American Mystery with Chinese Connections -- Hsu Cast Wide Net For
Clinton Donors/WashingtonPost

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Hsu Cast Wide Net For Clinton Donors

List Included Strangers, His Own Investors

By John Solomon and Matthew Mosk

Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, September 16, 2007; A01

To raise $850,000 for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential
campaign in just eight months, Norman Hsu tapped an eclectic group of
donors that included wealthy investors in his apparel ventures, hotel
shopkeepers, a 96-year-old in a Florida retirement home and an auto-body
worker who mistakenly thought he would get a tax break for his political
generosity.

The Clinton campaign has not yet released any information about the 260
donors whose contributions it is now refunding because they were
credited to the prodigious fundraising of the former fugitive, but a
detailed analysis of donors Hsu brought to Clinton shows that he tapped
many Asian American donors in California and New York, including
complete strangers as well as his relatives. He also raised political
funds from people who had already invested large sums in his private
business ventures.

Some donors among the nearly 100 identified this week said they never
met Hsu and did not know that their donations had been credited to his
fundraising. Others had trouble explaining why they gave the funds to
Clinton or could not recall the circumstances in which they met Hsu.

"He called me and asked me if I'd give $1,000. . . . I don't know how
you'd say we struck up a relationship. I just knew him," said Henry
Rosenberg, a New York City lawyer. Asked if he wanted Clinton, New
York's junior senator, to be the next president, Rosenberg said: "I
don't know. He just asked me to do it, and I did."

Nay Oo, another Clinton donor for whom Hsu claimed credit, was listed in
the candidate's fundraising reports with an address in Daly City, Calif.
The home's owner, Ellen Yee, said Oo used to rent a room in the house
but hadn't lived there for years. A man who returned a call to Oo's
phone and identified himself as Oo said he works in an auto-body shop
and does not know Hsu. He said he donated $250 to Clinton at the request
of a landlord. "I thought it was going to be a tax write-off," he said.

The case of the mysterious bundler has become a major embarrassment for
Clinton and an echo of the campaign finance scandals that surrounded her
husband's presidency in the 1990s. The campaign's decision to return the
money associated with Hsu followed his recent arrest on charges of
trying to outrun a 15-year-old warrant, but many questions remain about
Hsu's fundraising tactics, the origin of the funds and whether they were
all given legally.

The names of Clinton donors for whom Hsu claimed credit were confirmed
through a computer analysis of donations as well interviews with several
people familiar with Hsu's fundraising. None of the donors connected to
him has been accused of doing anything wrong.

Robert H. Emmers, a Los Angeles publicist hired by Hsu's attorney, said
Hsu -- who now sits in a Colorado jail cell -- is not responding to any
of the allegations leveled against him. "There's a lot of speculation
out there," Emmers said. "Mr. Hsu is not in a position to defend himself
right now, so that needs to be taken into account."

In just four years before being taken into custody, Hsu became a top
political fundraiser. Not only was he among the top 15 "bundlers"
nationwide for the Clinton presidential campaign, but he also helped
fund the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, various congressional
and Senate candidates, and the leadership committees for other
presidential candidates such as Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Sen.
Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.).

His intensive fundraising brought him close to their campaigns, which
showered him with dinner invitations and opportunities to get his
picture snapped with the politicians -- contacts that some businessmen
said lent credibility to Hsu's efforts to sell investors on his clothing
ventures.

But his pursuit of political and business funds at the same time -- from
many of the same people -- leaves unclear which was the end and which
was the means. Was Hsu hoping to leverage his political affiliations to
boost the credibility of his business? Or did he intend the more than $2
million he bundled in political donations in four years to curry favor
for some as-yet-undetermined goal?

"Never once, that I ever came across, did he seem to have a particular
policy or issue agenda," said Hassan Nemazee, one of Clinton's top New
York fundraisers. "The only thing he ever seemed to want was to get his
photo taken."

Hsu, an immigrant from Hong Kong who by several accounts is a charming
and easygoing man with an imperfect command of English, was convicted in
California in 1991 for corporate theft, according to court records. Both
the donors and the Clinton campaign have said they did not know about
his past troubles during the period that he was channeling funds to the
candidate. Several who mingled with Hsu at Clinton's lavish fundraising
parties, strategy briefings and intimate dinners said he shared little
about himself, beyond his work in what they called "the rag trade."

Hsu's encounters with law enforcement authorities include a 1990
incident in which he was kidnapped by a Chinese organized-crime figure,
Raymond "Shrimp Boy" Chow, who said Hsu owed him money, according to
Foster City, Calif., police. Officers said they interrupted the crime
during a 3 a.m. traffic stop, rescuing Hsu from the back of a Toyota.

Hsu was taken into custody Sept. 6 in Colorado after failing to appear
at a bail hearing related to the California theft case, threatening
suicide and then falling ill on a train.

Before his controversial past surfaced in late August, Hsu had built a
reputation as an effective bundler of donations by others. "We sought
him," said Marc Dunkelman, vice president for strategic communications
at the Democratic Leadership Council, an advocacy group for centrist
Democrats that was once chaired by Bill Clinton. Hsu donated $25,000 to
the DLC this year, and the group is refunding the money, Dunkelman said.

Hsu's name was referred to the Clinton campaign by professional
fundraisers who were aware of his donations to other campaigns and
groups, according to a former Clinton aide. Hsu's donors to the Clinton
presidential campaign included four others with the last name Hsu,
including his grown son, Oliver. They gave a total of $16,100.

Hsu also claimed credit for donations by two other people, Danny Lee and
Yu-Fen Huang, who have given $154,000 to Democratic causes since Hsu
began his fundraising in late 2003. Fundraising and property records
list them as joint owners of a nearly $1 million home in the New York
neighborhood of Forest Hills.

The donations from Lee and Huang include $38,000 to Clinton's Senate
campaign, political action committee and presidential committee. The two
gave a total of $9,200 -- the maximum allowed -- to Clinton's
presidential bid in the first quarter of this year, donations for which
Hsu claimed credit. They also gave $8,400 in January to Clinton's 2012
Senate campaign, even though her reelection bid is six years off.

The two listed their place of employment as Newspring Packaging in Mount
Carmel, Pa. Lee is listed as a vice president of Newspring, which makes
plastic containers for food, and Huang is listed as a manager.

A third employee of Newspring, Soe Win Lee, also donated the maximum
allowed amount to Clinton's campaign and made other recent Democratic
donations. None of the three Newspring employees returned calls to their
company seeking comment. Newspring's parent company, Pactiv Corp. of
Illinois, said it does not comment on the private activities of its
employees. It is not clear what connection, if any, Hsu had to the firm.

A few donors for whom Hsu claimed credit said that they didn't know him
and that others must have passed their checks to him to give to
Clinton's campaign.

Karen Tan, an employee at Super One Vision in San Francisco, said a
friend who worked for California Assembly Majority Whip Fiona Ma asked
her to contribute to Clinton. Donations that Ma collected, including
Tan's, were credited to both Ma and Hsu because together they threw an
August fundraiser for Clinton. Hsu contributed $8,300 to Ma's 2006 campaign.

A review of fundraising records found much overlap between Hsu's
business investors and the political donations for which he claimed
credit -- something that is common among political bundlers, who often
solicit contributions from their business contacts.

For example, Hsu received fundraising credit with the Clinton campaign
for $19,200 in contributions from executives at Source Financing
Investors, a New York City investment fund run by 1960s Woodstock
concert organizer Joel Rosenman, on March 28. The next day, Rosenman's
96-year-old father, Bernard, sent $4,600 to Clinton from his Boynton
Beach, Fla., retirement home, for which Hsu also claimed credit.

The investment group put $40 million into 37 separate investment
proposals by Hsu to import clothing from China, according to Seth L.
Rosenberg, a New York lawyer for the group. But Rosenberg said he
believes that the money may be gone. The New York City district attorney
has launched an investigation of the allegations.

Rosenberg said he has asked politicians to hold on to any checks they
collected from Hsu. "We want to be sure that any candidates who received
money from Mr. Hsu act responsibly with those contributions so they may
be returned to the victims of Mr. Hsu if indeed they are the source of
those funds," he said.

Three members of the Paw family in Daly City, Calif., both donated to
Clinton and invested in Hsu's apparel business, a circumstance first
reported last month by the Wall Street Journal. The Paws operated a gift
shop in a hotel where they befriended Hsu in the 1990s.

Frank Ubhouse, the Paws' attorney, said Friday that although the family
initially made some money, its members are concerned about the fate of
their remaining investments with Hsu. "Given what is now known, I think
there's got to be a lot of concern. The big question is, when the music
stops, will everyone have a chair?"

In Irvine, Calif., businessman Jack Cassidy alerted the FBI and
Clinton's campaign this summer to his concerns that Hsu was soliciting
people he knew for investments in what appeared to be an illegal Ponzi
scheme, in which early investors are rewarded with funds obtained from
subsequent investors. The FBI recently interviewed Cassidy and collected
documents as part of an initial inquiry.

Cassidy said he was concerned that Hsu had invoked his role as a Clinton
fundraiser to gain the confidence of people he was meeting. "If you are
opening a hamburger stand, you want to put a set of golden arches
outside," Cassidy said, referring to the McDonald's symbol. "Hsu was
using Hillary Clinton as his golden arches."

Another California resident, Chi Kou Fan, alleged that he was bilked
years ago in the investment that resulted in Hsu's 1991 conviction on
grand theft. He recalled that "Norman would make friends with one guy,
and then move around to meet all this guy's friends, and soon they would
all be his investors."

Fan, a retired San Francisco area real estate developer who lost
$240,000 in the Hsu investment, was one of 16 investors in a deal to
sell latex gloves imported from China to an Illinois company, Service
Master, according to court records. In early 1989, as the deal took
shape, Hsu promised investors a 5 or 6 percent return on their money.
But after a year, investors had still not seen their money. When state
investigators called Service Master's accountants, they found no record
of any deal for latex gloves.

Research editor Alice Crites, staff researcher Madonna Lebling and
washingtonpost.com database editor Derek Willis contributed to this article.

(c) 2007 The Washington Post Company