A STEP AHEAD OF DEATH
Shot in the face last month, alleged money launderer was luckier than his associate
Paul King Jin, a former boxer from China who got rich in B.C. as an admitted loan shark and alleged money launderer, was shot in the face recently in a restaurant. His associate Jian Jun Zhu was killed. Jin, who police allege has cleaned upwards of $220 million a year, has been looking over his shoulder for years.
Years before alleged money launderer Paul King Jin was injured in a Richmond shooting that left his associate dead, he and his wife told police about the danger he was facing.
Interviewed after he was arrested in February 2016, Jin told police he switched cars often and had even sold a Richmond house because “myself in danger — I tell you.”
The Vancouver Sun has obtained transcripts of the 2016 police interview with Jin and a 2015 one with his wife Xiaoqi (Apple) Wei after her arrest in connection with the police E-pirate money laundering investigation. Neither has been charged.
Jin, 51, was shot in the face Sept. 18 while seated with an alleged money launderer, Jian Jun Zhu, inside a Japanese restaurant on Capstan Way. Zhu, 44, was killed.
Zhu and his spouse, Caixuan Qin, had faced several charges in connection with the E-pirate probe and an underground bank they were alleged to have operated, called Silver International. They are alleged to have laundered as much as $220 million a year, largely proceeds from drug trafficking.
But the charges were dropped suddenly in November 2018.
The transcripts are part of 1,000 pages of documents filed in late August in B.C. Supreme Court.
REASON FOR NO CHARGES
The transcripts reveal for the first time that no charges have been approved against Jin and Wei in E-pirate because the charges were stayed against their alleged associates Zhu and Qin.
The Integrated Homicide Investigation Team has released little information about last month's gangland shooting of men alleged to be B.C.'S biggest money launderers. In the earlier police interviews, Jin and Wei referred to threats to Jin and said he had even been warned by police that he might be in danger.
RCMP Cpl. Mel Chizawsky asked Jin who might be after him. “I know you're saying in danger, but from who? Like, is it because people are your competitors?” Chizawsky asked the admitted loan shark.
“Yeah, you know,” Jin replied. “You guys told me that, too, right?”
The Sun has confirmed that police gave Jin a “duty to warn” briefing in 2015. The warnings are given when police receive information that someone might be in danger. Specifics on how the police got the information are not revealed.
During the 2016 interview, Jin told Chizawsky that police had clearly heard “something” about a threat to him. “I hope you're wrong,” he said.
Chizawsky told Jin it was suspicious that he was driving different cars all the time that were not in his name.
“Like the vehicle you are driving today. Who owns that vehicle?”
“I pay the down payment,” Jin said, adding that keeping his name off vehicle registrations was another safety measure because “myself sometime (I'm) in danger right. … I'm a loan shark. I have money you know.”
PRECAUTIONARY MOVE
Chizawsky also asked Jin why he and his wife moved from a large house they bought in 2013 to a rented Richmond condo in the fall of 2015.
“For better security,” Jin replied. Wei, 30, was arrested on Oct. 15, 2015 — the day E-pirate investigators searched a number of Metro locations. At the time, her husband was on a trip to China.
She was then interviewed by Vancouver police Sgt. Alvin Shum, who asked if Jin was “ever scared of people going after him … like hurting him or threatening him?”
At first Wei said no, that “nobody threatened him” and that he had never threatened others.
But then she mentioned the warning from police.
“Paul talked to me. He says the police says maybe you get in danger,” Wei said. “Of course, I get scared.”
She said the warning was “part of the reason” they moved.
LIVES IN CANADA
The documents obtained by The Sun paint a picture of Jin and Wei's lives in Canada and how each ended up in the Lower Mainland and at the centre of an international money laundering investigation.
Jin told police that he was a champion amateur boxer in China and was on the country's national team in the mid-1980s. He had hoped to make it to the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, but missed the cut.
In 1989, Jin immigrated to Canada, settling in Montreal, where he worked at a gym. He lived in Quebec for three or four years and even trained some police officers, he said.
After moving to Toronto, Jin met his first spouse and the mother of his two older children, Jesse and Snow.
By 1995, he owned “around seven to eight places in Toronto,” he claimed, including massage parlours, restaurants and gyms.
“So you established a very good lifestyle in Toronto,” the officer commented.
“I worked hard,” Jin said, rattling off the names of several of his former businesses.
He also got in trouble with the law. He was convicted in April 2008 in Richmond of both sexual assault and sexual exploitation and got a two-week sentence on top of 16 days of time served. The following year in Toronto he was convicted of aggravated assault and received a conditional sentence of two years less a day.
There were many more criminal charges laid that were later withdrawn or discharged, including an
assault count in 2001, another assault charge, plus one for uttering threats in 2004, a breach charge in 2007 and in 2009 charges of failure to comply with a recognizance, obstructing a peace officer, failure to attend court and assault with a weapon. When he moved to B.C., Jin opened the Water Cube spa in 2008 inside the Radisson Hotel. It now operates out of a mall on No. 3 Road.
MONEY LENDING
Then, Chizawsky suggested to Jin that he began “to loan money to different people for a variety of reasons and some of those people have come forward to police and said that when they became late in payments or defaulted with their payment, they were not happy with how you approached them or had representatives of your firm approach them.”
Jin denied that he had “any problem with my customers.” He laughed.
“I borrow money from the people, they give it to me,” he said, explaining that he then reloads the money at an interest rate that's “higher than the bank.”
Apple Wei said in her interview that she was a teenager when she came from China to study at Douglas College in 2008.
She met Jin a short time later and was married by the time she was 23, she said. They have two young children.
She repeatedly said she was a housewife and not involved in her husband's businesses, even though she admitted that sometimes her name was registered as an owner on properties of debtors who couldn't pay.
“You're not a housewife. You know a lot more than you're telling me. You know the vocabulary. You know the lingo. You know the people,” Shum, the Vancouver police sergeant, countered. “You need to tell me more about what you know and to protect yourself. And you need to think about what's best for your family.”
Neither Jin nor Wei would tell police where they got the more
than $4.3 million found in a safe at their rental apartment on Brighouse Way in 2015.
“I don't want to mention about that,” Jin said.
Wei said some of the cash was her husband's and some belonged to his friend.
Shum asked: “Do you think possibly that the money from Paul's rich friends is like dirty money, crime money?”
“I don't think so,” Wei replied. She referred to Jin's friends as the “big bosses” in China.
“They don't like do some illegal thing,” she said.
She said her husband had business interests overseas — a hotel in China and a mine in Mongolia. Some of their money comes from there, Wei said.
EVERYTHING ABOVE BOARD
Both admitted he loaned money to people but claimed everything was above board. The interest rates were at a reasonable level and no one was ever threatened with violence, they said.
Even when they went to lawyers to get Wei's name registered on properties, it was simply a “mortgage,” she explained.
The RCMP affidavit filed as part of civil forfeiture proceedings paints a different picture, alleging Jin withdrew nearly $27 million from Silver International over a 5½-month period in 2015.
Police surveillance showed that in some instances cash picked up by Jin or his associates was delivered to people who gambled at River Rock and Edgewater casinos.
Jin said the money he got from Silver was already his, but in China.
“I give (Silver International) the money for China you know, they give the money here,” he said.
He admitted he loaned money to gamblers, but said it was because B.C. — unlike Las Vegas, Hong Kong or Macao — doesn't allow casinos to give lines of credit.
He used to love to go to Vegas, Jin said, though could no longer travel to the U.S. because of his criminal record
In Vegas, he was “like king.”
“My name is money,” he said, laughing. “I call … they give, money right. Credit you know. I collect million, two million, they deal right away.”
In Canada, “you don't give credit, … Here is why we have to borrow the money to the customer you know,” Jin said.
For months in 2015 and early 2016, police followed Jin and Wei as they went about their business. They documented meetings where they say Jin distributed cash. They also watched as they bought groceries, stopped at restaurants and picked up dry cleaning.
Police also watched as cars arrived at a large Richmond property on the banks of the Fraser River. They allege Jin ran one of two illegal casinos on the 27-acre site at 13511 No. 4 Road. The other was allegedly inside a condo at 5131 Brighouse Way, then owned by Wei's mother, Yumin Zhang, who worked at Bank of Beijing and lived in China. It has since been sold.
RCMP ON GAMBLING
The RCMP affidavit said “the net profit of the gaming houses for June 11, 2015 to October 8, 2015 was $32,716,719.”
Jin has not been charged with illegal gambling, though he was the subject of a Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit investigation called E-nationalize that recommended charges. The B.C. Prosecution Service is reviewing the case.
Jin, his wife, mother, father, son and niece are all the subject of B.C. government civil forfeiture lawsuits. They have denied all allegations in their filed responses.
Chizawsky put some of the evidence allegedly gathered at the two locations to Jin during their 2016 interview.
“I don't like underground casinos,” Jin said, asserting his innocence repeatedly.
“I'm on your side. I can help you guys you know, if you need any help,” Jin said. “You know why I'm innocent — I lose money too.”