A former top governor’s aide who allegedly helped her hubby’s seafood business make millions of dollars by trading favors to the Chinese government brazenly toted around a red phone case that said, “Get rich, good luck,” the feds say.
“Linda Sun was all about the money,” prosecutor Alexander Solomon said in Brooklyn federal courtTuesday, showing jurors a photo of the 42-year-old accused woman’s cartoon-animal-decorated phone case, which was seized by the FBI in a 2024 raid on her Long Island mansion.
Sun is charged with cashing in on her high-ranking positions for both Gov. Kathy Hochul and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo by advancing China’s interests as an unregistered agent of Beijing — and scooping up a luxury Hawaiian second home and white Ferrari in the process.
She repeatedly bragged to New York’s Chinese Consulate about taking actions favorable to China during her decade-plus stint in the state Capitol, evidence from her month-long-trial has revealed.
She once blocked the president of Taiwan, which China does not recognize as an independent country, from meeting with Cuomo in 2019, the court heard.
She took credit for removing mentions of the Uyghurs — a predominantly Muslim ethnic group that Chinese authorities have jailed en masse — from gubernatorial statements, too.
Evidence also revealed that Sun secretly added Chinese consulate official Lihua “Helen” Li onto an government conference call about the COVID-19 pandemic response.
In addition, Sun told Li in 2021 that Hochul — Cuomo’s lieutenant governor at the time — was “much more obedient” that Cuomo after convincing Hochul to film a cringe-worthy Lunar New Year video that name-dropped Li’s boss, Huang Ping.
In exchange for the favors for Chinese officials, her husband Chris Hu received millions of dollars from the Chinese government that turned his fledgling Queens seafood export business into a cash cow, allowing the couple to afford a $3.6 million Manhasset manse, a $2 million Hawaii second home and luxury cars such as a 2024 Ferrari Roma, prosecutors say.
Sun also received perks such as free ballet tickets and delectable salted duck prepared by the personal chef of Ping, the former head of the New York Chinese Consulate, in the hard-to-find style of Nanjing, Sun’s family’s hometown, evidence revealed.
“I want to eat salted duck,” Sun texted Ping during a chummy July 28, 2021, exchange in which she also joked that she should get a “China-US Friendship Award.”
“I eat it as a midnight snack,” Sun added — punctuating the exchange with a licking-lips emoji to convey how much she enjoyed the poultry delicacy.
Sun and Hu are separately charged with taking millions of dollars of kickbacks and bribes in exchange for steering personal protective equipment, or PPE, contracts to a company owned by her cousin in the early stages of the pandemic, and with visa fraud for allegedly forging Hochul’s signature on invitation letterssent to Chinese dignitaries which allowed them to enter the country.
“You saw, time and again, a clear pattern of corruption,” Solomon told jurors Tuesday during closing arguments.
“Linda Sun betrayed the State of New York to enrich herself,” the prosecutor said, as Sun sat calmly at the defense table in a gray turtleneck sweater, jotting down notes.
Sun rose the ranks in her time in Albany to eventually serve as a deputy chief of staff in the executive chamber under Hochul. She was ousted from the state government in 2023, while serving in its Labor Department, after an internal probe exposed that she’d issued phony state “proclamations” to her father and uncle without permission.
“Is there something wrong with that?” the squirrely former state official — who according to a witness in the room was “sweaty and nervous” — could be heard saying in a taped interview from the investigation that was played for the jury.
Sun and Hu have pleaded not guilty, and their lawyers are set to make their own closing statements to the jury on Wednesday.
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