NYC woman sentenced for laundering $20M in drug money through airline ticket business

A Queens woman learned her fate for laundering over $20 million in years-long drug trafficking cash through an airline ticket business where she worked as an accountant, according to authorities.

Rui Fang Yu, 40, was sentenced Monday to two years behind bars for her role in a Chinese money laundering scheme between 2016 and 2020, according to court records obtained by The Post and the US Department of Justice.

Yu accepted large amounts of cash from co-conspirators who were laundering drug proceeds, including from the sale of heroin and cocaine in the US through a Mexican cartel-linked drug trafficking organization, prosecutors said.

She used her role as an accountant at an “airline ticket consolidator” in Flushing to launder the illicit cash through her employer’s bank accounts, officials said. The business she was employed by is not immediately clear.

Yu used a complex scheme that involved trade-based money laundering to conceal the drug profits through phony business transactions made to purchase airline tickets, officials added.

The accountant and her co-conspirators laundered the funds to accounts controlled by other co-conspirators in the US and China, prosecutors charged.

In August, Yu pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering, federal authorities said.

Her lawyer, King L. Wu, argued in a memo that Yu — a first-time offender and legal permanent resident in the US from Taishan, China — should be sentenced to time served or probation.

Yu, a mother of two who also cares for her elderly parents, has “expressed deep regret throughout this case,” and was driven to engage in the laundering scheme after financial hardships, her attorney wrote.

“Her financial struggles intensified after the birth of her second child. With rising expenses and
fewer hours at work, she became overwhelmed,” the memo read.

“In that period of vulnerability, she made the worst decision of her life. She agreed to deposit funds for others, telling herself it was a simple favor connected to business dealings,” Wu wrote.

“She did not control the money, did not direct anyone, and earned only small amounts for her efforts. She now understands how wrong it was and accepts responsibility for not saying no.”

Yu now also faces the loss of her green card and deportation to China, the memo said.

Wu did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.

The Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI investigated the case, authorities said.