SF crime boss ‘Shrimp Boy’ Chow gets life, insists he’s innocent

Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow, sentenced to life in prison for racketeering and murder as the leader of a venerable Chinatown community organization, said Thursday he was an innocent victim of dishonest prosecutors, a biased judge and incompetent defense attorneys.

“You got the wrong man,” Chow, 56, said in a discourse in San Francisco federal court that lasted more than an hour before a judge pronounced his sentence. “I’m not apologizing (for) a crime I had nothing to do with.”

Chow, the lead prosecutor responded, was only showing his tendency to blame others for his wrongdoing. And U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer said the evidence presented during an eight-week trial amply proved Chow’s guilt.

A federal court jury convicted Chow in January of conspiring to operate his organization, the Ghee Kung Tong, as a racketeering enterprise and of ordering the murder of its previous leader, Allen Leung, in 2006.

Chow was also convicted of conspiring unsuccessfully to murder another rival, Jim Tat Kong, who was later shot to death in 2013. Jurors additionally found him guilty of five counts of dealing in stolen liquor and cigarettes, and of 154 counts of money-laundering through members of his organization who testified that they had his approval.

Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow poses for a portrait in San Francisco in July 2007. Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow poses for a portrait in San Francisco in July 2007. Photo: Jen Siska, Associated Press Photo: Jen Siska, Associated Press Image 1 of / 10 Caption Close SF crime boss ‘Shrimp Boy’ Chow gets life, insists he’s innocent 1 / 10 Back to Gallery

The Leung murder conviction carried a mandatory sentence of life without the possibility of parole. Breyer also imposed a life term for the racketeering conviction, and added a 20-year term for the more than 140 remaining convictions.

Chow plans to appeal. He made it clear at Thursday’s hearing that one argument his new lawyers will make is that he was represented incompetently by a team that included J. Tony Serra, one of the nation’s most renowned criminal defense lawyers.

“My defense team has really failed to protect my rights,” Chow told Breyer.

He said his lawyers failed to properly challenge secretly recorded conversations and phone calls that were allowed as prosecution evidence, telling him their hands were tied by court rulings. When a series of co-defendants testified against him in exchange for reduced sentences, Chow said, he tried to tell his attorneys about the witnesses’ shady backgrounds, but they ignored him.

The prosecution arose from a five-year undercover FBI investigation focusing on the Ghee Kung Tong, a century-old community “brotherhood” that Chow had led since Leung was shot to death in February 2006 by a still-unidentified gunman at his Chinatown import-export business.

Agents said they arranged drug and gun deals and other crimes with payoffs to Chow’s associates, including Keith Jackson, a former San Francisco school board president. Jackson was also a fundraiser for then-state Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, who was snared in the investigation.

In July 2015, Yee and Jackson pleaded guilty to racketeering and admitted that the senator, with Jackson’s help, had accepted bribes from agents posing as shady campaign contributors in exchange for promises of political favors and an agreement to illegally import firearms.

Breyer sentenced Yee in February to five years in prison. Jackson, who admitted taking payoffs for other crimes, including a fictitious murder-for-hire plot, got a nine-year term. San Francisco prosecutors have also charged Jackson and two former local government employees with agreeing to bribes by undercover agents who allegedly sought access to Mayor Ed Lee.

Chow, a self-described gangster for much of his life, had been imprisoned in 1993 on another racketeering charge and won early release a decade later for testifying against a gang leader. He told jurors in the current case that he had reflected on his past while in prison and promised himself, during a meditation session after his release, to live a crime-free life.

He began counseling troubled youths in minority communities and won praise from Lee and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. But prosecutors said Chow had been plotting all along to take over the Ghee Kung Tong and to run it as a criminal gang, with the help of longtime followers.

Chow deserves some praise for “working with young kids,” Assistant U.S. Attorney William Frentzen said at Thursday’s hearing, but at the same time he was “turning (other) younger people to a life of crime.” He described Chow as a “highly manipulative, constant perpetual liar.”

Chow retorted that Breyer, as the trial judge, “allowed Mr. Frentzen to lie, manufacture the evidence.”

Echoing his trial testimony, Chow said he had known nothing about the drug deals and other crimes his associates told agents they had committed with his approval. Of all the money the agents paid for the crimes, he said, none of it went to him.

“I might have less education, but I’m not stupid,” Chow told Breyer. “I know money.”

The jury, however, heard recordings of an undercover agent repeatedly pressing Chow with cash payments for approving his associates’ activities. The agent said Chow usually protested, saying he wasn’t involved, but never turned down the payments, which totaled $60,000.

The agent, who posed as an East Coast businessman with mob connections, recorded conversations with Chow over the course of three years. Testifying in a courtroom closed to the public, the agent described agreements with members of the tong involving sales of supposedly stolen liquor and cigarettes, and some drug deals, with more than $2 million of the proceeds laundered to evade government detection.

Chow’s convictions included more than 100 counts of money-laundering. He has been in custody since his indictment in March 2014.

At Thursday’s hearing, Chow said Breyer, the veteran judge assigned to the case, “has been biased and prejudiced on me.” He cited his lawyers’ unsuccessful attempt to dismiss the charges by claiming he was selectively prosecuted because FBI agents, in another recorded episode, had sought favors from Lee in exchange for a $20,000 contribution they made to his 2011 campaign for mayor. Prosecutors filed no charges against Lee, who has denied wrongdoing.

“I’ve been prejudiced by the court protecting Ed Lee,” Chow told Breyer, who had found no evidence of selective prosecution. Chow also told Breyer that the judge had unfairly made him look bad to the jury by telling him repeatedly to give yes-or-no answers to the prosecutor’s questions.

Chow was implicated in Leung’s murder by a former co-defendant who testified that he had heard Chow order the killing in the midst of a feud between the two men. The driver of the getaway car also said Chow had set up the killing. Jurors heard a secretly recorded conversation in which Chow supposedly told an undercover agent in 2013 that he had once advised Leung that anyone who messed around with Chow, or with his investments, would be “gone.”

Chow listened to the same recording and told the jury he hadn’t been referring to Leung. On Thursday, he denied any involvement in Leung’s murder.

“They claim they do the murder for me. They don’t say how much I pay them,” Chow said, adding that his lawyers “brush(ed) me off” when he raised that issue with them.

But Breyer said the evidence showed that Chow had been motivated by power, not profits.

Eliminating Leung accomplished “the removal of an obstacle to your ascension,” the judge told Chow. His good deeds for troubled youth, Breyer said, were “far outweighed by the corruption you fostered by virtue of your quest for power.”

San Francisco Chronicle

staff writer Kevin Schultz

contributed to this report.

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com

Twitter: @egelko