Six indicted in alleged Flushing election fraud
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Six people were charged in an indictment for alleged voter fraud in last year’s Republican Primary for the 20th City Council District. Eagle file photo by Ryan Schwach
By Ryan Schwach
Six defendants were charged last week in a 161-count indictment for alleged voter fraud in a Flushing City Council race last year.
The six defendants, including the candidate’s daughter, volunteered for Yu-Ching James Pai, who ran unsuccessfully for Flushing’s Council District 20 after winning the Republican primary race, which prosecutors now say was influenced by election fraud.
The charges came down on Thursday from Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz, and come after Pai’s primary opponent last year filed an election fraud lawsuit that was ultimately thrown out in court, the Queens Chronicle reported at the time.
According to the DA, the six volunteers – Pai’s 19–year-old daughter Syndee Pai among them –
worked for his Republican primary bid from approximately March 1, 2023, to June 27, 2023.
During that time, the six volunteers visited the New York City Board of Elections office in Forest Hills to pick up ballots for voters who they said wanted to cast absentee ballots in the June Republican primary election, where Pai was facing off against his opponent, Dany Chen.
The defendants claimed that they were all authorized to pick up ballots on behalf of a number of voters.
However, an investigation from the DA’s office found that many, if not all, of the voters whose ballots were requested and picked up by the six volunteers never gave anyone permission to exercise their vote on their behalf.
The DA’s office said they first became aware of the suspected impropriety after one voter reported that when they went to vote, they were informed they already had via absentee ballot.
The voter brought the incident to the DA’s office right after the June primary, and others brought similar grievances to the BOE, who directed them to the DA.
The DA said investigators interviewed multiple individuals whose names and personal information were listed on the ballot applications and learned that the voters did not fill out or sign the application, never met the defendant listed as the person authorized to pick it up and never received an absentee ballot.
In total, the charges in the indictment reflect that 23 Queens voters had absentee ballot applications and ballots fraudulently submitted in their names.
The allegations resulted in charges for the six volunteers: Pai’s daughter Sydnee Pai, Li Zhen Wan, 46; Yee Ping Yam, 53; Lisbeth Cheng, 24; and Crystal You, 20, and an unnamed sixth defendant who will be arraigned at a later date.
The candidate himself was not named in the indictment.
The first five were arraigned Thursday before Supreme Court Justice Leigh K. Cheng, and were ordered to return to court on Sept. 19.
Pai and Cheng are charged with two counts each of criminal possession of a forged instrument in the second degree; falsifying business records in the first degree; illegal voting; offering a false instrument for filing in the first degree; criminal possession of a forged instrument in the third degree; falsifying business records in the second degree; and offering a false instrument for filing in the second degree.
Wan, Yam and You are charged with four counts each of criminal possession of a forged instrument in the second degree; falsifying business records in the first degree; illegal voting; offering a false instrument for filing in the first degree; criminal possession of a forged instrument in the third degree; falsifying business records in the second degree; and offering a false instrument for filing in the second degree.
They each face up to seven years in prison if convicted of the top charge.
“Our democracy relies on integrity at the voting booth, and we will not allow that to be compromised in Queens County,” said Katz. “As alleged in this case, the defendants went to the Board of Elections and filed fraudulent absentee ballot applications on behalf of 23 voters they had never met. I thank my Public Corruption Bureau and the Board of Elections for their assistance in this investigation.”
Six people who volunteered for Republican candidate Yu-Ching James Pai in a race for Council District 20 last year were indicted on election fraud charges last week. Photo via Pai for NYC/Twitter
Pai, a Taiwanese-born accountant, ultimately won the primary where the alleged voter fraud took place, defeating Chen by less than 200 votes. He went on to lose to incumbent Democrat Sandra Ung by 26 percentage points. Pai had challenged Ung in 2021 as well, and lost by 19 percentage points.
This is not the first time that voter fraud has come up in last year’s District 20 Republican Primary.
About a month after the election, Chen filed an election fraud lawsuit against Pai, alleging a similar scheme now being prosecuted.
That lawsuit argued that a large number of voters – “hundreds,” as Chen’s lawyer Aaron Foldenauer claimed – tried to submit a vote on election day, only to find they had already voted by absentee ballot when they had no recollection of doing so.
Foldenauer had said that 68 percent of the votes cast in the June primary in the district were from absentee ballots, and that the majority of the absentee ballots requested were returned – both abnormally high numbers compared to the city’s average.
Pai’s lawyer at the time John Ciampoli – who also represented Queens and Brooklyn locals in the case to get rid of the Floyd Bennett Field migrant camp – called the lawsuit a “weasel hunt” and “fishing expedition” in his motion to dismiss.
“They've gone and run through the streets, crying fraud, the pleadings don't cite a single instance of fraud,” Ciampoli argued in a phone call with the Eagle last year.
Ultimately, the case was thrown out by Queens Judge Robert Caloras, who decided that Chen’s camp had not filed enough proof that any fraud was committed in the election, saying, “the petition has failed to plead fraud with particularity and failed to state a cause of action.”
Neither Pai nor Chen returned a request for comment.
