Men sent to prison after attempted extortion, abduction of children

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This article was published 06/04/2024 (558 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Two Chinese immigrants convicted of attempting to abduct their former employers’ children in a failed extortion bid have left the family “in a constant state of fear,” a judge said Thursday before sentencing the men to five years in prison.

Xiaohui Ji, 34, and Guofeng Zhang, 35, were convicted after trial of attempted child abduction, extortion and criminal harassment in a case that revolved around the men’s attempts to force the children’s parents to repay 270,000 Chinese yuan (approximately $50,000) they alleged had been taken from them in an immigration scam.

“It is aggravating that they chose to involve and terrify children who were in no way involved in their financial dispute with the parents … in the hopes of causing fear and panic so the parents would pay the money,” said provincial court Judge Cindy Sholdice.

Ji and Zhang — who each immigrated to Canada in 2017 and have doctoral degrees — have no prior records, are assessed as low risks to reoffend and are described in support letters provided to court as kind and hard working.

Defence lawyers Omri Plotnik and Greg Sacks urged Sholdice to consider a sentence of no more than six months, which would allow them to appeal any deportation order issued upon their release from custody.

Sholdice said she was satisfied the men had good prospects for rehabilitation, but the sentence recommended by the defence would not send the message “that involving young innocent children as a means to collect money will not be tolerated and will yield penitentiary incarceration.

“Imposing a sentence so low would be a misuse of the sentencing process to create an artificial sentence for the sole purpose of avoiding immigration consequences,” she said.

Court heard evidence at trial Ji and Zhang, who already knew each other and were friends, began working at a restaurant owned by the children’s parents in early 2018. The Free Press is not naming the restaurant or the parents, as it would identify the child victims, whose names cannot be disclosed under terms of a publication ban.

The children’s mother testified she considered the two men part of the family and they would often eat dinner together at the restaurant.

But the men soon began to feel their employers were taking advantage of them, having them drop off and pick up their children from school and music lessons, and other “unrelated errands.”

Both men hoped to secure permanent residency status, which required they work for the same employer for at least six months. Ji, testifying through an interpreter, said his English was too poor to find another job, while Zhang said he didn’t want to start the permanent residency process over again.

Court heard Ji transferred 120,000 yuan (about $22,500) into the the mother’s bank account in the fall of 2018 and Zhang deposited another 150,000 yuan (about $28,700, half of it borrowed from Ji) a couple of months later. The men testified the money was part of an “immigration scam” to keep their employment long enough to secure permanent residency status and to assist the mother with some “financial problems.”

The mother denied taking the money as part of a scam, testifying the men “willingly” provided the money as an investment in a new grocery business. As the business had not done well, there was no return on the investment to give the men, the mother testified.

Ji quit the restaurant in July 2019, and Zhang left the following November. In April 2021, the men hatched a plan to get their money back.

After direct attempts to pressure the mother and her husband to repay them failed, the men turned their attention to the couple’s three children.

On May 11, one day before Manitoba classes shifted to remote learning owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, Ji and Zhang staked out the children’s schools — Ji at the school of the two young daughters, and Zhang at their older brother’s school — waiting for them to leave for the day.

The girls both testified Ji told them their mother had sent him to pick them up and that Ji pulled on the older girl’s arm, saying, “Let’s go.”

The girls’ father arrived in his car and honked his horn, at which point Ji walked away.

Around the same time, Zhang approached the boy at a different school, telling him the same story. The boy, suspicious, made up a story about having a music lesson. He walked away and called his mother, who told him to take a picture of the man, which he did.

Both Ji and Zhang denied telling the children they were there to pick them up, testifying at trial they only wanted the names of their teachers, who, in their culture, were people with authority to intervene in cases of conflict.

Sholdice dismissed the men’s claim as “far-fetched and unbelievable.”

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca