Ferrari, Patek, Rolex, Safe Stuffed with $100s: Inside the High-Life Evidence at the Linda Sun–PRC Corruption Trial

BROOKLYN — A New York jury has now heard in vivid detail what federal agents say they found when they raided the homes and bank boxes of former Cuomo–Hochul aide Linda Sun and her family: a 2024 Ferrari parked outside a Long Island mansion with a golf simulator and bar, Hermès boxes and high-end watches inside, a silver Rolex taken from her father-in-law’s wrist, and more than $130,000 in cash bundled in $100 bills from a family safe-deposit box.

It is exactly the kind of emotive, detail-heavy evidence of luxury beyond a civil servant’s means that could sway a jury, Texas criminal defense lawyer Samuel Bassett told The Bureau in a previous analysis, because it makes the government’s narrative of “greed and betrayal” tangible.

Sun, a longtime political aide who handled Asian and immigrant outreach for former New York governors Andrew Cuomo and Kathy Hochul, is accused of secretly acting at the direction of Chinese consular and community-network figures while steering multimillion-dollar PPE contracts to companies linked to her husband, Chris Hu.

As The Bureau has reported, prosecutors say the couple turned her modest state job into a covert influence business that bought a Long Island mansion, a Hawaii condo and luxury cars for their family, even after the FBI warned Sun in 2020 that a consular “overseas Chinese affairs” official she dealt with was actually an intelligence officer and walked her through the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

On Monday, jurors heard from FBI Special Agent Edward Tam, who walked them through a series of July 2024 search warrants: one at Sun and Hu’s home in Manhasset on Long Island, another at Hu’s parents’ residence in New York City, and a third on a safe-deposit box held in the parents’ names.

According to Courthouse News Service’s account of his testimony, Tam said agents who arrived at the Manhasset house seized a 2024 Ferrari Roma parked outside, along with a 2022 Mercedes GLB, while an Audi SUV at the property was photographed but not taken. Inside, they found orange Hermès boxes and at least one Hermès handbag, as well as a Patek Philippe watch that records showed had been sold to Hu.

At Hu’s parents’ home, Tam told jurors, agents took a silver Rolex that Hu’s father was wearing when they arrived, and a pearl necklace stored in a box that also contained the business card of a Chinese trade representative. From the safe-deposit box, he testified, agents recovered more than $130,000 in $100 bills, bundled together.

Courthouse News described the picture as one of a family “flush with high-life luxuries” despite more than a decade on a public-sector paycheque.

Tam also told jurors that, under the warrant, agents were directed to seize items connected to the People’s Republic of China. Among the documents they took, Courthouse News reported, were a Lunar New Year invitation addressed to “the Honorable Linda Sun,” a letter from the Chinese consulate expressing that her “personal friendship and kind support will always be cherished.”

Those items dovetail with the earlier evidence The Bureau has already detailed, including video and photos of Sun at pro-Beijing rallies and national-day events, and FBI testimony that she had been warned in 2020 that certain consular contacts were in fact intelligence officers and that acting under the direction of a foreign state without registering under FARA could be a crime.

Bassett, the Austin criminal-defense lawyer, said that if prosecutors can tie the seized luxuries — and perks such as a Chinese official’s personal chef allegedly preparing Nanjing-style salted duck for Sun’s parents — to undeclared income or bribe streams, they will have gone a long way toward securing a conviction in the jury room. Jurors, he told The Bureau, “tend to hang their hat on evidence such as purchases of large dollar items, and extravagant expenses that aren’t readily explained.”

Bassett also noted that federal prosecutors win the vast majority of their cases once they get to trial. “Federal prosecutors have a 95, I think, percent conviction rate,” he said. “And I really don’t see this being one of the 5% cases unless the defense has some sort of strong evidence that the proceeds used [by Linda Sun’s family] were generated by legitimate business practices of her husband.”

Upcoming witnesses will reportedly include Linda Sun’s mother, who, according to the indictment, accompanied her on a 2017 trip to China that prosecutors say was funded by the Chinese government.