THE JUDGE & THE CONVICT'S WOMAN
Page 4 of 13
The sheriffs found much more than Yan and Lo in the Jin home. A search turned up a bulletproof vest, three silencers and various loaded handguns and pistol-grip shotguns, some of them under the cushions of the sofas in the living room and family room. They also found blasting caps, five and a half pounds of C-4 plastic explosives and two and a half pounds of dynamite. These firearms and explosive were within access of Jin's twin four-year-old daughters and 13-year-old son Sean who told investigators that he had made a detonator for the C-4 plastic explosive, but that it had not worked. That resulted in the child-endangerment charges later filed against Jin, Lo and Chu.
| Investigators seized over $700,000 and another $100,000 in cash that had been placed in a safe deposit box by Lo a few days before the arrest. |
Beginning on March 20 investigators began serving search warrant on various banks and seized over $700,000 and another $100,000 in cash that had been placed in a safe deposit box by Lo a few days before the arrest.
Bank records showed that between June of 1994 and February of 1995, Jin and Lo had over $643,000 cash deposited into various accounts in their names. The family's 1994 Mercedes had been bought with $40,000 in cash and $94,000 in checks and that their 1995 Plymouth minivan had been bought with $26,500 cash.
Investigators also uncovered 35 aliases Jin had used at various times and learned that three of the guns and all three silencers found in the Jin home had been stolen in Nevada.
With the help of a man named Jason Scott Custer, Jin had bought and learned to operate various pieces of equipment used to print labels on compact disks. They asked a printing company to copy packaging identical to that used for Microsoft Encarta 95 CD-ROMs.
In the face of this evidence, Jin admitted that since 1990 his income had come from selling counterfeit Microsoft software and that those operations were the source of the money uncovered in various bank accounts under the name of Lo, Xu and Chu and the certificate of deposit found in his house. Questioned separately in July of 1995, three months after their arrest, Lo claimed that all the money belonged to her. Their income tax returns, on the other hand, showed no taxable income for Jin for 1992 and 1993 and only $14,000 in each of those years for Lo, according to an FBI analyst assisting the investigation.
The money laundering charges against Jin, Chu, Lo and Custer were based on Jin's various financial dealings with Custer. Custer claimed to have been employed by Jin to tutor Sean at a salary of $2,000 a month. He also claimed to be repaying Jin $1,500 a month on a loan of $207,000 made by Jin with which Custer bought a $250,000 apartment building in Los Angeles. In addition, Jin seems to have loaned Custer between $50,000 and $150,000 in a complex series of $50,000 transactions involving several accounts. The investigator concluded that this amounted to a scheme to launder the profits from the counterfeiting operation.
The Second District Appellate Court on Spring Street where Jin filed the handwritten Petition for a Writ of Habeas Corpus that won him a new trial.
Based on these facts developed by investigating officer Jess Bembry, the DA's office moved successfully to deny bail to Jin, Chu and Lo pending trial.
One allegation for which the investigator and the DA seem to have failed to find convincing evidence was that Jin was involved with organized crime. In particular, the investigator tried, unsuccessfully, to uncover links with the Wah Ching, the most notorious among U.S.-based Chinese gangs.
The evidence produced by the investigation was enough, however, to persuade the grand jury to indict Jin, Chu, Lo, Xu, Xu's girlfriend "Jane Doe Su" and Custer with conspiracy to manufacture counterfeit marks and conspiracy to commit money laundering. The original indictment filed September 1, 1995 also charged Jin, Chu and Lo with two counts of child endangerment. Page 5
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