CALIFORNIA—Wing Wo Ma, also known as Fat Mark, was sentenced to a life sentence on August 5 for a murder he committed in 2013.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, a federal jury in San Francisco convicted Wing Wo Ma of murder, drug distribution conspiracy, weapons, and bribery charges in November 2019, after a three-week trial.
Ma shot and killed Jim Tat Kong and Cindy Bao Feng Chen on October 17 in 2013 in Ft. Bragg California, while the couple was seated in their minivan. In January 2013, Ma borrowed money from Kong for several business ventures including a marijuana grow, as well as real estate in Mendocino County. He found he was not able to repay the money to Kong, and Ma met with Kong and Chen on Chen’s birthday. While seated in the car, Ma shot both victims’ in the head with a single gunshot and left their dead bodies in the minivan parked in a desolate wooded area in Mendocino County.
In addition to double murder, Ma was convicted of bribery, the U.S. Attorney’s Office reported. Ma offered the inspector Hu bribes, including airfare for multiple trips to Las Vegas, free accommodation at luxury hotel rooms at Las Vegas casinos, female hostesses at private room bars in Las Vegas and San Francisco, use of a new Mercedes Benz, and labor for the remodel of the DA investigator’s personal residence.
On April 6, 2017, a federal grand jury found Ma guilty with all conspiracy to cultivate, distribute, and possess with intent to distribute marijuana, discharging a firearm during and in relation to a drug trafficking crime, use of a firearm causing murder, and conspiracy to commit honest services fraud and bribery.
The Mercury News reported that Ma was born in Hong Kong and raised in a “cramped apartment in a public housing project” there. When he was 15, he delivered a box of drugs at the request of his neighbors without knowing it was drug. He was a marijuana cultivator with ties to organized crime in the Bay Area, but also a confidential informant, The Mercury News reported.
