SAIPAN — Far from the tragic standoffs in icy Minneapolis amid a nationwide immigration enforcement surge, a quiet arrest in the sun-drenched western Pacific has surfaced a geopolitically sensitive case involving a failed casino empire in Saipan and the Chinese offshore gambling ecosystem that U.S. authorities have repeatedly scrutinized for money-laundering risks and Beijing corruption and influence ties.
On Jan. 13, 2026, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested Hong Kong-based businesswoman Cui Lijie at Saipan International Airport in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory. Local reporting indicates Cui is being held in Susupe’s jail, facing removal proceedings tied to alleged immigration violations. According to court documents, Cui allegedly overstayed her long-term investor visa. An immigration hearing is scheduled for Tuesday.
Cui’s detention—largely unnoticed in mainstream U.S. coverage—nevertheless lands atop the long-running legal and political fallout from Imperial Pacific International’s Saipan casino venture, an unfinished mega-resort that spawned years of regulatory conflict, labor exploitation allegations, and civil litigation as the project collapsed.
Corporate records have tied Cui’s rise to Macau’s VIP junket and high-roller economy—an industry structure that flourished during the era of the late Hong Kong gambling tycoon Stanley Ho, whose casinos helped popularize the junket-driven VIP model and whose operations have long been the subject of public allegations about organized-crime influence and Beijing operations.
Stanley Ho’s gambling monopoly, held through Sociedade de Turismo e Diversões de Macau from 1962 to 2002, involved partnerships with Hong Kong billionaire Cheng Yu Tung, who acquired a 10 percent stake in STDM in 1982. Reporting has indicated that when Cheng and Ho opened VIP rooms in Macau casinos, they used members of the 14K and Sun Yee On Triads as debt collectors—a relationship that facilitated loan sharking, violence, and organized crime penetration of the legal casino industry.
In that ecosystem, Cui’s Saipan project has been framed by critics as part of a broader, opaque casino-capital network that intersects with high-profile figures such as U.S.-sanctioned former Triad boss Wan Kuok “Broken Tooth” Koi, who controlled VIP rooms in STDM casinos during the 1990s and was convicted of triad-related crimes in 1999.
In Cui’s case, her junket operation Heng Sheng appears to have expanded during the latter stage of Ho’s career and amid the rise of Alvin Chau, whose Suncity Group—reportedly founded in 2007 with assistance from Broken Tooth—became one of Macau’s most powerful junket operations. Australian authorities have alleged that Chau was a member of the 14K Triad under Broken Tooth’s leadership.
The Heng Sheng group shuttered operations after its key executive, Ji Xiaobo—Cui Lijie’s son—disappeared amid a crackdown on junkets, following high-profile arrests of other operators like Alvin Chau of Suncity and Levo Chan of Tak Chun.
Reporting indicates that Macau junkets, including Heng Sheng, operated in an environment where Chinese security agencies pressured operators to provide intelligence on corrupt officials gambling in Macau. In 2023, a Beijing court deemed Ji Xiaobo the head of a “criminal syndicate” for activities from 2008 to 2021, including setting up illegal casinos outside China, using violence or threats for gambling debt repayment, and organizing asset transfers related to debts.
For Washington, the Saipan casino story and ICE’s arrest of Cui carry an uncomfortable overlap with establishment figures who have appeared in or around the company. Past reporting has noted that IPI’s board and advisory sphere at various points included former CIA director James Woolsey, former Mississippi governor Haley Barbour, and former FBI director Louis Freeh.
The Bureau has separately reported that Woolsey has been widely identified in press coverage as the unnamed “Individual-1” referenced in U.S. charging documents connected to Gal Luft—an accused agent in an alleged influence-and-espionage scheme tied to energy, arms, and political access—through a think-tank project that prosecutors say was leveraged to promote Belt and Road-aligned messaging in Washington. Woolsey has not been charged in that matter.
U.S. prosecutors have also previously alleged that senior Imperial Pacific and related construction executives used unlawful labor practices during construction and moved millions of dollars into the United States to promote illegal activity. In an August 2020 Justice Department announcement describing a federal indictment, prosecutors alleged transfers exceeding $24 million into the United States, alongside accusations tied to labor and immigration-related offenses. The indictment did not name Cui, and those allegations remain unproven in court.
The connections between casino junket operators and Beijing’s geopolitical initiatives have drawn scrutiny beyond the IPI case. In December 2020, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Broken Tooth under the Global Magnitsky Act, alleging he was “spreading his criminal network through Southeast Asia and across China’s Belt and Road economic bloc.”
According to the Treasury, Broken Tooth established the World Hongmen History and Culture Association in Cambodia in 2018, which U.S. officials characterized as a front for 14K Triad operations that “continues a pattern of overseas Chinese actors trying to paper over illegal criminal activities by framing their actions in terms of China’s Belt and Road Initiative.” The organization has established operations across Malaysia, Myanmar, and Palau, with business networks involved in cryptocurrency, real estate, and security services protecting Belt and Road investments.