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Financier Danny Pang dies under house arrest
Did he defraud investors of millions? Did he belong to a Triad gang? Did he have his wife killed? We may never know
A mysterious California-based financier who had been under house arrest since April accused of money laundering and perpetrating a massive Ponzi scheme, has died suddenly at the age 42, denying prosecutors their day in court. Danny Pang was taken to hospital from his home in Newport Beach on Friday suffering from a heart ailment and pronounced dead early on Saturday.
His death leaves many questions unanswered. As well as the financial irregularities, there were rumours that he was involved in the murder 12 years ago of his wife, Janie Pang, and that he had links to the United Bamboo Triad based in Taiwan, where he was born. It is one of the world's most notorious underworld gangs, with links to drug smuggling, human trafficking and assassinations.
Pang (above, right) was the founder of Private Equity Management Group Inc and Private Equity Management LLC, or the PEM Group. He was due to face trial next year accused of using PEM Group employees and family members to help him launder more than $300,000 by cashing individual cheques in amounts just under $10,000 to avoid filing currency transaction reports.
More seriously, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had another case pending, in which he was accused of running a Ponzi scheme that defrauded Asia-based investors, mainly Taiwanese. In comparison to Bernie Madoff (above, left) it was peanuts: he was accused of defrauding his clients of $83 million-plus.
His family have suggested that the pressure he was under may have triggered his death. A spokesman said he had been subjected to a "relentless attack of innuendo and false allegations" and had been denied any opportunity to defend himself. That moment would, of course, have come in court.
Earlier this year Pang was the subject of a Wall Street Journal inquiry which discovered that he had never been heard of at the university where he said he got his MBA or at Morgan Stanley where he claimed to have worked.
Soon after the article appeared, the SEC filed fraud charges and Pang has been under house arrest ever since.
The suspicions over his wife's death date back to May 1997 when Janie Pang, a former topless dancer, was shot dead at the couple's home.
A Californian attorney, Hugh 'Randy' McDonald, went on trial in 2002 for her murder, but the jury was unable to reach a verdict. McDonald's lawyers claimed that Pang, who had a reputation as an abusive husband and inveterate gambler, had hired a hit man to kill her.
Pang took the Fifth Amendment - the right not to incriminate himself - rather than testify. He was never tried for his wife's killing.
But in the course of the trial, Lucretia Ross, a friend of the Pang family, testified that after Janie died Pang put pressure on her to tell him anything Janie might have said about about his business and their relationship. When she refused, "he just looked at me and he said 'You know, I can have anybody killed I want'." ·
