CASH IN SPARE GAS TANK LANDS TWO MEN IN PRISON

They're found guilty of money laundering Wednesday, June 02, 2004 By
Jeffrey Meitrodt Staff writer A weekend in Houston turned into a 20-year
stretch in a Mississippi prison for two Vietnamese men, including one from
Gretna, who made the mistake of traveling through Rankin County with
$170,000 hidden in a spare gasoline tank.

Though no drugs were found in the truck and state prosecutors never proved
where the money came from or where it was going, the defendants were given
the maximum sentence for money laundering allowed under Mississippi law.

Biloxi lawyer Tim Kottemann thought the state's case was so weak that he
didn't even bother to call a defense witness.

"They didn't know where the money came from, so if they didn't know, how
can they say it came from an illegal activity?" Kottemann asked. "It is
guesswork, and in America you can't send somebody to the penitentiary for
20 years based on guesswork. Unless you are in Rankin County."

Mike Guest, the assistant district attorney in Rankin County who prosecuted
the case, sees it differently.

"It is not uncommon for drug-trafficking organizations to not carry drugs
and money together," he said. "They know that if they carry both together,
it makes my job much easier as a prosecutor to prove money laundering."

North Carolina resident Quang Tran, 26, and Johnson Nguyen, 27, of Gretna,
were on their way to Houston with Tran's girlfriend on Dec. 10, 2002, when
they were pulled over by a Rankin County sheriff's deputy for driving over
the fog line -- the white line that separates the shoulder from the
highway. The violation is so obscure that one of their attorneys had to
look it up when he first heard about it.

After getting Tran's consent to search the vehicle, the deputy crawled
underneath the truck, where he discovered that the spare gas tank had been
disconnected. Suspicious, he ordered the trio to follow him to the
sheriff's department, where the tank was removed and examined. Inside the
tank, wrapped in aluminum foil, was $170,000.

Though the money was Tran's, he lied to the deputies when they asked
whether the money was his, Kottemann acknowledged. He and his passengers
also gave a somewhat vague description of their trip to Houston. They
couldn't remember the last name of the person they were staying with, or
provide a phone number. They also disagreed on the exact number of days
they were staying.

Guest said those discrepancies cost the defendants credibility with the
jury, which Kottemann said was all white and predisposed against his clients.

"Their stories were just unbelievable," Guest said. "It wasn't their truck.
It wasn't their money."

Despite the deputies' suspicions the day they were arrested, all three of
the travelers were allowed to leave without being charged with a crime. But
the department confiscated the money.

Five months later, when Kottemann tried to get Tran's money back through a
civil proceeding, he was told that the trio had just been indicted for
money laundering.

"If they had not tried to get their money back -- which they had a legal
right to -- they would be out fishing today," Kottemann said.

In February, the case went to trial. The state put on just two witnesses:
the deputy who pulled them over and an agent from the Drug Enforcement
Administration.

In his opinion, the DEA agent told the jury, this looked like a money
laundering case. Guest said the agent's opinion was based on the fact that
cell phone records showed that all three of the truck's passengers had been
in contact with people who were, or had been, under investigation for drug
trafficking.

"I asked point blank: Are any of my three clients on the DEA's list? And he
said no," Kottemann said.

In fact, the DEA agent didn't testify that any of the people who showed up
in the cell phone records had either been arrested or convicted of a drug
offense, Guest acknowledged.

But he said the fact that nobody testified for the defense was telling.

"There was no way this was legitimate currency," Guest said. "At trial,
they brought in nobody, and they produced no bank records or income tax
records to show it was legitimate money."

Kottemann said he didn't produce those records, or call any witnesses,
because the state failed to meet its burden of proof that the money was
connected to illegal activity. The case is under appeal.

He said Tran got the money from his parents, who are wealthy businesspeople
in North Carolina. He said they own a grocery, a fleet of shrimp boats and
a shrimp processing plant. Tran earned the money through the business,
Kottemann said.

"I tried to get it across to the jury that the Vietnamese deal in cash,
that they are historically afraid of banks and institutions and police
officers," Kottemann said. Both men were convicted of money laundering, but
Tran's girlfriend was acquitted.

Quan Huynh, president of the Vietnamese American Community in Louisiana,
said this emphasis on cash goes back to his native land, where a small
percentage of the population uses banks. He said those habits die hard.

That often causes problems. For instance, he said, a Vietnamese couple
living in eastern New Orleans accidentally threw away $8,000 that was
hidden in the trash can because the husband never told his wife what he had
done with the money.

"Most Vietnamese carry their property and try to hide it," Huynh said.
"They never deal with the banks or the financial institutions like the
Americans do."