| FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE December 4, 2007 WWW.USDOJ.GOV/USAO/CAN |
SAN FRANCISCO/SAN JOSE/OAKLAND – United States Attorney Scott N. Schools announced that Toha “Jimmy” Quan was sentenced on November 30, 2007 to serve four years in prison for committing bankruptcy fraud. Quan’s wife, Anna Wong, was sentenced to serve fourteen months in prison for the same offenses. The sentence is the result of an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Internal Revenue Service.
Mr. Quan, 47, of San Francisco, was convicted on May 23, 2007 of ten felony counts, including conspiracy to conceal assets, concealment of assets, bankruptcy fraud, the making of false statements on documents submitted to the Bankruptcy Court, and money laundering. Anna Wong, 45, also of San Francisco, was convicted of conspiracy to conceal assets, concealment of assets, and making false statements to the Bankruptcy Court. The convictions were returned by a jury after a four-month trial earlier this year in United States District Court in San Francisco.
During the trial, which was presided over by United States District Judge William B. Shubb, evidence showed that over the course of six years, from 1997 through 2003, Mr. Quan and Ms. Wong, placed three of their companies into Chapter 11 reorganization bankruptcy. Two of the companies – Win Fashion Inc. and Wins of California, Inc. – were clothing manufacturing companies operating in the South of Market area of San Francisco. The third, Tomi LLC, was a property management company. By placing the three companies into Chapter 11, the numerous creditors of the companies could not collect money due them. Evidence showed that both before and after filing bankruptcy, Mr. Quan and Ms. Wong deliberately transferred approximately $6 million in assets out of the bankrupt companies so that those funds would not be available to pay creditors. They moved the funds into other companies that they owned, and thereby placed the assets out of the reach of the creditors of the bankrupt companies and the Bankruptcy Court. The evidence further showed that they failed to disclose these transfers to the Bankruptcy Court, as is required by law.
In the case of Wins of California, evidence showed that at the same time that the company was having financial difficulties and stopped paying its hourly workers in the clothing factory, Mr. Quan and Ms. Wong transferred substantial sums out of the company in
order to finance a purchase of a piece of property in San Francisco and to benefit their other companies. By the time Mr. Quan and Ms. Wong put Wins of California in bankruptcy in August 2001, they owed over $800,000 in wages to their employees. The State of the California, through the State Department of Labor Standards Enforcement, stepped in on behalf of the employees and were able to pay them out of a state fund maintained for the benefit of garment workers.
Mr. Quan and Ms. Wong, who currently operate Chinatown Restaurant in the Chinatown district of San Francisco, were ordered to start serving their sentences on February 8, 2008. After completing their sentences, both defendants will be subject to Court supervision for a period of three years. The Court will hold further proceedings on January 18, 2008 to determine the amount that the defendants will be ordered to pay in restitution.
Susan Badger and Stacey Geis are the Assistant U.S. Attorneys who are prosecuting the case with the assistance of Ana Guerra, and Miche Sharpe. The prosecution is the result of a four-year investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Further Information:
Case #: CR 04 0323 WBS
A copy of this press release may be found on the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s website at www.usdoj.gov/usao/can.
Electronic court filings and further procedural and docket information are available at https://ecf.cand.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/login.pl.
Judges’ calendars with schedules for upcoming court hearings can be viewed on the court’s website at www.cand.uscourts.gov.
All press inquiries to the U.S. Attorney’s Office should be directed to Joshua Eaton at (415) 436-6958 or by email at Josh.Eaton@usdoj.gov.