Michael Moy (1969-) was a Chinese-American triad gangster-turned-policeman and now a documentarian who operates the "Chinatown Gang Stories" YouTube channel, telling the stories of former gangsters who were active in Chinatown, New York City from the 1970s to 1990s.
Biography[]
Michael Moy was born in New York City, and he was raised on East Broadway, just a short walk away from the heart of Chinatown, Manhattan. At the age of five, he and his family moved to Brooklyn to escape Chinatown's rampant gang violence. He was frequently bullied as a child, and, at the age of 16, he was recruited into a youth gang and was involved with organized crime for nine years; he was involved with gambling houses, counterfeit money, bootleg kung fu movies, gunrunning, and credit-card fraud. However, friends were killed or imprisoned, causing Moy to reconsider his future. After hearing about how NYPD officer Steven McDonald had forgiven a 15-year-old Chinese gangster who had shot and paralyzed him in Central Park in 1986, Moy realized that he was a mere product of his environment like the shooter, and, in 1989, he took the NYPD police officer's entrance exam. He remained involved with the gang until he graduated from the police academy in the 1990s, and he spent more than 20 years with the NYPD, including 9 years as an officer and 16 as a detective, most of it in south Brooklyn. He was a first responder during the 9/11 attacks, causing him to develop several illnesses. In 2016, after losing several friends to cancer related to 9/11, Moy decided to become a historian, spending more than $100,000 to travel the world to interview former Asian gangsters and create videos for "Chinatown Gang Stories".