Matthew Cox

And so in southern China, you had, based around the city of Guangzhou, the organization known as the Big Circle Boys.

And the Big Circle Boys was essentially the paramilitary arm of the Red Guard back in the Cultural Revolution.

And then when Mao realized, hey, these guys are getting too powerful, he crossed them, threw them in re-education camps.

Once they get released, they band together to form like a criminal confederacy, go around causing all kinds of mischief in southern China.

And whenever they're about to get charged, those that are able to do so, boom, slip into Hong Kong.

Well, those are the guys that ended up forming one of the factions with the 14K.

Now, the 14K, you have to understand, isn't a single triad.

It's a society consisting of 15 to 20 triads.

So the 14K operation in the United States, which was led by Frank Ma, was different than the 14K operation in the Netherlands or South Africa or in Vancouver or in Toronto.

These are all separate, essentially, triads.

But they all are one huge network

operating out of Hong Kong.

And so the 14K in Orange County, which was principally based out of Westminster, was right next to the town where Armando Valencia's operation was, which was based out of Santa Ana.

So you started getting business relationships between the two of them.

Okay.

This is some of the activity that was underlying my indictment for the L.A.

investigation.

And so...

you had a business relationship that got developed between the 14K and the Valencia faction of the Sinaloa Collective in the early to mid-1990s.

Now, where things took a turn is that in the mid-1990s, the American Department of Justice initiated an attack against the domestic production of synthetics.