Michael Nagle
The New York Fire Department’s new chief’s ties to China are coming to light against the backdrop of a federal investigation into foreign influence on the city’s officials.
FDNY Commissioner Robert Tucker was previously head of a private security firm where one of the clients was a billionaire who once admitted to feds he worked for Chinese intelligence, according to reports.
While in that role, Tucker also approved an email putting forward ex-golf club hospitality worker Lin Gui’an for a top position in the New York Police Department, which he eventually got. Lin’s links to the Chinese Communist Party were exposed by The Post last week.
Before joining the FDNY, Tucker was boss of T&M USA LLC, a Manhattan-based global private investigations firm that once counted controversial Chinese billionaire, Miles Guo as a client.
Guo — also known as Guo Wengui and Miles Kwok, among other names — was convicted in a billion-dollar fraud scheme in Manhattan federal court in July. He faces decades in jail when sentenced in November.
Guo, a pal of former President Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon, admitted to having worked for China’s Ministry of State Security, but also claimed to be a victim of CCP harassment, according to the New Yorker.
His lavish apartment at the Sherry Netherland by Central Park was wired for sound to record his visitors, according to sources.
A mysterious fire broke out while FBI agents searched that apartment last year. Authorities are investigating whether the blaze was sparked remotely, according to reports.
T&M began working for Guo in 2017, according to Chinese language media and court documents. “Guo had worked with T&M Security to install cameras in his apartment, but they [T&M] no longer work for him,” according to federal court papers filed in 2020.
Furthermore Tucker, who worked for T&M from 1999 and the company’s vice president, former federal prosecutor Duncan Levin, are shown posing with Guo in photographs taken inside his sprawling Fifth Avenue apartment.
The three men appear to be having a great time in the pictures, with one showing Levin and Tucker playfully pecking Guo on the cheek and another showing Guo resting his arms on their shoulders as they crouch down on either side of him.
A spokesperson for T&M told The Post the company’s policy does not allow them to “disclose the identity of any of our clients nor reveal information regarding any services related to client matters.”
Meanwhile, in March 2022 an email including Lin’s resume was sent by a personal assistant at T&M with Tucker copied to then-deputy commissioner Edward Caban, sources told The Post.
Lin, 49, had been working at an elite golf course in Scarsdale — where Tucker owns a sprawling $7 million mansion — but had gone on to become a White Plains auxiliary cop and administrator at that time.
Speaking about the email, Meryl Lutsky, a lawyer for T&M, said: “To put this in context, for approximately the past ten years, Robert Tucker has served as a Board Member on both the New York City Police Foundation as well as the FDNY Foundation, among others.
“Additionally, Mr. Tucker was appointed to the Public Safety & Justice Committee of Mayor Adams’ transition team in 2021. In those various capacities, Mr. Tucker has received and forwarded many resumes to the appropriate NYC agencies, including the resume you referenced.”
Caban rose to become NYPD commissioner last summer, but resigned last Thursday following an FBI raid on his home two weeks ago.
Lin was hired in 2022 to fulfill a non-uniform position and quickly rose through the ranks, despite his limited policing experience.
Within a year, he became assistant general director of the Police Commissioner Liaison Unit where he was described as Caban’s “right hand.”
Lin, who was born in Fujian province in China, was previously vice chairman of New York City-based Fujian Changle Nanxiang Benevolent Association for 12 years beginning in 1994, a year after he arrived in the US, according to Chinese-language media reports.
He was photographed attending their meetings as recently as 2023.
The association is linked to a web of CCP-controlled community groups and school associations know as United Front, which spread Chinese propaganda in the US, overseen by the United Front Department which is funded and controlled by China’s central government.
Lin’s rise is all the more remarkable as most of his experience is in hospitality, working between 2004 and 2018 at Fenway Golf Club — a place where Tucker, 54, has sponsored charitable events.
According to a source, Lin started as “a low-rung guy” and worked his way up to assistant manager of the golf club’s dining room.
Lin claims to have arrived in the US from China “on a ship carrying illegal immigrants” and was forced to pay $40,000 to the Chinese mafia, according to a talk he gave in Westchester which was reported by a local newsletter in Feb. 2014.
He said he worked as a busboy in his uncle’s New Rochelle restaurant before getting a job at Fenway Golf’s restaurant, according to the Aging in Place in White Plains newsletter.
Lin remained at the golf course until 2018 when he was hired as an advisor to White Plains Public Safety Commissioner David Chong. Lin worked for Chong for three years, according to sources. Chong did not return a request for comment from The Post.
The NYPD did not respond to a request for comment Friday, and a spokesperson for the Mayor’s office referred The Post to the FDNY.
Lin’s ties come under scrutiny at a time of heightened awareness of Chinese influence in New York, after the arrest of Linda Sun, a former aide to Gov. Kathy Hochul earlier this month and after a Chinese NYPD cop was fired for allegedly spying for China.
Sun is charged with 10 criminal counts, including money laundering, visa fraud, conspiring to act as a foreign agent for China and other crimes. She has pleaded not guilty in Brooklyn federal court.
Meanwhile, sources have told The Post the federal investigation which led to the raid on Caban and others is looking into trips taken by senior staff to countries including Turkey and Qatar paid for by foreign governments and pro-policing groups.