrest in the Golden Venture tragedy.
Ping was tracked down, arrested in Hong Kong and returned to this country after six years on the run.
Mukasey told Ping that the things she said were “simply incredible,” and sentenced her to the maximum for conspiracy, money laundering and trafficking in ransom.
Evidence presented at Ping’s trial showed that she raked in millions of dollars by trafficking-in a human cargo of thousands of immigrants from the mid-to late-1990s.
Mukasey sentenced Ping to 20 years for money laundering, 10 years for trafficking in ransom proceeds, and five years for conspiracy to commit alien smuggling and related crimes. She had been convicted by a jury in June 2005.
Ping is appealing the conviction, and is awaiting retrial on one charge that deadlocked the jury.
Mukasey said at the sentencing, “You are not the victim of fabricated evidence. You did precisely what you were accused of in the indictment, and you were justly convicted of it.”
Ping, in an effort to avoid reacting to the sentence, smiled and waved to relatives in the courtroom as she was led away to a waiting jail cell.
