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Ivan Cheung, 42, is charged with four counts of rape — two against children — that allegedly happened in 2003, 2005, and 2006, the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office said. Investigators arrested Cheung on Monday, Sept. 12. He did not appear at his initial hearing on Tuesday, Sept. 13, but his attorney entered a not guilty plea on his behalf, the prosecutor said.
Cheung, who was being held on a $1 million bail, will return to court Sept. 22 for a status hearing, the Suffolk County DA's Office said.
WCVB reports that police arrested Cheung in August 2003, a month after the first two rapes authorities say he committed, but the district attorney's office didn't move forward with the case.
In August 2003, a terrified woman ran up to a Boston University police officer just before 4 a.m., the news station reported. She said a man pulled up in his car to ask for directions before he took out a knife and forced her to get in the backseat, the station said citing a police report. He then raped her while pressing the knife against her throat and stomach.
Cheung was found near the scene, arrested, and charged in the case, WCVB said, but a month later, the Suffolk County DA's office dismissed the charges.
The DA's office said it had no comment when a Daily Voice reporter reached out on Wednesday.
The accusations in this report are eerily similar to what the prosecutors say Cheung did to four other women. Each alleged victim was picked up, driven to another location, and raped at knifepoint, authorities said. Three of the women were stabbed during the attacks.
Despite their similarities, police were not able to make an arrest in the case because analysts didn't have enough of the suspect's DNA. But last year, after the Boston Police Department received a $2.5 million grant, technicians were able to afford more sophisticated tests to get a genetic profile of the suspect, police said.
Boston detectives started surveilling Cheung this summer, though it's unclear why. In June, officers were able to get his DNA from a cigarette he tossed away after smoking it. They say DNA on that butt matched samples taken from two rapes – one in 2005 near Park Place and another in 2006 in the North End, prosecutors said.
And the method of those attacks matched one in July 2003 when a 13-year-old girl was raped and stabbed in Chinatown and another one a week later, when a 14-year-old was sexually assaulted at knifepoint in the Charles Circle area, authorities said.
Cheung was working as a vice president at State Street in Boston, but the famed financial firm suspended him after reports of his arrests surfaced. The Boston Herald reported the company has since fired him.
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