Oakland man charged in 2013 Mendocino County double slaying

An East Bay couple was found in 2013 shot execution-style in a minivan parked on a dirt pullout off Highway 20 outside Fort Bragg in Mendocino County.

A suspected triggerman was not identified.

Investigators for years said little about the slayings, even after a federal judge convicted infamous San Francisco gang leader Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow with conspiring to kill Jim Tat Kong, an alleged rival who was one of the two people found dead in the minivan and a man the FBI described as a major player in the Chinese-American criminal underworld.

On Friday, Mendocino County sheriff’s officials announced an Oakland man had been indicted in federal court in the shootings of Kong, 51, of San Pablo and his girlfriend, Cindy Bao Feng Chen, 38, of San Francisco leaving the bodies and packages of marijuana in the minivan.

Wing Wo Ma, 50, of Oakland pleaded not guilty April 7 in U.S. District Court in San Francisco to two counts of murder with a firearm, conspiracy to distribute marijuana and using a firearm during a drug-trafficking crime. Ma worked in construction, and built greenhouses and other structures for Kong’s marijuana cultivation operations, according to an FBI investigator’s affidavit in support of the charges against Ma.

Mendocino County Sheriff’s Capt. Greg Van Patten said it’s another example of the high stakes in Northern California’s lucrative and dangerous black market marijuana trade.

“It’s a deadly industry and it can be very violent and fatal; that’s something that’s proven itself year after year,” Van Patten said. “This was not a random act of violence.”

Ma - then a criminal informant for the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office - was arrested in 2015 on drug charges, and has been in federal custody since. Van Patten said federal prosecutors asked him not to publicize Ma’s arrest or his indictment earlier this month.

He was an early suspect in the killings of Kong and Chen, Van Patten said.

On Oct. 17, 2013, a group of off-road bikers passed the parked minivan by a yellow gate leading to an old bark dump off Highway 20 outside Fort Bragg. They saw blood and called 911.

Deputies found the bodies of Kong and Chen. They had been shot in the head at point-blank range. Packages of marijuana and a document from a Fort Bragg hotel were in the van.

Kong had been running several marijuana growing operations in the county, including an outdoor garden beyond the yellow gate, as well a 150-plant garden raided by the narcotics team earlier that year in the Redwood Valley, court files show.

“Kong had been spending more time in Mendocino County because he was in bad standing with some very powerful Chinese gangsters in the Bay Area,” the investigator said in his affidavit.

Federal investigators said Ma was acting as a double agent - getting paid to build greenhouses and other infrastructure for illegal cultivators before tipping off detectives. Ma had told a detective he was heading to Mendocino County with Kong to look at properties to acquire for additional marijuana operations.

The investigator didn’t outline a precise motive in the killing. But Ma, in a statement to investigators, said he’d followed Kong and Chen in his truck the morning of Oct. 17 because he was concerned Kong was visiting a marijuana farm without him.

Kong spotted Ma and confronted him along the highway. The FBI investigator didn’t describe what Ma said happened next.

The case against Ma is a separate investigation from the one involving Chow.

Chow is currently serving a life prison sentence after a federal jury convicted him in 2016 of conspiring to operate the Ghee Kung Tong as a racketeering enterprise and for ordering the 2006 murder of the group’s previous leader.

Chow was the “dragonhead” of the Ghee Kung Tong and a member of the Hop Sing Tong, both fraternal organizations based in Chinatown, when he was arrested in 2014 on racketeering charges. Federal authorities claim the organizations had been taken over by people like Chow engaged in criminal activity.

Kong at one point also belonged to the Hop Sing Tong board but apparently was ousted.

The federal case against Chow described infighting over the control of the Tongs, and a falling-out and series of confrontations between Chow and Kong.

Chow claimed Kong had an affair with another “brother’s” wife and “Kong was trying to take over the Hop Sing Tong,” case documents show.

Chow’s 2014 arrest was one of roughly two dozen made in a sprawling corruption and racketeering case that also involved San Francisco State Sen. Leland Yee, an associate of Chow’s. A former star in the Democratic party and a candidate for California secretary of state when he was arrested, Yee is serving five years in federal prison for taking bribes from undercover FBI agents in exchange for planned votes in the state Senate and pledges to smuggle firearms.

The federal investigation revealed evidence Chow conspired to have Kong killed, among the ?162 counts he was convicted of and sentenced to prison for in 2016. But Chow was not a prime suspect in the shooting of Kong and Chen.

Prosecutors did not present evidence showing Chow had any connection to Kong’s killing, leaving open the possibility Chow’s attempt to have Kong killed was unsuccessful and Kong was shot because of an unrelated business dispute.

You can reach Staff Writer Julie Johnson at 707-521-5220 or julie.johnson@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @jjpressdem.