On the 2nd, the Federal Court of the Southern District of New York sentenced Liu Dong (sound, Dong Liu), a Chinese who participated in the kidnapping and caused the victim’s death, to 20 years in prison. Liu Dong is a member of a Chinese drug trafficking and kidnapping gang. The gang leader Zheng Dongxing (sound, Dongxing Zheng) also received a sentencing hearing on June 30, but the verdict is still sealed. In addition to Liu Dong and Zheng Dongxing, the other defendants in this case have not yet been sentenced.
According to court documents, Zheng Dongxing’s gang used Internet communication tools to contact a restaurant in Flushing on July 19, 2023, luring the restaurant employee Li Pengcheng (sound, Peng Cheng Li) to go out to meet them, and then illegally detained him and tried to extort a ransom. During the detention, the gang beat and abused the victim Li Pengcheng, and drove him away from New York to New Hampshire. Li Pengcheng died during the kidnapping, abuse and detention. After that, Zheng Dongxing’s gang buried Li Pengcheng’s body in a forest in New Hampshire.
The indictment shows that in addition to 28-year-old Zheng Dongxing and 35-year-old Liu Dong, the members of the criminal gang also include 29-year-old He Wangchao (sound, Wangchao He), 22-year-old Lin Jiangnan (sound, Jiangnan Lin) and 22-year-old Zhang Sui (sound, Sui Zhang), and the registered addresses of the five people are all in Queens. After the incident, Zheng Dongxing was arrested on July 31 of that year, and the other four were arrested in November.
The prosecutors charged the five members of the above gang with three common charges, including kidnapping resulting in death, conspiracy to kidnap and cause death, and conspiracy to sell drugs ketamine (also known as ketamine), as well as other personal charges. After consultation with the prosecutors, at the end of 2024, Liu Dong pleaded guilty to one conspiracy to commit Hobbs Act extortion.
According to the court verdict, Liu Dong was sentenced to 240 months (i.e. 20 years) in prison, with an additional three years of post-release supervision, and a fine of 41,646.58 yuan. Under federal law, this is the maximum sentence Liu Dong can be sentenced to for the crime he pleaded guilty to.
