Posted on: Tuesday, June 18, 2002

Man faked Sept. 11 death to skip trial

By Walter Wright
Advertiser Staff Writer

A Hong Kong man has admitted to claiming he died in the World Trade Center attack on Sept. 11 to avoid trial for lying on a U.S. passport application last year in Honolulu.

Steven Chin Leung, 34, pleaded guilty last week in New York to passport fraud, jumping bail and obstructing justice by making up the story about his death.

Last year, Leung applied for a passport at the federal courthouse in Honolulu and gave a passport specialist forged papers, saying he was born in 1974 in Chicago, according to Ed Kubo, the U.S. attorney in Hawai'i. State Department computers showed Leung had sought a passport in New York in 1999, saying he was born in California, Kubo said. Leung moved to New York, where he had been arrested and free on bond, pending a hearing on his passport fraud case.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, Leung called his New York lawyer claiming to be William Leung, the brother of Steven Leung. Posing as the fictitious brother, Leung claimed that his brother Steven had worked at the bond firm Cantor Fitzgerald as a computer technician and was killed in the World Trade Center during the terrorist attacks. He also claimed to have e-mail messages between Cantor Fitzgerald's human resources department and Leung purporting to show his brother had been hired by the firm.

U.S. Marshals in New York City established that Leung had established a Cantor Fitzgerald e-mail address in the days following the Sept. 11 attacks. They arrested him Feb. 12.

Leung could face up to 45 years in prison when sentenced Aug. 22 in federal court in Manhattan.