Woman appears in Oakland court after 20 years as fugitive, extradition from Singapore
OAKLAND -- A woman who had been a fugitive since 2002 made her first court appearance Monday after failing to appear at her sentencing hearing two decades ago, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Voni Chen, 57, of Taiwan, was charged with multiple counts of mail fraud in 2000 along with her father, Richard Chen, 87. Each pleaded guilty to mail fraud in October 2001 but failed to appear at their sentencing hearings in May 2002.
Twenty years later, authorities in Singapore alerted U.S. authorities that they had located the Chens there and had arrested them. The pair was extradited and Voni finally appeared before a judge.
Both Chens ran a company that manufactured and sold plastic bags, the Golden Pacific Manufacturing Corporation. When the company began to experience cash flow problems, both Chens admitted that they began a scheme to defraud the credit company that financed their accounts receivables. Golden Pacific would send invoices to the credit company that reflected orders that customers had never made. Once the credit company received the false invoices, it loaned funds to Golden Pacific as required in their financing agreement.
The plea agreements made by both Chens outlined their practice of increasing the number of false invoices by asking other customers to act as customers of Golden Pacific even though those companies never purchased merchandise from them. In addition, Golden Pacific asked their existing customers to represent that they had purchased more goods than they had actually ordered.
The Chens also created shell corporations to act as fake customers of Golden Pacific. False invoices from all these sources were submitted to the credit company to obtain loaned funds. The credit company agreed to loan Golden Pacific more than $5 million, largely secured by fictitious receivables created from sham transactions, the DOJ said.
Current information about the Chens' upcoming sentencing has not been provided by prosecutors.
