By: Mario Mancini
A Chinatown criminal-turned-informant was able to work both sides for decades while playing the FBI and NYPD. Ben Feuerherd of The New York Post writes, that the informant was Qian Zheng, known as Cash, a well-known figure in gambling parlors and other seedy neighborhood hangouts.
For nearly two decades – from 1998 through 2015 – Cash was a snitch for NYPD Major Case Squad detectives and federal immigration investigators, according to court documents recently unsealed at the request of The Post.
For more than eight of those years, he was also the head of a violent organized crime outfit – later dubbed the “Zheng Organization” by the feds – that trafficked ketamine and MDMA, ran a high-stakes gambling parlor, collected debts through violence and extorted business owners in New York’s Asian-American communities, according to court documents.
Quian was sentenced to nine years for the host of crimes he committed as a Dai Lo when Cash pleaded guilty to racketeering in Brooklyn federal court in 2017.
Feuerherd writes that the details of how he began working as a source for the NYPD are murky, in part because the first decade of his informant file is missing, according to a newly unsealed sentencing submission filed by his attorney in 2017. In the memo, Cash’s attorney claimed “dozens of convictions, from both state and federal prosecutions involving prostitution, smuggling, human trafficking, assault, gang activity, murder, and police corruption were secured with his assistance.”
In Quian’s first stint as a federal informant from 2003 to 2006, he sang about a human trafficking victim, wore a wire on a “handful of occasions” and provided information about murder, extortion, alien smuggling and money laundering,” then-HSI Acting Deputy Assistant Director Anthony Scandiffio said in a letter submitted in his case.
“[Cash] also set up a dinner party for the targets of the investigation, which aided in the arrest of these individuals,” Scandiffio added in the 2017 letter.
According to documents found by The New York Post related to the 2017 sentencing, “It is clear from the defendant’s behavior that he acted as an informant to further his own agenda,” Assistant US Attorneys Nadia E. Moore and Maria Cruz Melendez wrote.
“The defendant operated commercial bus companies and extorted rival bus companies. The defendant distributed narcotics and provided information about other narcotics distributors,” the memo states. “The defendant operated illegal gambling businesses and provided information about others who ran illegal gambling parlors.”
It goes on: “The defendant extorted business owners and provided information about others who also engaged in extortion. The defendant committed and solicited numerous acts of extreme violence and provided information about violent crimes. The defendant was involved in alien smuggling and provided information about alien smuggling.”
In many cases, Cash provided information to the cops he had learned from other people –but refused to introduce the actual source of the information to the cops, the memo states.
He did so, “in order to maintain their relationship and potentially obtain a benefit from the NYPD,” the prosecutors wrote.
