By Johnnie Rosario
The United States government has brought out the big guns to go after organized crime in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands that federal documents show involve local government officials, casino officials, construction company owners, a foreign nationals from China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
David L. Jaffe, the prosecutor who filed the RICO case against casino and construction officials that was unsealed this morning, is the head of the Organized Crime and Gang Section at the U.S. Department of Justice.
He also has prosecuted numerous complex violent crime, narcotics, white collar, and RICO cases.
Peter Wu, Jianmin Xu, and Yan Shi were indicted August 1, 2019 on 71 counts of crimes involving RICO Conspiracy, Conspiracy to Harbor Illegal Aliens, Harboring Illegal Aliens, Unlawful Employment of Aliens, and International Promotional Money Laundering.
Mr. Jaffe has been prosecuting these types of crimes since 2002, when he was the Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. In 2006 he started at the Justice Department in Washington, D.C. as Deputy Chief of the Gang Unit, then served as Deputy Chief of the Human Rights and Special Prosecutions division from 2008 to 2010. He then served as acting Principal Deputy Chief for Litigation before his appointment as Principal Deputy Chief of the OCGS.
