NC pastor was accused in $24 million fake Cartier bracelet case. He’s now AWOL in China.
A pastor accused in a $24 million fraud case after North Carolina agents seized fake Cartier bracelets from his Chapel Hill church remains at large in China, skipping his court date Monday.
Jiangang “Frank” Lan, 37, failed to appear in Orange County for his counterfeit jewelry case, raising his bail to $1 million.
The NC Secretary of State’s office, acting as special prosecutor in the case, is waiting for further instructions from the court on next steps, said spokesman Tim Crowley, including whether Lan is unable to travel due to Chinese restrictions, as his attorney argued.
Meanwhile, it appears from court documents that Lan’s Chapel Hill attorney, Matthew Suczynski, has withdrawn from the case.
2019 arrest
At the time of Lan’s arrest in 2019, the seizure of counterfeit goods represented the largest in North Carolina dating back 15 years — the whole history of the state’s anti-counterfeit task force.
Secretary of State Elaine Marshall told CBS 17 she was “astonished,” and that the 3,200 bracelets’ value matched the previous year’s seizures in a single bust.
Court officials set Lan’s bond at $25,000, higher than the usual, because he had told law enforcement officials of his plans to leave the state on the upcoming weekend.
But in 2021, he left the country entirely, Crowley said, and a new court date has not been set.
In 2019, the website for Deer Park Community Church on Rosemary Street in Chapel Hill listed Lan as its pastor, along with his wife, Leah Peng.
It was unclear Tuesday whether the church is still operating. Its website contains no updated information since 2019 and is plastered with advertisements for security cameras. A link offering further information leads to a site with an expired domain, and a telephone number goes directly to voicemail.
The N&O’s message there was not returned.
Link to money laundering operation
Meanwhile, Newsweek is connecting Lan’s case to a larger money laundering operation.
In a Monday report, Newsweek drew ties to the cleric David Jang, whose World Olivet Assembly is being probed by the Department of Homeland Security. Jang also founded Olivet University, of which Lan is a graduate.
Citing unnamed law enforcement sources, Newsweek reported Lan is suspected of participating in a “trade-based money laundering” scheme connected to China. The national news site described such schemes as starting with wealthy Chinese depositing money in accounts controlled by a crime syndicate, which then places the same amount in U.S accounts and ships goods — often counterfeit — to generate a legitimate paper trail.
Crowley said the investigation is active and the secretary’s office cannot comment further.
“In general in counterfeit cases,” he said, “we understand that counterfeiting can lead to other kinds of crimes like money laundering or human trafficking. We’ve found that before.”
Olivet was not named at the hearing in North Carolina.
This story was originally published June 28, 2022 at 1:16 PM.