THE LIFE OF A GANSTER

The 34-year-old Vietnamese man passes himself off as a lowly kitchen
worker and clam digger, apologizing in a letter to immigration
officials that he "hadn't speak and understand English."

But on the street he swaggers and smirks as only a powerful gang
leader can. Dressed in tailored suits and casually tossing orders to
his underlings, the man who tried to take over the Vancouver and
Nanaimo heroin trade ordered beatings and kidnappings and randomly
attacked fellow members of the Vietnamese community to establish his
power.

His name is Phin Van Nguyen (pronounced Win) and for years, according
to a report from B.C.'s secretive Coordinated Law Enforcement Unit
(CLEU), he has been behind shootings and mayhem that tore into the
legitimate Vietnamese community. On the street they called him Gai da
- -- literally, "older brother" in Vietnamese, but used only to refer to
gang hierarchy, not family relationships.

An immigrant from Vietnam, he was ordered deported in 1996, although
he continues to live in Vancouver. After years of crime and gang
activity, Nguyen applied for Canadian citizenship, a step that would
prove to be his downfall. The application precipitated an
investigation by immigration authorities, who subsequently ruled that
Nguyen was a danger to Canadian society. His citizenship application
was denied and he was ordered removed from the country. The removal
order was challenged but confirmed by a judge and reinstated in May of
this year.

An immigration department spokesman says Nguyen will be deported as
soon as the required paperwork and travel documents are complete.

Though Nguyen could not be reached for comment for this story, his
lawyers deny their client was a criminal mastermind, calling the CLEU
allegations preposterous, hearsay and without foundation. But a
federal court judge considered the claims strong enough to rule that
Phin Van Nguyen must go.

The CLEU report on Nguyen is a window on a criminal organization said
to be behind a string of crimes that looked like unrelated acts of
violence but were, in fact, connected to a years-long struggle to
control the city's heroin trade. The shootings, the beatings and the
extortions lit the night sky of the Downtown Eastside with the red and
blue flashing lights of police cars and terrorized law-abiding members
of the Vietnamese community.

The Hoang Gia restaurant at 535 East Hastings Street was a popular
night-time meeting spot for younger Vietnamese immigrants in 1993.
People would gather with friends who knew their language in this
strange, new city, drinking the strong "French coffee" sweetened with
condensed milk popular in their homeland.

It was considered a safe hangout, until a new group of men started
showing up unannounced and attacking single victims with broken beer
bottles and glasses. The assaults came out of the blue, lightning
quick, some against drug dealers, others against law-abiding patrons
of the restaurant.

One of the main participants in the brutal assaults, and the man
directing other attacks, was Phin Van Nguyen, police informants told
Vancouver police department Constable Eric Wickberg.

"Phin was making it known that his gang was in Vancouver to take over
the Vietnamese drug trade," Wickberg would later write in a CLEU
report to immigration officials. "They intended to prove how powerful
they were by the use of unprovoked violent attacks against drug
dealers and other legitimate members of the Vietnamese community."

Nguyen had come to the attention of B.C. police agencies in 1992.
Police believed he bought and sold heroin, moving the expensive drug
in multi-ounce units which street dealers would later break down into

packages of a half or quarter gram for resale.

Nguyen had arrived at Vancouver International Airport on April 23,
1990, telling immigration authorities that he had been living in a
refugee camp in Hong Kong and was hoping to acquire landed-immigrant
status. He arrived with a wife and child, and spent time in Kingston,
Ont. and Nanaimo before returning to Vancouver in 1993.

Sources in the Vietnamese community told Wickberg that Nguyen and his
accomplices were believed to have committed several violent home
invasions and drug ripoffs of rival dealers.

He had not been charged or convicted of any offences -- some
immigrants were willing to share their knowledge with Wickberg but too
frightened to be seen as cooperating with the police by testifying or
laying complaints.

Left unsaid in the CLEU report were the problems police face trying to
get criminal convictions in communities cut apart from the Canadian
mainstream by language, coercion and violence.

Nguyen and his group started taking over the Little Saigon Restaurant
at 406 East Hastings later in 1993, extorting free food and
intimidating other customers. At this time the group of men were
living in an apartment on Union Street near the restaurant in the
city's Downtown Eastside.

On Nov. 11, 1993, Nguyen and eight of his "underlings" had a parking
dispute with a Vietnamese male living in the apartment complex, police
say.

"Using pieces of wood they attacked this person and beat him
unconscious," Wickberg wrote. Nguyen and others were charged with
assault causing bodily harm, but were acquitted.

"During the course of the trial there was open intimidation in the
court by the accused toward the victim. At the end of the trial they
were acquitted due to the change in some of the witness testimony,"
Wickberg said.

On Dec. 7, 1993, a member of Nguyen's gang called Dinh Xuan Cao was
shot outside a casino in Nanaimo. Cao survived and told police his
wounds stemmed from an attempt by robbers to steal his money.

"It is more likely that this was retaliation for Phin and his group's
conflict with the local drug dealers in that area," the CLEU report
said.

The only criminal charge -- plea-bargained down from a raft of other
charges -- to result in a conviction against Nguyen occurred because
of a sloppy home invasion at 6 a.m. on Dec. 12, 1993.

Nguyen and nine males who police described as "members of his gang"
showed up at the basement suite at 2735 Oxford Street in Vancouver. It
was thought the men who lived there worked for a rival Vietnamese drug
dealer, and Nguyen had arranged a home invasion robbery to rip off
their drugs.

Two of the three men had nothing to do with drugs, but all were
awakened when Nguyen and his men burst into the suite, armed with
knives, a blue-steel .357 Magnum and a Browning high-power 9 mm
semi-automatic. Both pistols were loaded.

The three men were bound with electrical wire, stabbed, beaten with
gun butts and fists, a subsequent court trial would be told.

Nguyen directed the interrogation and the search of the apartment,
threatening the men with death if they didn't reveal the location of
money and drugs.

The assault was noisy enough to awaken residents living upstairs who
called 911.

Police arriving at the scene found 10 fully dressed males and three
frightened Vietnamese men, two in underwear and one in blue pajamas.

The gang members were arrested, jailed and photographed. The victims
identified their assailants from the photos.

Shown a Polaroid of Nguyen, one of the victims was quoted by a police
officer as saying: "He's the leader, big brother, dai ga."

Nguyen was collecting welfare at the time and driving a near-new
silver Toyota Camry, which was found parked at the back of the home.
Dressed nattily in a grey turtleneck and dark suit, the ringleader was
jailed and charged with robbery, unlawful confinement and using a
weapon in an assault.

Nguyen would later also be charged with attempting to obstruct justice
by threatening one of the victims with a further beating if he said

anything to police.

While in custody, police said, Nguyen threatened to kill one of the
sheriffs and was involved in numerous fights with other prisoners.
Nguyen and his accomplices were held in jail for the 14 months it took
for the case to reach court. Days after the trial began, three of the
accused, including Nguyen, pleaded guilty to unlawful confinement. The
Crown dropped the other charges against them and the men were held in
jail for a further nine months.

Finally released in 1995, Nguyen started insulating himself from his
gang's street operations, allowing his henchmen to take direct control
of some of the younger Vietnamese males in the gang while Nguyen
remained in the background, sharing the profits, police said.

One of his most trusted lieutenants set up gambling houses where
members of the gang took a percentage from each game. By now, police
referred to Nguyen's followers as "Phin's boys."

An inter-gang squabble arose in September 1995, when one of Nguyen's
associates returned to Vietnam with Nguyen's wife.

Believing that gang member Kevin Minh Nguyen -- no relation -- knew
where his wife had fled, the gang leader had the man kidnapped and
held in one of the group's gambling houses at 3040 East Fifth Avenue.

"There he was tied up, beaten repeatedly and forced to drink his own
urine. This was done by Phin as well as by others at Phin's
direction," Wickberg wrote.

"Kevin subsequently escaped and charges were laid against Phin and
several others in his gang. Just before the case came to trial, Kevin
suddenly disappeared and has not been seen since. There is speculation
that either he was paid to disappear or he was executed. Either would
have been done at Phin's direction."

Lawyers acting for Nguyen argued that speculation and vanishing
witnesses did not prove their client was a criminal mastermind.

"It's important to point out that the so-called details in
[Wickberg's] report are a compilation of source information, i.e.
rumour and gossip," lawyer Jerry Cikes said at an immigration hearing.
"It's puffery, smoke and mirrors."

But among the Vietnamese community in Nanaimo, a big shot from
Vancouver was letting it be known that he was taking over the heroin
trade in that island city. The gang leader called himself "Phin Huu"
- -- the street name that Nguyen had adopted to protect his identity.

Members of the Phin Huu gang provoked a fight with some of Nanaimo's
heroin dealers in a popular karaoke spot on Dec. 10, 1995. A Phin
associate called Cuong Chung shot two males from the other group,
whose friends retaliated by beating to death a member of Nguyen's
gang. All three are currently facing charges of attempted murder or
murder.

By the spring of 1996, members of Phin's boys started hanging around
several Vancouver restaurants, selling their drugs. Former Vancouver
Sun reporter Nicole Parton caused a public stir when she wrote a
first-hand account of how she bought heroin at the counter of what was
then the Casablanca Vietnamese Restaurant at 535 East Hastings.
Vancouver city council voted to revoke the restaurant's business
licence and shut it down.

Reopened by a new owner and called the Blue Sky Restaurant, the
building once again became a magnet for Phin's boys, who stabbed the
new owner with a broken beer bottle while trying to extort money. They
were charged with the assault -- and the restaurant mysteriously
burned down that same year.

"No charges were ever laid related to this arson, however it is
believed this same group was involved," Wickberg wrote.

By late 1996 Nguyen returned to Vietnam to visit his family in the
northern city of Hong Gai. Police sources said he took $10,000 with
him to "make drug connections and likely bring drugs back to Canada
upon his return," Wickberg wrote. Customs officers were instructed to
pay close attention to anything brought back by members of his gang.

Still on probation for the unlawful confinement conviction, Nguyen
committed a pivotal mistake -- he applied for Canadian citizenship,

which brought his case to the attention of the federal immigration
department.

A section of the immigration act allows Canada to deport anyone
convicted in this country of a crime punishable by as much as 10 years
in prison -- the maximum penalty for his confinement conviction.

An unidentified immigration officer wrote a note on Nguyen's file:
"This appears to be just the kind of case that this legislation was
written for."

A federal judge agreed and Nguyen was ordered deported in 1996. His
lawyers delayed his departure for two years by asking for a judicial
review based largely on an argument that the CLEU report contained
hearsay evidence.

Federal court justice Yvon Pinard dismissed the application, ruling
that "it must be remembered that these allegations are consistent with
the violent offence for which he was convicted, are the result of
extensive investigation, and were not refuted . . . ."

Nguyen attended his own hearing on Aug. 6, 1997, using crutches after
being shot in a leg and the chest. He has never revealed to police the
identity of whoever tried to kill him the previous month.

Nguyen's deportation order was reinstated May 25.

During the past year, Phin Van Nguyen has lived in a house in the 2200
block of East 33rd Avenue, and another which he shared with a
common-law wife and a child in the 4000-block Beatrice. Today, he is
waiting for a knock on the door by immigration authorities ready to
escort him to Vietnam.

'I WAS SO UPSET AND I BEATEN HIM. . .'

Even after six years in Canada, Phin Van Nguyen had only a rudimentary
command of the English language, having spent most of his time
immersed in the Vietnamese emigre community.

Told that he was considered a danger to Canadian society because of a
confinement conviction, Nguyen tried in a letter to immigration
officials to explain away the charge by claiming he was the victim of
the men he confined, arguing they cheated him in a card game.

"So I move to Vancouver I met some my friends they made to me some bad
things on 13th of November 1993 I played card gambling with some of
them. I was lied by them they are dishonest trick and got my money by
that way, when I knew that I was so upset and I beaten him and I tied
his hands till police came," Nguyen wrote. "Please forgive me
everything I did before give to me last chance in my life let me try
my best to build up my future as your wish from me. One more time I
beg you forgive me."

Checked-by: "Rich O'Grady"