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In bid to dismiss case, ‘Shrimp Boy’ accuses S.F. mayor of bribery

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The federal investigation involved years of undercover work and culminated in a sweeping indictment with 29 defendants. Among them was former state Sen. Leland Yee, who pleaded guilty July 1 to racketeering.

Lesser known is the man whom the investigation — involving charges of public corruption, gun-running and more — initially targeted: Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow.

The leader of a Chinatown fraternal organization known as the Ghee Kung Tong, Chow had served federal prison time but was released in 2003 to testify against his crime boss.

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In a court filing Tuesday, Chow’s legal team alleged that this time around, he was being “selectively prosecuted” by federal authorities who “descended on Chinatown … armed only with racist assumptions.”

Chow was charged last year with money laundering, conspiracy to sell stolen liquor and trafficking in illegal cigarettes. The motion, which seeks dismissal of the indictment, included snippets of FBI reports and wiretap evidence that suggest San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee and others participated in public corruption schemes but were spared prosecution “due to their political affiliations.”

Those documents had been considered protected material, and late Tuesday the U.S. attorney’s office alleged that Chow’s lawyers may have improperly released them.

The investigation involved “numerous fake identities ... over $2 million in faux money laundering, and over $50,000 in payments to local elected and appointed public officials,” Chow’s attorneys wrote. “The FBI shipped truckloads of fake stolen liquor and cigarettes across the country, contracted murder for hire on fake people, and agents paraded around with $20,000 watches posing as nouveau multi-cultural La Cosa Nostra.”

“Yet,” the filing said, “the reality is that the evidence was at least as damning to the unindicted politicians” as it was to Chow.

Lee was appointed mayor in 2011 to serve out the term of Gavin Newsom, who became lieutenant governor. Later that year, Lee successfully ran for a full term. He “took substantial bribes in exchange for favors,” according to the motion.

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The documents released by Chow’s lawyers also assert that a Human Rights Commission staffer and a former commissioner appointed by Lee had admitted to an undercover agent that they were handling campaign finance laundering schemes for the mayor.

The pair met in 2012 with Lee and the undercover federal agent, who was posing as a donor and made it clear that he had raised $10,000 to help Lee retire campaign debt and agreed to give $10,000 more, according to the filing.

In an excerpt of one conversation documented by the FBI, commission staffer Zula Jones explained the modus operandi to the undercover agent: “You pay to play here.”

Another excerpt quoted Jones as telling the agent in a phone call: “Ed knows that you gave the 10,000 ... he knows that you will give another 10,000. He also knows that we had to break the 10,000 up.” She continued, “I can give you a list of names if that’s what you want. The people that we broke it down,” adding, “they were mostly my family and my close friends, people I trust.”

Questioned Tuesday about the allegations that he met with an undercover agent posing as a major donor, Lee told the San Francisco Examiner, “I can’t remember everybody that I meet with….I know that we’ve done everything clean in our campaign and we closed it out.”

A spokesman for Lee’s reelection campaign denied the allegations.

“While it appears others may have tried to engage or ensnare Mayor Lee, and any number of other people, in their own wrongdoing, there’s absolutely nothing in today’s filing by Raymond Chow’s attorneys that suggests that Mayor Lee himself or his 2011 campaign did anything wrong or inappropriate,” P.J. Johnston wrote in an email. “Mayor Lee’s campaign is committed to following the letter and spirit of all campaign finance laws.”

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If the indictment is not dismissed, Chow’s lawyers are proposing an alternative: to have all records surrounding the decision to investigate Chow disclosed as pretrial discovery

For breaking news in California, follow @LeeRomney.

Times staff writer Matt Hamilton in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

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