Sister Ping, aka the “Snakehead”
Cheng Ping was a very known figure in New York’s Chinatown, and despite her sinister Chinese nickname for a smuggler (that’s where Snakehead comes from), there are still people who do not see the wrongs she has done. Sister Ping, as she was known back then around Chinatown, was a known smuggler and extortionist back in the 1980s and 1990s, but the main activity of her criminal empire was smuggling people from mainland China to the United States.
Back then, it got harder and harder to be able to get a visa, and she offered to get people’s families in the country or sold the mirage of a better future to people in the United States, charging exorbitant sums for her services. When she was finally prosecuted for all her criminal activity, it was revealed that she used to charge up to about $40,000 per person to smuggle them into America and that she amassed a fortune of tens of millions of dollars.
Her wrongdoings didn’t stop there, as she was also a loan shark, besides a known gangster. She used to give money to the people that needed it in Chinatown, and when they couldn’t pay her back, she would send violent thugs and various other gangs that worked under her to get her money back and set precedent. She ruled with fear, and in the 1980s and 1990s, everyone knew about her, making her a notorious New York gangster!
And if you’re hungry for more information about American gangster history, we recommend you read our article about the people you wouldn’t think wreaked as much havoc as they did here!
7 Responses
Yes I have heard of them All
They should make a movie all about these women and how they started especially Stephanie st.clair
I love stories like this
Thank you for this fascinating article about female mafia heads from gangster history. I found it interesting when you mentioned that there are numerous female mafia heads who ran successful crime empires. This read compels me to learn more, so I’ll definitely find a mafia historical site in my area to satisfy my curiosity.
You forgot to include Hillary Clinton
Interesting that they went into the 1990s, and yet failed to mention Hillary Clinton… She had a daughter by a family friend in retaliation for her husband’s multiple infidelities… Everyone that opposed her “committed suicide”, one by stabbing himself in the back 12 times in a public park… And, of course Ron Brown who was about to destroy her Golden Goose, by reporting to Newt Gingrich, when he returns to Washington after giving our Nuclear Missile Guidance System Blueprints to China, in thanks for reElection funds… He died in a plane crash on the way back, in which, as they reported “Everyone died”, but in truth there was only 1 body at the crash site, Ron Brown, with a bullet in the back of his head… The Investigator of the site was moved to a different department, when the cover story made news… 2 years later, she, the Investigator, managed to steal the sealed file and open it live on CNN showing pictures of her and her Assistant at the crashsite, as well as Ron Brown and the bullet hole, for 10 minutes, then it disappeared… The Clintons were still in the Whitehouse…
I don’t know if you would consider Patty Cannon of Sussex County De a gangster but she was a illegal slave trader a serial killer and the co-leader of the Cannon-Johnson gang of Md and De.