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MANHATTAN---A Jersey City, NJ woman has pleaded guilty to using her New York business since January to provide customers a way to move $7.2 million between Vietnam and the United States, in violation of federal and state regulations requiring her to check and record her customers' identification and to scrutinize their transactions for suspicious activity.
Manhattan district attorney Robert M. Morgenthau said that for at least two years, Rose Huong Phung Dao has been operating an unlicensed money transfer business in Manhattan through her business, Kim Phuong Vietnam Enterprise Inc., a Chinatown jewelry store.
Dao pleaded guilty to attempted enterprise corruption, a class C felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison, and a violation of the Banking Law, a class E felony, punishable by 1 to 3 years in prison.
Money transfer businesses are obligated under federal and state law to develop and implement an effective anti-money laundering program, to file suspicious activity reports with law enforcement if suspicious activity is identified, to follow currency transaction reporting (CRT) requirements for transactions over $10,000 and to screen customers' identification against lists of known terrorists and narcotics traffickers, according to Morgenthau.
Prosecutors said for a fee, Dao allowed her customers to move money to Vietnam without any scrutiny for suspicious activity, and screened none of them against the lists of known terrorists and narcotics traffickers. Moreover, without filing a single Currency Transaction Report, Dao made at least 70 cash transmittals from Vietnam to the United States of over $10,000 cash, totaling about $4,000,000, and24 transmittals from the United States to Vietnam of over $10,000 cash, totaling $390,000. She also purposefully structured customers' transactions to avoid federal and state record keeping requirements.
In part, DAO operated her money service business outside of the conventional banking system - like a hawala - by means and methods that are generally untraceable, prosecutors said. . For example, prosecutors said that Dao often did not wire transfer to Vietnam all the funds she received from her customers. Rather, she kept much of the funds she received for transmittal to Vietnam here in New York so that they could later be distributed in New York County to recipients of transmittal orders placed in Vietnam. Likewise, Dao did not wire transfer to the United States all the funds she collected in Vietnam. Instead, she retained those funds in Vietnam to distribute to Vietnamese recipients of transmittal orders placed at her Chinatown jewelry store.
As a part of her plea, Dao has agreed to forfeit over $250,000, including monies seized from her bank accounts and cash found in her storefront on Aug., the date a search warrant was executed at her Chinatown business.
http://www.manhattanda.org/whatsnew/press/Rose%20SCI.pdf
12-20-05
© 2005 North
Country Gazette
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