As you can imagine, kidnapping a member of a billionaire family would be a difficult
task.
But one Hong Kong gangster named Cheung Tze Kueng didn’t just kidnap one, but multiple
billionaires.
And the amount of money he made during his time as a crime boss was absolutely insane.
It was May 23, 1996 when Victor Li Tzar-kuoi was driving to his father’s house.
Suddenly another car swerved in front of him; both vehicles came to a screeching halt.
Armed men swarmed Victor Li’s car and pulled him out onto the concrete.
He was dragged to the other vehicle, thrown in, and tied up.
The kidnappers sped away to bring Victor Li to their boss, Cheung Tze Kueng, so he could
be ransomed for millions of dollars.
Victor himself wasn’t especially wealthy, but his father, Li Ka Shing, was one of the
wealthiest men in China.
He had made a fortune of billions from the shipping company he owned.
Cheung knew that by kidnapping the billionaire’s son rather than the man himself, he could
hold Victor Li for ransom and receive the money in a matter of days.
How did Cheung Tze Kueng do it?
And how much is a billionaire's son worth?
To understand this mastermind we will have to dive deeper into the seedy underworld of
Hong Kong, and how it created this kidnapper of billionaires.
Cheung Tze Kueng was incredibly successful at pulling off big payout crimes.
However, he wasn’t your normal crime boss.
His nickname was “Big Spender” and his obsession with money was borderline unhealthy.
The gangsters who worked for Cheung , along with others who met him, were shocked by his
generosity and spending habits.
Reportedly even the Triads were impressed with the way Cheung Tze Kueng spent his money.
He would drop massive amounts of cash on gambling tables in the casinos of Macau.
Cheung clearly had a gambling problem as he once lost 20 million dollars on a single game.
He loved money so much that in his bedroom there was a giant carving of an “M” hanging
on the wall over his bed.
When asked what it stood for, Cheung just smiled and said “money.”
Cheung was introduced to a life of crime at an early age.
His father operated an illegal gambling ring and often sent his son to do jobs for the
organization.
This included dealing with the money.
By the time Cheung was 16 he had already been arrested and convicted for his activity in
the street gangs of Hong Kong.
After being released it didn’t take long for Cheung to make a name for himself and
become the boss of his own gang.
Cheung enjoyed the finer things in life like fast cars, gourmet cuisine, and expensive
liquor.
He also had a taste for art.
It was said that he once paid tens of thousands of dollars for an art piece created by a street
painter in Bangkok.
Cheung stayed in luxury hotels and made sure to tip the staff extremely well.
In fact, just before his final arrest, Cheung put himself and his gang members up at an
extraordinarily expensive hotel to relax from crime for a bit.
The hotel didn’t mind having a crime boss there as he paid his bill in full and continuously
provided the hotel staff with generous tips.
But how did Cheung amass his fortune?
Was he just your ordinary crime boss?
Cheung Tze Kueng was a mastermind when it came to kidnapping billionaire targets.
His crime spree is like nothing you’ve heard of before.
Early on in his career as a crime boss Cheung partnered with another high profile gangster
named Yip Kai-foon.
Together they carried out a number of armed robberies that made Cheung a wealthy man.
One of their first robberies was at Kai Tak Airport.
They managed to infiltrate the consignment warehouse where Cheung and Yip stole almost
4 million dollars worth of Rolex watches.
The craziest part is that Cheung wasn’t done making money off of the airport yet.
A year later he went back to Kai Tak a second time and robbed a security van, which contained
close to 20.5 million dollars worth of loot.
Unfortunately for Cheung and Yip it looked like they were going to be caught.
But for Cheung, something unbelievable happened.
Even though at this point Cheung had stolen around 25 million dollars at the airport,
he did not spend very much time in jail.
When he was arrested for the security van heist and sent to trial, the judge found there
was not enough evidence to convict Cheung.
His sentence was supposed to be for 18 years, but the case was said to have too many inconsistencies
when presented to the judge.
Yip Kai-foon on the other hand was found guilty and sentenced to 41 years in prison.
Was the judge paid off by Big Spender?
Or was there really not enough evidence to convict Cheung Tze Kueng?
We may never know, but his deep pockets probably had something to do with it.
Cheung’s crime life was filled with lucrative robberies.
He eventually stole enough money to hire his own army of thugs to protect him.
They helped him carry out more crimes and amass enough weapons to start his own war
if he wanted.
On the darker side of things, anyone who was thought to be an informant was immediately
and brutally assassinated.
Cheung had no desire to risk his chances in the courtroom again.
Living the Big Spender life wasn’t cheap, and Cheung continuously needed money flowing
in to support his gambling and spending habits.
That was unless he could claim a big pay day.
Cheung needed a crime that would bring in enough money that he would be set for the
foreseeable future.
That was when he decided it was time to start kidnapping billionaire targets.
After kidnapping Victor Li, Cheung gave his billionaire father three days to deliver the
ransom.
Li Ka Shing had no choice if he wanted his son returned alive.
Cheung actually held the billionaire’s son in his own house while he waited for the money
to be delivered.
In the end, Cheung received over a billion Hong Kong Dollars in ransom money for the
return of Victor Li.
This is just over 135 million U.S. dollars, making it the largest kidnapping ransom ever
paid at the time.
Cheung Tze Kueng was now filthy rich, but it still wasn’t enough.
He thought of himself as a true mastermind.
Cheung was even reported saying: “I take unconventional steps to get rich.
Money is the most important thing in life but it's only me who can pull off kidnapping
tycoons.”
And he was right.
After the successful payday made off of Victor Li, Cheung devised another kidnapping to make
even more money.
On September 29, 1997 Cheung Tze Kueng and his gang kidnapped Walter Kwok, a billionaire
chairman of Sun Hung Kai Properties.
Sun Hung Kai was one of Hong Kong’s largest property conglomerates, and this had allowed
Kwok to amass a fortune.
Cheung wanted in on the action so he kidnapped the tycoon and ransomed him off to his wife.
Kwok had not cooperated on his own, so Cheung had him roughed up a bit to make him more
receptive.
In the end, Kwok’s wife was able to collect 600 million Hong Kong dollars, or roughly
77 million U.S. dollars, to secure the release of her husband.
At this point Big Spender was getting a little greedy.
He did not necessarily need the money, but he wanted more.
He was truly addicted to the stuff.
However, his next attempted kidnapping didn’t go as planned, and would eventually lead to
his downfall.
The crazy thing is that this kidnapping was more personal than business.
Cheung had planned the kidnapping of Chief Secretary for Administration Anson Chan, who
was responsible for putting Cheung’s friend and accomplice, Yip Kai-foon, in jail.
This was a kidnapping of retribution.
Unfortunately for Cheung, someone tipped off the authorities before the job could be completed.
In preparation for his retaliation, Cheung had bought 818 kilograms of explosives and
placed them around the Sheung Shui neighborhood of Hong Kong.
It seemed that his plan was to bomb several government buildings.
When the raids began on his storehouses and hideouts, Cheung fled Hong Kong for the Guangdong
province of China to lay low for a while.
He bribed the police using the massive amount of money he had stolen over the years.
Even while in hiding, Cheung had been planning his next kidnapping.
His idea was to kidnap the Macau gambling magnate, Stanley Ho.
Big Spender was no stranger to the casinos of Macau, and he knew there were enormous
sums of money controlled by the heads of the casinos there.
Ho probably wasn’t just a billionaire chosen at random as Cheung was known to have lost
more than 200 million dollars at Ho’s casinos.
The plan to kidnap Ho may have also been an act of retribution, but not one that was ever
carried out.
Cheung continued living his life of luxury for a few months in China before the authorities
finally caught up with him.
Cheung and 35 of his men were arrested at their Guangdong province hideout in August
of 1998.
They were tried in China where they had been captured, and this was particularly bad news
for Cheung because of what would happen next.
Cheung’s lawyers lobbied the Chinese government to move the trial back to Hong Kong where
most of his crimes had taken place.
This was probably done because the court system in Hong Kong tended to be slightly more lenient
than the one in Guangzhou province.
The request was denied by the Chinese government and Cheung was sent to trial in the Guangzhou
courts.
The charges against Cheung included illegal possession of weapons, transporting and smuggling
explosives and firearms, robbery, and kidnapping.
Cheung had planned to plead not guilty, but on the very first day of trial, he made a
full confession.
When he confessed in court Cheung showed no fear or emotion at all.
He put on a persona of being afraid of no one.
It was allegedly reported that the police had used questionable tactics to elicit the
confession from Cheung, but he wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction in the courtroom
by showing any emotions that would convey fear.
On November 12, 1998 Cheung was convicted and sentenced.
The penalty for his crimes in China was death.
While in jail it was reported he still tried to maintain his Big Spender lifestyle by ordering
bird's nest soup and other delicacies.
On December 5th the sentencing was carried out and Cheung Tze Kueng was executed by firing
squad.
It is unknown what the outcome of a trial would have been in Hong Kong if Cheung had
been tried there, but it wouldn’t have been worse than death by firing squad.
Cheung was obsessed with money, and his means of getting it through the kidnapping of billionaires
was something unique.
He bought luxurious things and tipped well until the very end, even though the money
wasn’t really his to spend.
Now watch “If You Are Kidnapped, Do This To Survive!
Advice From Experts!”
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