By Chris Fuchs
A Flushing man pleaded guilty last week to bilking seven Queens women out of more than $130,000 through ads he took out in a Chinese-language newspaper that promised marriage and an affluent lifestyle, the Queens district attorney said.
After the women responded to his advertisements in the World Journal, a Chinese-language daily newspaper based in Whitestone, the 45-year-old Flushing man, Ping Liu, would tell them that his money had been tied up and would then ask for loans. In some cases, the women gave Liu as much as $20,000, District Attorney Richard Brown said.
Liu pleaded guilty in Queens Criminal Court June 27 to one count of third-degree grand larceny, having cheated the women out of more than $130,000, Brown said. Justice Joseph Grosso said he would sentence Liu next month to two to six years in prison, the district attorney said.
Between June 1999 and January 2001 Liu either responded to or took out personal ads in the newspaper as a professed eligible businessman from Shanghai, one of the wealthiest cities in China, the district attorney said. The women, after making contact with Liu, were promised expensive homes and a lavish lifestyle — offers that were supported by official-looking documents that were shown to them, Brown said.
But some time later Liu would claim to be “cash poor,” saying the government had frozen his assets, the district attorney said. In other instances, he would say he was waiting for his funds to be transferred to New York from California, Brown said. He would then ask the women to lend anywhere from $350 to $20,000 and, in exchange, he would promise them high-paying jobs, even marriage. Liu also assaulted two of the women, all of whom were from Queens, during arguments that arose from the debts, Brown said.
The Queens district attorney’s office became aware of the case only after the allegations were raised by a member of its Asian American Advisor Council, which meets regularly, said Mary de Bourbon, a spokeswoman for Brown.
The charges against Liu had shed light on a business for which many Chinese-language newspapers serve as a platform: marriages of convenience. Many women from Shanghai run ads in such newspapers seeking men, usually in their 40s, who are U.S. citizens, said Joe Wei, an editor of the World Journal. It is common, he said, for some to offer as much as $80,000, often paying the sum in installments, to come to the United States to find such a partner.
Reach reporter Chris Fuchs by e-mail at Timesledgr@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 156.
