To the authorities, Cheng Chui Ping was the “mother of all snakeheads,” a ruthless businesswoman who smuggled thousands of Chinese emigrants into the United States.

Prosecutors said she ran a smuggling ring that amassed a $40 million fortune in two decades putting desperate passengers on faulty ships. Many drowned. And, they said, for those who made the trip safely but could not pay, Ms. Cheng sent vicious gangs to abduct and beat, torture or rape them until relatives made good on their debts.

When the Golden Venture, a rusty freighter loaded with 300 starving immigrants, ran aground off the Rockaways in 1993, and 10 people died, Ms. Cheng became the enduring symbol of the traffic in human cargo, and helped popularize the term snakehead, from the Chinese translation for human-smuggler.

But along East Broadway in New York’s Chinatown this weekend, where Ms. Cheng was known as kindly Sister Ping, the untold numbers of Fujianese immigrants who arrived here with her aid, or knew others who did, were mourning her death at age 65 in federal prison with the respect accorded a folk hero.