Feds put big focus on organized crime in Little Saigon

In the last month, authorities have busted gambling and counterfeit clothing operations, as well as credit card scams and what they described as the county's largest supplier of the designer drug Ecstasy.

Criminal enterprises in central Orange County have spent years quietly taking control of everything from video poker games to loan-sharking, according to police. The groups prey on an immigrant community often hesitant to report such crimes.

"These are problems that have been going on for years in Little Saigon," said Mike Clesceri, head of a district attorney's office task force. "This is an area that had gone neglected because we were after the violent criminals."

In some cases, yesterday's street gang members have become today's syndicate leaders, said Randy D. Parsons, an FBI supervisory special agent who heads the bureau's Organized Crime Squad in Orange County.

"If you look at the time frame," Parsons said, "some of the people who were gang members and committing violent crime in the early '90s have graduated to ... the middle managers and leaders of the more organized efforts."

The FBI reported last month that several members of the Wah Ching operate in Little Saigon. One of the most prominent of the Asian crime groups, the Wah Ching has ties to centuries-old criminal societies in Hong Kong.

The recent crackdown has won general support in Little Saigon, though some residents caution that officials must take into the account the cultural mores of Asian immigrants.

For example, Vietnamese immigrants come from a society where knockoff fashions are common, said Lan Quoc Nguyen, a Westminster attorney and community activist.

"They work on the assumption that there's nothing wrong with it," Nguyen said. "That's the way of life in Vietnam and it's still rampant. ... 1/8Copyright law is a Western concept that will be hard to enforce."<