Plea on money transfer
A Vietnamese couple who ran, Vietnam Services, Inc., 401 Broadway at Walker St., pleaded not guilty on March 24 to charges that they illegally moved nearly $25 million in U.S. money over the past three years to Vietnam without a license.
The couple, Larry Vu, 41, and Maria Vu, 38, are scheduled to appear in Criminal Court again on April 14, according to the office of District Attorney Robert M Morgenthau. Larry Vu also pleaded not guilty to three counts of falsifying business records in connection with the case.
The defendants are charged with operating a web of out-of-state subagents from whom they collected funds for transmitting to Vietnam without regulatory scrutiny
Suspect awaits extradition
Norman Dennis, arrested on March 22 in Gardena, Calif., a Los Angeles suburb, by New York City Detectives in connection with the murder 19 years ago of his former girlfriend on the Lower East Side, is still awaiting extradition to New York, law enforcement officials said.
Police charge that Dennis fled after the March 26, 1986 shooting death of Sharon Copeland in a yard behind 45 Rutgers St. in the Rutgers Houses complex. Copeland, then 25 and raising a five-year-old son, was living with her mother in the Rutgers Houses after her relationship with Dennis went bad, according to newspaper reports.
The police cold case squad reopened the case in 1997 and recently received a match from the F.B.I. of fingerprints taken at the crime scene with fingerprints taken in 1993 of a Norman Kearse, who had been arrested in California.
Police said on March 28 that the suspect known as Kearse had acknowledged that he was Norman Kearse, now 48 years old.
— Albert Amateau
WWW Downtown Express
