Fang Ping Ding, Human Trafficking, California 2011

A California woman has been sentenced to more than three years in prison for human trafficking, according to a recent ruling in federal court.

Fang Ping Ding, 62, of Fremont, California, was sentenced to 37 months in prison for confiscating the passport, visa, and other documents of a woman from the People’s Republic of China in order to maintain control over the victim and force her to work as an unpaid, live-in domestic servant.

The victim was forced to work without pay for more than a year, physically abused, and had her visa and passport taken from her. Ding began recruiting the victim in China in December 2007 and eventually brought the victim to the United States in April 2008.

Ding gave the victim’s identity documents to her daughter, Wei Wei Liang, who kept the documents locked in a bedroom. Ding and Liang also admitted to telling the victim that she needed to remain inside the house because she was an illegal alien.

Liang, 36, and her husband, Bo Shen, 43, were also sentenced in the same hearing. Liang received a sentence of home confinement, while Shen received a probationary sentence on related immigration charges of harboring the victim, who entered and remained in the United States illegally.

The court also ordered that the defendants jointly pay the victim $83,866.61 and that Liang and Shen also forfeit $346,000 to the government. The defendants pleaded guilty on November 1, 2010.

The U.S. Attorney filed charges in a superseding information against Ding, Liang, and Shen on May 27, 2010. Ding was charged with and pleaded guilty to one count of unlawful conduct regarding documents in furtherance of forced labor. Liang and Shen were each charged with and pleaded guilty to one count of harboring an illegal alien for purposes of private financial gain.

The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew S. Huang of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California and Trial Attorney Karen Ruckert Lopez of the Civil Rights Division.

Fang Ping Ding’s sentencing was handed down by U.S. District Judge Saundra Brown Armstrong in the Northern District of California.

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