Wins Executives Indicted in San Francisco

10/11/04

In 2001, the state of California shut down a factory at which the workers ? mostly Chinese immigrant women who did not speak English ? had not been paid in months. In the years since, these workers have not only had to struggle against their former employers to demand the wages they earned and never received, but they were also sold out by the Department of Labor, which settled with the factory owners and agreed not to pursue the remainder of the workers? wages. (See previous articles .)

But these sweatshop overseers are not off the hook. On September 30, 2004, Anna Wong and Jimmy Quan ? the husband and wife owners ? were indicted by a federal grand jury in San Francisco. They have been charged with eight counts of bankruptcy fraud, as well as false record entry, false declaration, concealment of assets, and money laundering. Jenny Wong ? Anna Wong?s sister ? was indicted on several of her own charges.

The gist of these charges is that these three held on to money that should have been made available to their creditors when they filed for bankruptcy on three separate occasions between 1997 and 2003.

This indictment must be bittersweet for the Wins workers. While they certainly would like to see their crooked former employers get what is coming to them in federal court, they never got the cooperation from the Department of Labor they needed to receive the full wages they had earned.