Feds: 2 LI men charged with murder-for-hire conspiracy in killing of Queens business owner

An Oyster Bay man and his nephew from Plainview are among four men facing murder charges in the 2019 execution-style killing of a Queens business owner, according to an indictment unsealed Tuesday in Brooklyn federal court.

Qing Ming Yu, 54, of Oyster Bay, and You You, 34, of Plainview, are charged in the indictment with murder-for-hire conspiracy and murder for hire, along with Antony Abreu, 34, of Queens, and Zhe Zhang, 34, of Arcadia, California.

Yu, also known as Allan Yu, plotted to kill Xin Gu, 31, of Long Island City, because Gu had quit Yu’s Manhattan property development company, Amaco, taking some of the firm’s clients with him, prosecutors said in court documents. Gu started his own property development company, which beat out Amaco for a renovation project expected to bring in more than $1 million in profits.

Gu’s new company hosted a Lunar New Year celebration at a restaurant in Flushing on the night of Feb. 11, 2019. The festivities continued with an after-party at Shangri-La Karaoke into the next morning, prosecutors said. With You acting as a lookout and Zhang serving as the getaway driver, Abreu shot Gu multiple times, killing him, prosecutors said.

Yu and You pleaded not guilty Tuesday during their arraignment in Brooklyn federal court before U.S. Magistrate Judge Peggy Kuo, who ordered both men held without bail. Yu and You are scheduled to return to court June 10.

Zhang was scheduled for arraignment later Tuesday in U.S. district court in Los Angeles. Abreu is already serving a 24-year sentence in a federal facility in Mississippi for conspiracy to distribute and will be transferred to the Eastern District of New York at a later date, officials said.

Investigators searching Yu’s eight-bedroom Oyster Bay home recovered two 9-mm Glocks, a "NYPD-style 9 mm Smith-and-Wesson," two semi-automatic rifles, two other rifles, two shotguns and ammunition, prosecutors said in court papers.

Gu’s father, Chang Jun Gu, and mother, Ying Xu, joined other family members at Tuesday’s arraignments. Chang Jun Gu thanked the FBI for its efforts in solving the murder.

Xu called her son’s death a “disaster.”

“We have been waiting for today for three years,” she said through tears and a Mandarin interpreter after the arraignments.

“He was only 31 years old,” she said. “I wish I was the one who would suffer, not my son.”

Prosecutors said Xin Gu worked at Amaco from 2015 to 2018 but left because he did not feel he received fair compensation and believed the company was not financially viable, which Yu perceived as disloyalty. Yu hired You, his nephew, to kill Gu, court documents said.

Amaco went out of business at the end of 2018.

If convicted, the defendants face up to life in prison or the death penalty.

“The defendants callously used gun violence to resolve a business dispute, reducing the value of a man’s life to a dollar figure,” said Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Breon Peace.