indictment<\/a> and evidence presented at trial.<\/p>\nDefense attorneys argue Hu helped his mother-in-law open the account so she could buy a new condo.<\/p>\n
The case’s outcome may hinge partly on how the jury views Mei Ping Sun: either as a cog in the illicit scheme prosecutors allege her daughter and son-in-law of running, or as an elderly immigrant woman who needed her younger and more culturally fluent family’s help navigating the American banking system.<\/p>\n
Mei Ping Sun was born in Nanjing, China, and moved to the United States in 1990, according to her testimony in court Tuesday. She worked as a seamstress for New Jersey-based Charles Komar & Sons apparel company, making samples and repairing friends’ clothes on the side.<\/p>\n
Her husband, Guo Xian Sun, owned a dry cleaning store in Queens. She said she and her husband divorced during the COVID-19 pandemic, but continued living together in Flushing.<\/p>\n
Around April 2020, Mei Ping Sun opened a joint account at Signature Bank with Hu, Linda Sun\u2019s husband. Through a court translator, Sun said she didn\u2019t do \u201canything\u201d after the account was opened, and the money in it didn\u2019t \u201cbelong\u201d to her.<\/p>\n
She said she does not read or speak English and relied on her daughter and Hu to help her with banking.<\/p>\n
Hu now faces charges of bank fraud related to the account.<\/p>\n
In court Tuesday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Alexander Solomon asked Mei Ping Sun whether she\u2019d written an email requesting a $1.6 million transfer from the joint account.<\/p>\n
\u201cI do not know English,\u201d she replied. \u201cHow would I write an email?\u201d<\/p>\n
Mei Ping Sun told defense attorneys during cross-examination that they opened the account to help her buy a condo, though she never ended up doing so.<\/p>\n
But prosecutors pushed back, questioning whether this explanation only arose after the FBI raid at the family\u2019s Flushing apartment.<\/p>\n
Solomon asked Mei Ping Sun if her daughter told her not to say anything to the agents in a phone call. \u201cNo,\u201d she replied.<\/p>\n
When Solomon asked why she told the FBI she wasn\u2019t aware of the money in the account, Mei Ping Sun said \u201cI was very scared and I could not remember what I said.\u201d<\/p>\n
Prosecutors subpoenaed Mei Ping Sun to compel her appearance Tuesday, and highlighted it in opening arguments last week, saying Hu \u201ceven lied to a bank to open up accounts in his mother-in-law’s name so he could launder the money.\u201d<\/p>\n
Defense attorney Nicole Boeckmann also featured Mei Ping Sun in her opening statement, questioning why the government had moved to compel her testimony at all.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo she can tell you that an account was opened? That she gave her identification to her son-in-law to open an account in her name? That she doesn’t speak very much English?\u201d Boeckmann said. \u201cIt’s absurd.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mei Ping Sun was preparing for a trip last summer when roughly a dozen armed FBI agents showed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45102,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[9,24,63,134,136,135],"class_list":["post-45101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-staten-island","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-staten-island","tag-staten-island-headlines","tag-staten-island-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45101\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}