© Uli Seit/The New York TimesJoanna Fan, left, and Ziming Shen, center, at federal court in Brooklyn, where he got into a scuffle with Dan Shapiro, a photographer for The New York Post.
The complaint accused the couple, Joanna Fan and her husband, Ziming Shen, of siphoning money over five years from accounts at the nonprofit Red Apple Child Development Center preschool chain, of which Ms. Fan, also known as Xiao Ping, is the executive director. The complaint accused the couple of using the money to make mortgage payments on several Manhattan condominiums and to benefit their private business interests, which include Preschool of America Inc., a chain of about a dozen for-profit preschools in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens.
The couple surrendered to agents of the United States Agriculture Department on Friday morning and were arraigned before Magistrate Judge James Orenstein of United States District Court in Brooklyn. They pleaded not guilty and posted bail of $750,000 each.
The judge restricted their movement to parts of New York and ordered them to surrender their passports.
Comment: Indeed, and stories like this only serve to underscore the lengths to which the anti-smoking fascists will go to see tobacco snuffed out. Oh, and in case you haven't heard, smoking tobacco might actually be beneficial to many people:
Let's All Light Up!
Pestilence, the Great Plague and the Tobacco Cure