Feds add charges against Yee, ‘Shrimp Boy’

Suspended state Sen. Leland Yee, Chinatown association leader Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow and 27 others were charged in federal court in San Francisco Friday in a revised grand jury indictment that includes new counts of racketeering.

Yee and Chow were both accused of racketeering, or running a continuing criminal enterprise, but in two separate counts of the indictment.

Yee, a Democrat who represented parts of San Francisco and San Mateo County, is charged together with former San Francisco school board president Keith Jackson with racketeering by soliciting bribes and campaign contributions in exchange for political favors by Yee.

Chow is accused together with Jackson and 15 other defendants of racketeering by allegedly running drug sales, money laundering, gun sales and schemes to buy stolen property through an alleged criminal faction of the Chee Kung Tong, a fraternal association.

Chow is the dragonhead or leader of the Chee Kung Tong, based in Chinatown in San Francisco. The racketeering counts carry a possible maximum penalty of 20 years in prison upon conviction.

The 88-page revised indictment, known as a superseding indictment, contains a total of 228 counts against various of the defendants. It repeats a number of charges in an earlier indictment, including a charge that Yee, Jackson and Daly City dentist Wilson Lim conspired in a never-completed international arms deal.

A status conference is scheduled for Aug. 7 in San Francisco before U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, the trial judge assigned to the case.