Life as a Flying Dragon from The Chinatown Sting

Cowboy, now known as CB, was once a member of the powerful Flying Dragons gang, led by Johnny Eng, aka Onionhead. CB speaks with Lidia Jean Kott about why he joined the gang, about street-violence PTSD, and how he wound up in prison for 16 years. He also has an update on what Johnny Eng is up to today. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

After five days of deliberation, a jury finally returns a verdict in the case of Johnny Eng. Its ultimate meaning depends on whom you ask — and the lessons it taught the justice system may already be forgotten. For more: Mike Moy’s memoir book Bad to Blue and his Chinatown Gang Stories channel on YouTube. Rong Xiaoqing’s article in Documented, "Ghosts of Chinatown."See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Flying Dragons gang leader Johnny Eng faces so many separate counts of heroin smuggling that prosecutors from various jurisdictions have to join forces. But Eng’s defense lawyers ably attack the government’s cooperating witnesses in court. And Beryl faces a personal deadline that might make sticking around to the end of the trial impossible. For more check out:  Gerald Posner’s book Warlords of Crime. Fredric Dannen’s pieces in The New Yorker, "Revenge of the Green Dragons” and “Defending the Mafia.” Get early, ad-free access to the entire season of The Chinatown Sting by subscribing to Pushkin+. Subscribers also get bonus episodes, exclusive binges, full audiobooks, and early ad-free listening for all Pushkin shows.  Subscribe on Apple: apple.co/pushkin Subscribe on Pushkin: pushkin.com/plusSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Lidia Jean and Shuyu search for traces of Johnny Eng, aka “Onionhead,” the elusive leader of the Flying Dragons gang. He’s nowhere to be found in his former estate in rural Pennsylvania. Back in the late 1980s, he was nowhere to be found at all. Could prosecutor Beryl Howell ever bring him to justice? Meanwhile, Tina Wong is caught in the gamble of her life. For more check out the documentary: Machine Gun Johnny: Johnny Eng  Get early, ad-free access to the entire season of The Chinatown Sting by subscribing to Pushkin+. Subscribers also get bonus episodes, exclusive binges, full audiobooks, and early ad-free listening for all Pushkin shows.  Subscribe on Apple: apple.co/pushkin Subscribe on Pushkin: pushkin.com/plusSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Being only half Chinese, Tina Wong felt like an outsider growing up in Chinatown. But then she met another girl who was a natural leader and included her in the pack. After they grew up, that friend would eventually recruit her to accept and move packages of heroin. Now Tina faces a choice: betray her old friend, or condemn her baby daughter to growing up without a mom. Get early, ad-free access to the entire season of The Chinatown Sting by subscribing to Pushkin+. Subscribers also get bonus episodes, exclusive binges, full audiobooks, and early ad-free listening for all Pushkin shows.  Subscribe on Apple: apple.co/pushkin Subscribe on Pushkin: pushkin.com/plusSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tina Wong finds herself in handcuffs in the Brooklyn office of a new federal prosecutor, Beryl Howell. Beryl’s goal is to get Tina to tell her everything she knows about the people who recruited her. But Chinatown is a dangerous place in the 1980s, and few low-level suspects want to talk. We hear from Chinatown author Henry Chang and former gang members Mike Moy and Peter Chin about the violence and impossible choices Chinatown residents faced in those days. For more, check out: Henry Chang’s series Detective Yu Investigations. Mike Moy’s Chinatown Gang Stories channel on YouTube.  Peter Chin’s book, In the Ghost Shadows.  Get early, ad-free access to the entire season of The Chinatown Sting by subscribing to Pushkin+. Subscribers also get bonus episodes, exclusive binges, full audiobooks, and early ad-free listening for all Pushkin shows.  Subscribe on Apple: apple.co/pushkin Subscribe on Pushkin: pushkin.com/plusSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

After a major bust in 1988, DEA agents are in a race against time to find out who’s behind a scheme to import millions of dollars worth of heroin to the US. They stumble upon some unlikely suspects: young mothers like Tina Wong, who were paid to accept packages in the mail. These women will have to make a choice between protecting or betraying their friends. Lurking behind it all: the history of American Chinatowns, which developed to protect immigrants from a hostile society. For more, check out: Ellen Wu’s The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority. Michael Luo’s Strangers in the Land: Exclusion, Belonging and the Epic Story of the Chinese in America. Get early, ad-free access to the entire season of The Chinatown Sting by subscribing to Pushkin+. Subscribers also get bonus episodes, exclusive binges, full audiobooks, and early ad-free listening for all Pushkin shows.  Subscribe on Apple: apple.co/pushkin Subscribe on Pushkin: pushkin.com/plusSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Here's a preview of a new Pushkin podcast, The Chinatown Sting. Over the next few weeks, we'll be sharing the series right here for Bad Women listeners to enjoy. In the late 1980s, federal authorities laid a trap. They’d gotten a tip that huge amounts of heroin were being mailed to New York City inside boxes filled with tea. The investigation would uncover a network of drug smugglers who used women recruited at mahjong parlors in Chinatown. Host Lidia Jean Kott and co-reporter Shuyu Wang interview sources who’ve never spoken on record before, including federal prosecutors, to reconstruct a years-long effort to bring down one of the most powerful gangsters in Chinatown. The Chinatown Sting drops weekly on Tuesdays starting September 16. Get early, ad-free access to the entire season of The Chinatown Sting by subscribing to Pushkin+. Subscribers also get bonus episodes, exclusive binges, full audiobooks, and early ad-free listening for all Pushkin shows.  Subscribe on Apple: apple.co/pushkinSubscribe on Pushkin: pushkin.com/plus See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In 2020, the Financial Times exposed a 2 billion euro fraud at Wirecard, a high-flying German fintech. Many thought that was the end of the story. But for reporter Sam Jones, it was just the beginning. This season on Hot Money: Agent of Chaos, from Pushkin Industries and the Financial Times, Jones investigates Wirecard’s chief operating officer who vanished just as Wirecard collapsed. And turned out to also be a Russian spy. Here’s episode 1. Listen to Hot Money: Agent of Chaos wherever you get your podcasts.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The new season of Deep Cover, a podcast about people who lead double lives, reveals a story of stolen valor and misplaced heroism. Sarah Cavanaugh was many things to the people who knew her: a decorated veteran, a Marine who saved her comrades, a young woman fighting cancer. Sarah was everything people wanted her to be—until she wasn’t. Turns out, no one knew the real Sarah. Not her comrades. Not her wife. No one. In Deep Cover: The Truth About Sarah, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Jake Halpern and acclaimed investigative journalist Jess McHugh unravel an epic six-year deception that upended lives of countless people. Here’s a preview of episode 1. A mysterious letter arrives from Sarah. In it, she asks: What do you think of my crime? Listen to new episodes of Deep Cover on Mondays, available wherever you get your podcasts. Pushkin+ subscribers can hear more ad-free episodes from this season of Deep Cover, before they’re released to the public, right now. Learn more on the Deep Cover show page on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm/plus. Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deep-cover/id1520478402Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6FJkQKT7bl2RvjMZUyDceF?si=06414c33150a40dbSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.