In this episode of Gangland Wire, Gary Jenkins, a former KCPD Intelligence Detective, is joined by Lydia Jean Kott (LJ), a producer at Pushkin Industries, the company founded by Malcolm Gladwell. LJ brings us inside the making of Chinatown Sting, a gripping new podcast that uncovers the fascinating and little-known story of Chinese organized crime, China White heroin, and characters like Machinegun Johnny in New York’s Chinatown during the 1980s.

LJ explains how her interest in the case was sparked by a personal connection—her boyfriend’s mother was a federal prosecutor involved in the original sting. That legendary case centered on heroin smuggled from Hong Kong into Chinatown, hidden in packages and distributed through a network of mahjong-playing mothers. What began with a flagged parcel at the post office unraveled into a high-stakes undercover investigation.

We explore how law enforcement managed to penetrate this tight-knit immigrant community, the risks taken by prosecutors like Beryl Howell, and the difficult moral choices faced by those caught in the middle—including a woman forced to choose between betraying a friend or saving herself.

LJ also delves into the history of Chinatowns in America, where family associations and Tongs—formed initially as mutual aid societies—became intertwined with the vice industry. She connects this legacy to gangs like the Flying Dragons and their ties back to organized crime in Hong Kong.   Our discussion is not just about drugs, gangs, and federal stings—it’s about storytelling, community, and the pursuit of survival.

LJ shares how she and her co-reporter pieced the story together over the course of years of interviews and archival research, giving voice to people often overlooked in the larger mob narrative.   If you’re fascinated by organized crime, hidden histories, or the way law enforcement takes on international networks, Chinatown Sting is a podcast you won’t want to miss.

Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app.

 

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Gary Jenkins : [00:00:00 ] Hey, welcome all you wire tappers. Good to be back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. This is Gary Jenkins. You know, I’m a retired Kansas City police intelligence unit detective turned podcaster.

Gary Jenkins : I did a few other things in between, but this is the love of my life here, guys. And I was just talking with our guests that I don’t do this for the money, but I do it for fun and, and it is a lot of fun and, and I can tell my guests today. Does it to earn a living, but she does it a lot for fun. She really is into it.

Gary Jenkins : So it’s Lydia Jean Kott, or we call her lj. Welcome. Lj,

L.J. : thank you so much. I’m a huge fan of the show and it’s an honor to get to be on it and to get to talk to you.

Gary Jenkins : Well, cool. Thank you for that compliment. I really appreciate that. Kind of makes it worthwhile keeping coming back. I get those nice comments on my YouTube channel quite a little bit.

Gary Jenkins : That kinda keeps me coming back when I get down a little bit. Anyhow first of all, you’re. You’re with something called Pushkin, P-U-S-H-K-I-N, which is a Malcolm Gladwell company. I think he started it and had [00:01:00 ] the first podcast early in the days. Mm-hmm. You know, I’m like one of the earliest I am the earliest Mafia podcast.

Gary Jenkins : I think that ever first one had ever started, I believe long before. When did you start? Oh, . 2015, I believe.

L.J. : Okay. Yeah. Early, early podcast days,

Gary Jenkins : early podcast. I listened to Serial and I thought, man, I think I could do that and tell police stories.

Gary Jenkins: Yeah.

Gary Jenkins : So tell the guys a little bit about.

Gary Jenkins : Pushkin and how this podcast industry works. We talked about this a little bit before, and I’m always kind of curious myself. You know, I’m, I’m what they call A GDI that’s a goddamn independent. If you don’t know what a GDI is, ask my son if he’s gonna join a fraternity. He said, yeah, A GDI. So I’m a GDI.

Gary Jenkins : But LJ is with a company and, but she’s been all in all areas and aspects of the business. So tell the guys a little bit about. What we talked about, how this podcasting business works.

L.J. : . So [00:02:00 ] Pushkin is a podcasting company in New York City and we do a whole, we produce a whole bunch of different podcasts.

L.J. : So we produce a podcast called Against the Rules, which is hosted by Michael Lewis, who wrote my Ball story. Yeah, that’s

Gary Jenkins : a great one. But guys Against the Rules with Michael Lewis, who’s a guy that wrote Moneyball. This is a great one. Go ahead.

L.J. : So yeah, so that’s the you know, that’s the podcast that I work on, so I’m a producer on that show.

L.J. : And Happiness Lab and Revisionist History. So we make a bunch of shows and we have, you know, people can come to Pushkin with ideas for shows, and then there’s producers on staff, people like myself who then would help you make the show. You know, sometimes ideas originate within the company. So I actually, as a producer, pitched this idea to the higher ups at Pushkin, and then it became a show.

Gary Jenkins : And this one here, this one here, to clarify, guys, this one here, Chinatown Sting is the name of it. We’re gonna talk about. Chinese organized crime for a change rather than the Italian organized crime or some drug organization what we call a peckerwood. Peckerwood is non [00:03:00 ] Italian, by the way. Lj

Gary Jenkins : yeah. I never

Gary Jenkins: heard that.

Gary Jenkins : Yeah, it’s kinda local. It’s little bit like saying hillbilly or a redneck drug association. But anyhow we use it as non Italian in Kansas City. Anyhow, she’s gonna talk about some Chinese organized crime. So it’s I’m really fascinated. I really wanna learn about this. I had just.

Gary Jenkins : I was just thinking I need to do a story about Chinese organized crime and, and I was finding a little bit of stuff on YouTube, but not a lot. So, and then this opportunity came along and, and you know, I’m, I’m kind of promoting a competing podcast, if you will, but if you guys are like me, I listen to so many different podcasts that, you know, we’re not in competition with each other.

Gary Jenkins : A, a rising ship lifts all a rising tide lifts all boats anyhow, right.

L.J. : Yeah. Yeah. You should listen to both the Gangland Wire and the Chinatown sting. You can, you can. Complimentary podcast.

Gary Jenkins : Yeah. They are, they are in many ways, a little. I they complimentary

L.J. : actually.

Gary Jenkins : Yeah. A little different aspect of organized crime.

Gary Jenkins : So LJ tell us about, you know, how’d you [00:04:00 ] first get interested in this story? Like I said, I was harping a hard time finding much about Chinese organized crime. So tell us how you got into it.

L.J. : So I, there isn’t, especially when I started working on this, which was like three years ago, there wasn’t very much about Chinese organized crime at all.

L.J. : But I, this is a little bit of a reveal of the podcast, but I got interested in it because my boyfriend’s mom, actually, her name is Beryl Howell, .

L.J. : But her career got started as a prosecutor, a federal prosecutor in New York City, in the eastern District. And her first big case started with this undercover sting that happened. In Brooklyn, because that’s where the eastern Eastern District of New York is. And this case is kind of legendary in my boyfriend’s family.

L.J. : And I’ve known her actually, you know, for a really long time. So I’d always heard about this case and how this was the case that, you know, it helped, et cetera. It was her first big case. She was just a baby prosecutor at the time, et cetera, off in her career. It made a [00:05:00 ] huge impression on her. It was kind of like family lore.

L.J. : And as a journalist, I’ve always been like. I wanna get to the bottom of it. Like I wanna find out, I’ve heard about her side of the story of this case, but I wanna find out about the people who, you know, who else was involved and kind of paint a full picture of this case. So it took me about, I think three or four years and I found a co reporter who speaks Cantonese.

L.J. : Her name is Sh Wang. And we worked on it together. And we’ve been telling the story of this case. And what was really helpful is that we barrel my boyfriend’s mom. Has this, she gave me this suitcase that was full of thousands of pages of court documents that she had saved. So it’s all public record, but since this is from the 1980s yeah, you know, it can be, you can only read the documents in the courthouse actually, or you have