Just biz – then it turned deadly
He arranged for slay of ex-employee who went out on his own – feds
A Queens businessman masterminded the 2019 murder-for-hire of a former employee who set up a rival real estate renovation company, federal prosecutors said Tuesday.
Qing Ming Yu, 54, was arrested at his palatial Long Island home Tuesday in the killing of his former star employee, Xin Gu, 31, who was shot dead early on Feb. 12, 2019, as he left a Flushing karaoke bar. Gu’s new company earlier that night threw a big party to celebrate the Lunar New Year.
“He was only 31 years old. I wish I was the one who would suffer, not my son,” said Ying Xu, Gu’s mother, outside a Brooklyn federal courtroom.
“It’s a disaster,” she said through a Mandarin interpreter.
Gu worked for about three years under Yu at Amaco, Yu’s Manhattan-based real estate renovation company.
He decided in 2018 to strike out on his own in the industry because he was not being paid enough and was worried about Amaco’s financial future, prosecutors said.
Gu’s solid reputation led to numerous clients ditching their contracts with Amaco and signing up instead to work with Gu’s new company — which enraged Yu, the feds say.
Yu lost a project to Gu that was expected to net a $1 million profit, prosecutors said.
“I treat him much better than my son. Can’t believe,” Yu allegedly texted an associate after losing the big-money contract. “Also I am upset myself trust him too much.” Yu’s company closed later that year. To exact his revenge, Yu hired his nephew You You, 34, who was also an Amaco employee, to carry out the killing.
You brought two more people into the plot. Antony Abreu, 34, was hired as the triggerman, and Zhe Zhang, 34, was hired as the getaway driver, prosecutors said.
The night of the killing, 100 people attended the Lunar New Year party thrown in Flushing by Gu’s company. Afterward, Gu attended an after-party at a karaoke bar.
Outside the parties, You waited in a van, and Zhang and Abreu lay in wait in a 2003 Honda Accord.
When Gu left the karaoke party and was about to step into an Uber about 2:30 a.m., Abreu — clad in a puffy jacket with the hood up — ran up behind him and executed him, firing numerous shots at point-blank range, prosecutors said. The murder was captured on surveillance footage released by the NYPD shortly after the incident.
“The defendants callously used gun violence to resolve a business dispute, reducing the value of a man’s life to a dollar figure,” said Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Breon Peace.
Yu, You, Abreu and Zhang were charged with murder-for-hire and murder-for-hire conspiracy and face life in prison or the death penalty in the case.
Yu — who owns at least four properties in the city — was busted at his eight-bedroom mansion in Oyster Bay, L.I. When the feds arrested Yu, they also found a stash of guns, including two shotguns, an AR-15 and an AK-47, prosecutors said.
You was arrested in Plainview, L.I., and Zhang was arrested at a home in California.
Alleged triggerman Abreu is already serving a 24-year prison sentence in a Mississippi drug-trafficking case.
The feds have at least one cooperating witness in the case, Assistant U.S. Attorney Devon Lash said in court Tuesday.
Yu and You were both ordered held without bail by Brooklyn Federal Magistrate Judge Peggy Kuo.