Sunny Sheu

Sunny Sheu (whistleblower)
A frame from Sunny Sheu's 2010 Youtube Video
Born	1969
Died	June 26, 2010 (Age 40)
Cause of death	trauma to the head "aneurism"
Exposed	• Joseph Golia/Corruption • NYPD/Corruption
Victim of	• fraud • murder
Interest of	Black Star News, Will Galison
After his home was fraudulently seized, he devoted himself to investigate how, following the leads up to Joseph Golia. Two days after announcing "Now I've got enough evidence to put Golia in Jail" he was found dead with head injuries.

Sunny Sheu emigrated from Taiwan to the USA and settled in New York. In 2001 he was victim of a "straw buyer scam" which utilized a forged power of attorney to claim ownership of his property. This was seized and sold in 2005. He started to investigate and uncovered evidence of fraud, and brought a case which was assigned to Justice Joseph Golia, whose financial affairs he investigated before meeting an untimely death from head injuries in 2010. On August 9th, 2010, he had published a video in which he stated that if anything were to happen to him, it would be the work of Golia.

Background

Sheu refinanced his house in his brother's name in 2000. Sheu's mortgage broker, Roman Chiu then forged Sheu's brother's signature on a power of attorney and received a mortgage from Centex for Sheu's home.

Sunny Sheu owned a home in Queens, New York. His house was seized fraudulently and sold in 2005. He started to investigate and uncovered evidence of fraud, and brought a case which was assigned to Justice Joseph Golia in the State Supreme Court of Queens. In spite of a lot of evidence, Justice Golia denied that any fraud had occurred. Early in 2009, Sheu walked into the office of the Black Star News and recounted to Publisher Milton Allimadi the story of his ten-year struggle with corruption at every level of New York government.

Kidnapping

On January 14, 2009, Sheu was kidnapped and threatened, possibly by NYPD detectives Dominic DeGenaro and James Monaco. A detective told him that if he "went to the press or authorities... you live in a dangerous neighborhood with gangs and anything could happen to you." He interpreted this a direct threat to his life. On April 9, 2010 Sheu emailed Special Supervising Agent Rachel Rojas of the New York FBI, asking for witness Protection. Rojas’ only reply: "Be careful".

Investigation of Golia

Sheu, TruthOut writes, "a man of considerable education and discernment, wondered if Golia's blatant disregard of law in his own case indicated a more general propensity for corruption. He figured that if he could find evidence of other improprieties by Golia, perhaps he could force the judge off his case." The investigation of Golia’s financial disclosure statements uncovered multi-million dollar discrepancies. He took these to the FBI, CCRB, the Attorney General and other authorities but found a lack of interest. On Thursday, June 24, 2010 he announced that he had evidence sufficient to have Golia arrested.

Murder

Redacted death certificate mentioning "Blunt Force Trauma to the Head, with skull fractures and brain injuries"

A letter from NYPD to the Medical Examiner claims that "no criminality" was involved, and gives the time of Sunny's death as 18:15, June 26, 2010. This document references a witness to the event. Two days after announcing to a friend "Now I've got enough evidence to put Golia in jail", Sunny was found in a fatal coma in the street. Zeeshan Ahmed, the ER doctor attending Sunny reportedly said that there was "not a scratch on his head" and that he died from an internal aneurism, and Detective Chris Austin of the 109th Precinct stated that there was "no head injury" and that Sheu died from "natural causes" - i.e. an aneurism. Their story has some inconsistencies and is contradicted by Michael Greenberg, the medical examiner who signed Sunny's death certificate. This declared his manner of death as "undetermined" (which under New York Law requires a criminal investigation), and noted an immediate cause was "Blunt Force Trauma to the Head, with skull fractures and brain injuries".

Cover-up

FOIA requests have uncovered that the NYPD arrived to remove the body and conclude (without an investigation?) that his death was natural.

Video

In 2010 he made a video and published it on YouTube. The transcript is:

"Hi my name is Sunny Sheu. I have filed a complaint to the FBI and the New York State Unified Court Ethics Committee about Judge Joseph Golia [who] falsified his financial disclosure statement. And I have submitted evidence to the FBI recently. [The] FBI sent me [a] copy of the evidence that I sent to the FBI.

And today, April 9th, the Unified Court ethics director, Janice Howard, she called me [that] Judge Joseph Golia already amended his financial disclosure statement. This means my evidence is true. At least that he was forced to amend (misrepresentations) on his financial disclosure statement.

For the security issues, for the security concerns, I make this recording, that if anything wrong goes to me, it should be come from Judge Golia and his people because before I had been kidnapped by his people, and threatened and intimidated by his people not to file a complaint against Judge Golia.

So I make this recording for safety. For protection. If anything wrong please go to Judge Golia and his people.

Thank you very much."

Response

CopBlock headlined the murder of Sunny Sheu "the biggest NYPD scandal in decades", while perhaps the definitive summary of the story is provided by Will Galison and Milton Allimadi. They summarised the importance of the case in a 2012 article for Truth-Out as follows: "The ramification of this case is that an American citizen can be killed and that law enforcement can simply neglect their responsibility to investigate the killing, thus failing both to serve justice and to deter future incidents.

Protection by law enforcement and a criminal justice system is the most fundamental contract between a people and their government. Without security, all other rights and liberties are moot, so we employ our government to protect us from being robbed, injured or killed by anyone with the inclination to harm us."

An online petition demanding a proper investigation into Sheu's premature death garnered over 1000 signatures in over a year.

Gradual exposure of Fraud

The persistence of Milton Allimadi has been instrumental in the gradual exposing of the case. Nearly two years after FOIA requests were made for tapes of the three 911 calls relating to Sunny's death, the NYPD finally made these tapes available. They apparently contradict the official note sent to the Medical Examiner by NYPD Detective Austin that "the 911 caller stated that the decedent was walking with a pedometer in his hand when he collapsed." None of the 3 witnesses mentioned seeing Sheu walking, all instead report finding him "lying on the ground". No documentation of any other interviews with the witnesses had been provided, despite numerous FOIA requests. None of the names of the witnesses have been supplied and all are redacted from the tapes, in violation of FOIL rules.

Various public officials have made palpably disingenuous statements in an apparent effort to hide the murder of Sunny Sheu, leading to the suggestion that it was a government (or cabal) sponsored killing.

 

A Quote by Sunny Sheu

Page	Quote	Source
Joseph Golia	“It's over 8 years, we have been prohibited to have any New York CPLR most basic "due process" to discovery, to deposition, to subpoena to counter claim, to cross claim again and again and our 3rd party summon has been ignore, too. After contacted NYPD Commissioner Mr. Raymond W. Kelly, Lut. Comofrty in 109 agreed that Det Keith Ng and Det. Kin Lee who investigation the crime should testify to you about the bank's officer and closing lawyer violated law and the bank's closing lawyer internationally accepted fake deposit of Residential contract of sales, fake money order, fake check, falsify bank records to endorsed the fraudulent mortgage and got some money for himself. There are no reasons you free all the criminals $0 dollars of judgment at all. Would you mind to schedule a hearing as soon as possible?”	Truthout

Rating

26 April 2016 Robin  A good summary of a hugely under-reported and ominous murder.
This page may be the clearest exposition on WWW of the fate of this courageous whistleblower.

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