The United States Attorney's Office

PEMGROUP FOUNDER ARRESTED ON FEDERAL CHARGES OF
STRUCTURING TRANSACTIONS TO AVOID REPORTS TO FEDS

An Orange County financier was arrested this afternoon on federal charges of structuring cash transactions to keep them under the $10,000 figure that triggers a report to be filed with the federal government.

Danny Pang, 42, who resides in the Dover Shores community in Newport Beach, was arrested by special agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Pang was arrested after federal prosecutors filed a criminal complaint in United States District Court in Santa Ana that charged Pang with structuring cash transactions.

Pang, who is a founder and former chief executive officer of the Irvine-based PEMGroup, is expected to make his initial court appearance on the criminal charges tomorrow afternoon.

The criminal complaint accuses Pang of using PEMGroup employees to cash checks for amounts less than $10,000 in order to avoid the filing of Currency Transaction Reports (CTRs), which financial institutions are required to file for all currency transactions that are more than $10,000. An affidavit in support of the criminal complaint alleges that Pang structured transactions to avoid the filing of CTRs as early as June 2007.

The affidavit explains that a person who intentionally causes a financial institution to fail to file a CTR by engaging in several transactions on the same day or over a period of days, where each currency transaction does not exceed $10,000, but the total amount of the transactions exceeds $10,000, is structuring transactions in violation of federal law

The affidavit details 38 checks – all between $9,500 and $9,900 – that were cashed at an El Monte branch of East West Bank. In some cases, two checks were cashed on the same day. Pang personally cashed only four of the checks, while most of the checks were cashed by his personal assistant.

A criminal complaint contains allegations that a defendant has committed a crime. Every defendant is presumed to be innocent until proven guilty in court.

The crime of structuring cash transactions carries a statutory maximum penalty of 10 years in federal prison.

The case against Pang is the result of an ongoing investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a lawsuit yesterday against Pang and PEMGroup, and a federal court issued an order freezing the assets of Pang and two of his companies for allegedly defrauding investors of hundreds of millions of dollars by misrepresenting investments in the life insurance policies of senior citizens and in timeshare real estate, see: http://www.sec.gov/litigation/litreleases/2009/lr21013.htm.

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