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There were numerous gambling houses in Chinatown (contemporary houses pull in from $40,000 to $50,000 on a good night), and Chinese faces became familiar at the city’s racetracks, probably the only. Last week, the federal government of the United States claimed a six-story New York City Chinatown building valued at about $17 million in a case related to illegal gambling. Attorney for the Southern District of New York announced today the filing of a civil complaint seeking the forfeiture of the six-story Chinatown building, located at 35-37 East Broadway. The building is alleged to have been in the site of a pervasive network of illegal gambling activities. Attorney Announces Forfeiture Of Chinatown Building That Housed Illegal Gambling Operations Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced today the settlement of a civil forfeiture action against a six-story Chinatown building, appraised at approximately $17 million, located at 35-37.
NEW YORK (AP) _ Benny Ong, reputed to be the ″Godfather of Chinatown″ and a major figure for decades in the Asian-American underworld, has died at 87.
Ong, known in New York’s Chinatown as ″Uncle Seven″ because he was the seventh son of a Chinese peasant, died Saturday at New York Downtown Hospital. He had been suffering from prostate cancer and pneumonia.
Ong headed the Hip Sing Tong, a Chinatown business organization. The tong’s leaders say the group does nothing wrong, but police have said for decades that it and a few other tongs control vice in Chinatown, including gambling, prostitution and, lately, drugs.
The Hip Sing reputedly had links to the Flying Dragons, a violent street gang involved with various criminal rackets.
Ong spent 17 years in prison for his role in a 1935 gangland robbery in which someone was killed.
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In 1974, authorities secretly recorded him bragging how he routinely bribed police and court personnel to protect his illegal gambling operations and the illegal aliens who ran them. He served one year on a bribery charge.
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His lawyer charged that Ong had been singled out by Rudolph Giuliani, who was then a federal prosecutor and is now the city’s mayor.
In the 1980s, Ong was again linked to violence when a businessman said three of his friends were gunned down in a bar after he clashed with Hip Sing members.
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He was a familiar figure on the teeming streets of Manhattan’s Chinatown, which he walked with the aid of a cane. Ong often held court in a restaurant near his home, sipping tea or playing cards.
Richard Eng, executive secretary of the Hip Sing Association, said there would be three days of public ceremonies in Chinatown later this month to mark Ong’s death.