Word: payment
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...CASH P2Ps (person-to-person payment services), like PayPal and eMoneyMail, are becoming the standard method of settlement on Web-auction sites. Buyers deposit money in an online account that transfers funds to the seller when a transaction is completed. Unlike credit cards, though, most P2Ps have not been offering fraud protection. That's changing in light of scams in which customers thought they were buying things like hard drives and digital cameras but got stiffed. Varying levels of protection are now available...
Ping's not-so-secret bank was also used to enlarge the smuggling operation, according to the police. Kwong says it enabled the snakeheads to lend money in China to those who couldn't afford the down payment on the trip or who didn't have relatives already in the U.S. to sponsor them. "They charged 30% annual interest, enough to keep someone working to pay it off over a very long time," Kwong says. It also enabled Ping and others to transfer the payments for the smuggling fee immediately after they were made, opening up a whole new pool...
...skyrocketed, larger criminal gangs learned that smuggling people was more profitable and legally less risky than smuggling drugs. Quickly the nature of the game changed. Gangs with bases in Hong Kong and China entered the field. Immigrants were recruited en masse, even if they couldn't afford a down payment. And when they couldn't keep up the payments or find jobs in a recession-wracked America, they were kidnapped, tortured and sometimes killed. To accommodate the demand, snakeheads pooled resources and bought old unseaworthy ships and stuffed the holds with people who would spend months at sea in horrific...
...expect fathers not to see their children. In America the law comes first. To Chinese, families are more important," he explained. And money is no object if reunion is the result. "If someone died on the journey," says Wong, "she was famous for making a payment to the family and promising free passage for the next son. In China she was like a goddess. A snakehead with a heart...
Police say she paid the gangs to do her dirty work, and her indictment lists several instances of calls from her demanding ransom and the payment of ransom money for the release of immigrants who were being held until families or relatives paid their smuggling fee. Wong, however, believes her participation in gangs was coerced. He says Ah Kay at one point sent goons who threatened to destroy her restaurant if she didn't knuckle under to his gang. Ah Kay, who pleaded guilty to alien smuggling several years ago, is expected to testify against her. Her attorney Joel Cohen...