A couple has claimed ownership of the $23,000 that was seized at the Francisco C. Ada-Saipan International Airport from a hand-carried luggage of a store worker who was bound for Shanghai, China in February last year. <\/p>\n
Xingnong Xu and his wife, Shaorong Zheng, said they are the innocent owners of the forfeited money at issue.<\/p>\n
Xu and Zheng, through counsel Samuel I. Mok, said they did not know that Delin Ma, who actually transported the money, would fail to report the currency on a FinCen Form 105 as required by law.<\/p>\n
Mok said the couple collectively earned the money from their joint savings from their longtime employment as managers at LN Market and Blue Sky Market.<\/p>\n
Mok said the $20,000 was intended for the couple\u2019s son\u2019s living expenses and tuition payment for a private school and Xu\u2019s mother for Chinese New Year celebration.<\/p>\n
Mok said $3,000 was for a personal loan to Ma.<\/p>\n
Mok asked the U.S. District Court for the NMI to return to the couple the seized $23,000.<\/p>\n
A federal grand jury indicted Ma with one count of bulk cash smuggling out of the United States. <\/p>\n
Under the currency reporting laws, a person is required to report any amount of currency $10,000 and over when traveling out of or into the U.S.<\/p>\n
Ma pleaded guilty.<\/p>\n
Attorney Mark Hanson, counsel for Ma, said the defendant was stopped at the Saipan airport on his way back to China for his son\u2019s wedding.<\/p>\n
Hanson said Ma, who was a farmer in China and worked in the CNMI since 1997, has no criminal record.<\/p>\n
Hanson said Ma was scared at the time, and that it was the first time he had carried money through the airport in this fashion.<\/p>\n
In December 2015, the court imposed a 36-month probation sentence on the 52-year-old Ma. The court forfeited the $23,000 seized from Ma.<\/p>\n
The court also ordered the return to Ma of the $3,294 that he was carrying on his person at the time of his arrest.<\/p>\n
In Xu\u2019s and Zheng\u2019s petition for return of the seized property filed on Monday, Mok said at the time of the seizure, Ma was a full-time employee of LN Market.<\/p>\n
Ma was responsible for the warehouse and maintaining the store\u2019s inventory.<\/p>\n
Mok said at the time of the seizure, Zheng also worked at LN Market along with her husbad, Xu.<\/p>\n
Both Xu and Zheng jointly manage LN Market and Blue Sky Supermarket.<\/p>\n
Mok said Ma is Zheng\u2019s distant relative.<\/p>\n
The lawyer said the couple gave Ma $3,000 as a personal loan because the latter was attending his son\u2019s wedding in China.<\/p>\n
On Feb. 12, 2015, Xu received a phone call from his mother in China stating that she needed money to pay for their son\u2019s living expenses and school tuition payment.<\/p>\n
Mok said Xu\u2019s mother also needed money for the upcoming Chinese New Year as she was expected to give lucky red envelopes to their family\u2019s relatives in China.<\/p>\n
Mok said according to Zheng since Ma was already scheduled to go to China for his son\u2019s wedding that perhaps the couple should give Ma $20,000 to take to Zheng\u2019s mother-in-law.<\/p>\n
Mok said Zheng did not know that Ma would not properly report the money by failing to complete the FinCen Form 105.<\/p>\n
\u201cMr. Ma\u2019s failure to do so was solely his own,\u201d the lawyer said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A couple has claimed ownership of the $23,000 that was seized at the Francisco C….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[169,10181,26,10182],"class_list":["post-222578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","tag-china","tag-chinese-new-year","tag-cnmi","tag-xingnong-xu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222578"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222578\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}