Lewis Li of Huntington Beach, California, 36, was sentenced Thursday, June 25, to six years in prison for the abduction and extortion of a man in Peekskill, the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York announced.
According to prosecutors, on Jan. 28, 2025, Li and multiple co-conspirators abducted their business partner to extort nearly $1 million from him.
The abduction was pre-planned at least five days beforehand, prosecutors said, adding that the co-conspirators prepared for it by buying a GPS tracker and putting it underneath the victim's car, surveilling their home, and digging through their trash.
At around 11:30 a.m. on the day of the abduction, Li and his three co-conspirators followed the victim and abducted him outside a grocery store on Park Street in Peekskill. They forced him into the backseat of a Jeep driven by one member of the group and restrained him for around an hour and 45 minutes, prosecutors said.
During this time, they beat him and used a stun gun on him while threatening him to return around $930,000 in cash that Li believed he had stolen. They also told him that the money belonged to people involved in organized crime and that he owed them another $100,000. The group also told the victim that he and his family were in danger unless he paid this additional amount, according to federal officials.
Additionally, Li and the rest of the group forced the victim to record a video admitting that he had taken the money.
As a result of the abduction and threats, the victim arranged for the money to be picked up by two of Li's co-conspirators at a location in Peekskill. After the cash was grabbed and counted, Li and the group released the victim and dropped him off on a street in Elmsford, prosecutors said.
The threats did not end there, though — Li and his co-conspirators kept threatening the victim and his family to extract the $100,000 from him, according to the US Attorney's Office.
Li was arrested around a week after the abduction, before the victim made another payment. According to prosecutors, police found a stun gun inside his apartment, as well as a cell phone that he had hidden in an oven.
In addition to his prison term, Li will serve three years of supervised release. He was also ordered to give up $910,000, prosecutors said.
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