Who is Henry Yau?
Henry Yau, 41, of Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States was a supervisory deportation officer with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which is a law enforcement agency within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). He is of Chinese descent.
From 2015 to November 2024, Yau was employed as a deportation officer with ICE. In September 2021, he was promoted to supervisory deportation officer.
Assigned to the ICE’s field office in Manhattan, Yau had access to several password-protected law enforcement databases operated by DHS and other law enforcement agencies. These include ICE databases containing records relating to arrests and removals of aliens from the U.S., U.S. Customs and Immigration Service (USCIS) databases containing the status of immigration-related applications filed by aliens and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) databases containing information about border crossings, criminal history databases containing people’s arrest and conviction records.
Who is Tommy Lin?
Tommy Lin, 41, of Forest Hills, New York is a former director in the New York City mayor’s office. He is also of Chinese descent.
From 2014 to 2019, Lin served as a director of constituent services in the New York City mayor’s office. From 2019 to 2024, he was the Queens, New York City community coordinator for the New York City Department of Environmental Protection.
From 2018 to 2022, Lin participated in a bank fraud conspiracy with his fellow Chinese men Zhong Shi Gao and Fei Jiang. They allegedly stole more than $10 million from banks by causing transfers of funds between accounts they controlled and falsely and fraudulently reporting that the transfers were unauthorized.
On June 6, 2024, Lin was arrested. He was charged with aggravated identity theft, bank fraud conspiracy and conspiracy to commit wire fraud affecting a financial institution.
Why was Henry Yau arrested?
From 2017 to 2023, Yau participated in schemes to disseminate confidential government information from databases maintained by CBP, ICE, USCIS and other law enforcement agencies. For his own personal and financial gain, he improperly disseminated confidential government information from DHS databases relating to at least 28 individuals, who are his friends and acquaintances.
From 2019 to 2020, Yau disclosed confidential information from law enforcement databases about an individual that Lin was seeking to have arrested and deported from the U.S. because the individual had conflict with members of the bank fraud conspiracy that Lin was involved in. Yau shared with Lin a copy of a Field Operations Worksheet containing personal identifying information about the individual.
On November 21, 2024, Yau was arrested. He was charged with identity theft conspiracy, conversion of government records and property, disclosure of agency records containing individually identifiable information and four counts of conspiracy to convert government records and property and disclose agency records containing individually identifiable information.
CONAN Daily 