{"id":13687,"date":"2012-07-25T05:07:33","date_gmt":"2012-07-25T05:07:33","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2012-07-25T05:07:26","modified_gmt":"2012-07-25T05:07:26","slug":"FBI-busts-Jimmy-Meng-1st-Asian-Am-to-serve-NY-legislature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/?p=13687","title":{"rendered":"FBI busts Jimmy Meng, 1st Asian Am to serve NY legislature"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>The first Asian-American in history of Empire state politics to serve in New York&#8217;s legislature was arrested today by FBI agents and charged with bribery.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Jimmy Meng, 68, a former state Assemblyman, touted his prowess as a deal broker and promised that he could bribe Manhattan assistant district attorneys pursuing a tax fraud case against an associate, officials said today.<\/p>\n<p>Brooklyn federal prosecutors say that Meng &#8211; who served in the Assembly from 2005-2006 while representing Flushing, Queens &#8211; solicited $80,000 in bribes from an associate in exchange for ironclad promises that he would make the tax fraud case disappear, officials said.<\/p>\n<p><strong>But the feds say they don&#8217;t believe that anyone from the Manhattan District Attorney&#8217;s Office was involved in the bribery scheme<\/strong>, and it appears that Meng was poised simply to cheat his unsuspecting friend out of the money &#8211; without delivering on his promises to get the tax case dropped.<\/p>\n<p>Eventually the associate began working with FBI agents and Brooklyn federal prosecutors probing public corruption.<\/p>\n<p><strong>This afternoon, Meng was arrested by FBI agents after a surveillance team saw the associate deliver a fruit basket containing several thousand dollars in illicit payment to the former Queens pol&#8217;s lumber yard.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Jimmy Meng sought to be a power broker in the halls of justice. But the influence he sought to peddle was corrupt, and his power was illusory. This arrest confirms that justice is not for sale,&#8221; said Loretta Lynch, US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York.<\/p>\n<p>Meng will be arraigned later today in Brooklyn federal court on wire fraud charges.<\/p>\n<p><strong>This is not good. His daughter is newly elected New York State Assembly member Grace Meng! She is the youngest Asian-American ever elected to the New York State Legislature, and currently the only Asian-American serving in the entire legislature. This is not a great representation of the Asian American community!<\/strong><br \/>\n<!--break--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The first Asian-American in history of Empire state politics to serve in New York&#8217;s legislature was arrested today by FBI<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":72448,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"magazineBlocksPostFeaturedMedia":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x150.jpg","medium":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","medium_large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","1536x1536":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","2048x2048":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-highlighted-post":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-featured-post-medium":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-featured-post-small":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x90.jpg","colormag-featured-image":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-default-news":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x150.jpg","colormag-featured-image-large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-block-extra-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-small-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-medium-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg"},"magazineBlocksPostAuthor":{"name":"Admin","avatar":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/53e6cdc30765aade0129f85e5aeb50124b1d3f5bb9a70373be31e4eb328371e0?s=96&d=mm&r=g"},"magazineBlocksPostCommentsNumber":"0","magazineBlocksPostExcerpt":"The first Asian-American in history of Empire state politics to serve in New York&#8217;s legislature was arrested today by FBI","magazineBlocksPostCategories":["News"],"magazineBlocksPostViewCount":136,"magazineBlocksPostReadTime":2,"magazine_blocks_featured_image_url":{"full":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg",113,170,false],"medium":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg",113,170,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x150.jpg",113,150,true]},"magazine_blocks_author":{"display_name":"Admin","author_link":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/?author=1"},"magazine_blocks_comment":0,"magazine_blocks_author_image":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/53e6cdc30765aade0129f85e5aeb50124b1d3f5bb9a70373be31e4eb328371e0?s=96&d=mm&r=g","magazine_blocks_category":"<a href=\"#\" class=\"category-link category-link-1\">News<\/a>","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13687\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/72448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}