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Shark-fin dealer
gets five-year term for
trying to hire hit man

By Crystal Kua
Star-Bulletin

A Circuit Court judge yesterday sentenced a shark-fin dealer to a maximum five years in prison for attempted second-degree assault for hiring a hit man to shoot a rival dealer in 1997.

Circuit Judge Wilfred Watanabe also ordered that Hung Van Huynh spend at least three years and four months behind bars before being eligible for parole.

At trial, prosecutors painted Huynh as being in control of the lucrative shark-fin business at Pier 17 in November 1997 when competitor Khanh Le tried to get fishing captains to sell him their shark fins.

Prosecutors said Huynh paid an undercover police officer posing as a hit man $5,000 to murder Le.

Jurors saw videotapes of Huynh paying the supposed killer.

The defense argued that Huynh did not intend to murder Le but was pressured into paying for murder through middleman Henry Scanlan, a business associate of Huynh's and a confidential informant for police.

The jury found Huynh not guilty of attempted first-degree murder, which is punishable by a mandatory life in prison without the possibility of parole. The jury instead convicted him of the lesser charge of attempted second-degree assault.

Because Huynh has a previous conviction for manslaughter in a fatal shooting in Texas and is considered a repeat offender, he was not eligible for probation.

Deputy Prosecutor Franklin Pacarro asked Watanabe to extend Huynh's five-year term to 10 years. "Because he's dangerous," Pacarro explained after sentencing.

Defense attorney Keith Shigetomi disagreed. "Basically (prosecutors) need to show that he was a danger to the public. We argued that he wasn't a danger to the public."

Shigetomi said that Huynh faces being sent back to Vietnam by U.S. immigration officials.

A federal court judge earlier this year sentenced Huynh to two years in prison for a 1993 conviction of trying to smuggle Chinese aliens. Huynh was initially placed on supervisory release for the 1993 offense but that release was revoked after the state conviction.