Amador County – A Federal Grand Jury last week charged 15 people with racketeering, extortionate extension of credit, and narcotics offenses at two Bay Area casino card clubs, Artichoke Joe’s Casino and Oaks Card Club.

U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag announced the indictment, which was unsealed March 3 in redacted form. It charged that between February 2008 and the present, Cuong Mach Binh Tieu, Lap The Chung, Bob Yuen, Ding Lin, Skyler Chang, Chea Bou, May Chung, and Hung Tieu “agreed to conduct and conducted the affairs of an enterprise through a pattern of racketeering activity.”

The indictment alleges that they “associated in fact at the casinos to form an enterprise and that they used the casinos’ facilities and assets to extend and collect extortionate credit and distribute illegal drugs.”

Maximum punishment for the RICO crimes is 20 years’ imprisonment, three years of supervised release, and a $250,000 fine. Federal narcotics offenses have maximum prison terms ranging from 20 years to life, and maximum fines ranging from $1 million to $4 million.

The indictment alleges that these narcotic offenses occurred either at the casinos or through the use of the casinos’ facilities.

Lap The Chung, Bob Yuen, Ding Lin, May Chung, and Hung Tieu are also charged with federal extortionate extension of credit offenses with maximum punishment of 20 years in prison, three years of supervised release, and a $250,000 fine. Haag said: “Extortionate credit is otherwise known as loansharking, and the indictment alleges that such loansharking occurred at the casinos on numerous occasions over the past two years.” Each of these defendants is an employee of either Oaks Card Club or Artichoke Joe’s Casino.

The indictment is the result of an approximately two-year investigation led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Administration, who worked with the California Department of Justice, Bureau of Gambling Control and the Internal Revenue Service.

On March 2, the FBI, DEA and more than a dozen other agencies “arrested 14 of the defendants charged in the indictment. They also simultaneously executed more than 20 search warrants throughout the Bay Area and elsewhere.”

Haag said: “During the course of executing the search warrants, agents seized several hundred thousand dollars in cash and thousands of dollars worth of casino gambling chips, jewelry, and valuables, several pounds of narcotics, and numerous firearms.” The investigation was conducted and funded in part by the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force, a multi-agency task force that coordinates long-term narcotics trafficking investigations.

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