Parents of fatal kidnapping victim demand return of ransom funds – BC News

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BC Supreme Court. | Mike Wakefield / North Shore News

The parents of a young Chinese man killed in an extortion kidnapping in North Vancouver have launched a lawsuit claiming a luxury Richmond apartment was bought with ransom money they paid their son’s killers.

Cang Sun and Hua Li are the parents of kidnapping victim Peng Sun, who died in 2015 after being lured to a home in North Vancouver by Tian Yi Eddie Zhang. At his sentencing in 2017, the court heard that Zhang targeted Sun for kidnapping because he believed Sun’s family would be able to pay a significant ransom.

Peng ended up at a vacant house in North Vancouver thinking he was going to a party. But when he got there, he was locked up by several men with belts and handcuffs while Zhang made ransom calls to Sun’s parents in China, demanding money.

In a call, Zhang told Sun his parents as he asked for the equivalent of 2.5 million Canadian dollars to be transferred to a Chinese bank account.

While ransom calls were being made, Sun died of strangulation caused by a zap strap that was fastened around his neck.

After Sun’s death, Zhang continued to make ransom calls to Sun’s parents.

Over three days in September 2015, the family transferred more than $350,000 to a Chinese bank account, according to the lawsuit. Of that, less than $50,000 was recovered by police, according to the parents.

Police were able to move in after Sun’s wife recognized Zhang’s voice from a recording of one of the ransom calls and put him under surveillance and obtained emergency wiretapping authorization on his phone.

Later, Zhang and others removed Sun’s body from the house, loaded it into their own white Bentley and drove it to another address on Wellington Drive in North Vancouver. They were in the process of moving Sun’s body from the trunk of the Bentley to the trunk of another rental car when the police came in and arrested four people.

Police later seized nearly $50,000 in cash from Zhang’s home.

In 2017, Zhang was sentenced to more than 11 years in prison after pleading guilty to manslaughter, extortion and illegal detention. He was granted full release in November 2023 after a parole board deemed him a “low risk of reoffending”.

In August 2020, Sun’s parents received a civil judgment against Zhang for the ransom funds.

But according to their lawsuit, filed in BC Supreme Court, Zhang never paid them any money.

In 2021, Zhang’s wife, Ya Ran Li, bought an apartment at 501 – 5131 Brighouse Way in Richmond, according to court documents, for $3.2 million.

On Dec. 20, 2023, Zhang was arrested by Richmond RCMP after police moved to deliver precursor chemicals used to create drugs to the apartment, according to court documents. Zhang had the chemicals and both Li and Zhang were at the property at the time.

When police searched the property, they also found more than $53,000 in cash, as well as a cash counting machine.

According to parole board documents, the police investigation into the case is ongoing.

Meanwhile, in April, the director of civil forfeiture filed a lawsuit claiming the money and the apartment were the proceeds of crime and seeking forfeiture to the Crown.

Both Zhang and his wife have filed responses denying that the apartment and money are linked to illegal activities.

In their own lawsuit, Sun’s parents claim that the $50,000 seized in the police raid on the apartment is the “remains of the ransom fund” they paid Zhang and are seeking to have the money returned.

“Zhang spent several years in prison and would have had no legitimate means to purchase property or accumulate $53,650 except by having access to the ransom funds,” the parents wrote in their lawsuit.

They also claim that the flat was bought with the ransom money and are seeking a declaration that the property be held in trust for them.

No answers have yet been filed in response to the lawsuit.