Introducing: The Chinatown Sting
Here’s a preview of a podcast we think you'll enjoy. From our friends at Pushkin Industries, this is The Chinatown Sting. In the late 1980s, a group of women connected through the mahjong parlors in Manhattan’s Chinatown were caught in a massive undercover drug bust. But this bust was just the beginning of an even bigger case. Host Lidia Jean Kott and co-reporter Shuyu Wang interview sources who’ve never spoken on record before, including witnesses, defendants, and federal prosecutors, to reconstruct a case that still has repercussions today. Listen to The Chinatown Sting on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get podcasts and binge the entire season, ad-free, with a Pushkin+ subscription—sign up on The Chinatown Sting Apple Podcasts show page or at pushkin.fm/plus.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Listen and follow along
Transcript
Hi, everyone.
I'm Lydia Jean Cott.
I'm dropping into your feed today to bring you a preview of my new podcast, The Chinatown Sting.
It's about a woman living in Manhattan's Chinatown in the 1980s.
After she agrees to receive a package in the mail for her best friend, she finds herself caught in a criminal case.
It's led by a prosecutor determined to bring down one of Chinatown's most notorious gangsters, no matter the cost.
Let's get into it
In New York City, in 1988, federal authorities laid a trap.
They'd gotten a tip that a vast amount of heroin was being mailed to the city inside boxes filled with tea.
All you gotta do is receive the package.
Don't have to open it.
Just accept it, and that's it.
It was a slow beep.
You're listening in.
and you hear the beep beep beep and then when a rapid beep goes beep beep beep beep beep that that means it's been open this sting was huge we probably had about 30 agents we had undercover postal agents in uniform attempt to deliver the package at each location
that day the feds caught low-level drug couriers mostly women who played mahjong together in chinatown i would play mj with them mahjong
And I beat them.
Read her rights, you know, in Canter, Cantonese and Mandarin.
I forgot exactly which one it was.
She was very upset, crying.
They took my daughter's picture off the refrigerator.
They go, is this your daughter?
I said, yes.
They go, oh, you may not see her for like 25 years.
My name is Lydia Jing Ka.
For the last few years, I've been trying to unravel what happened to a group of moms who played Mahjong in Chinatown.
How they got pulled into a criminal underworld.
To escape, they were forced to play the highest stakes game of their lives.
I couldn't trust her.
I was not going to put her on the stand.
That was the moment that she realized that she was not really being paranoid and everything she did has a consequence.
Five, six white people, you know, pushed me in the car.
I'm going, what the hell?
Not to say what the mafia is, but I don't know.
They can get to any resident in Chinatown, so that's why the fear is there.
Because there's no place for the residents to go.
Once I saw the gun, I tried to take his hand and I saw the flash of light, and that was it.
This is the Chinatown Sting.
When you place money, don't your heartbeat?
That's where it goes.
That's your adrenaline rush.
That's the rush you want.
Subscribe to Pushcum Plus to hear the entire season of the Chinatown Sting ad-free starting September 16th.
Subscribers also get bonus episodes, full audiobooks, and early ad-free listening from your favorite Pushkin hosts and authors.
Find Pushkin Plus on the Chinatown Sting Show page on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm slash plus.
