A Queens native who helped abduct a marijuana business associate in Peekskill after the man stole nearly $1 million from the operation was sentenced to six years in federal prison.
Before the sentence was imposed Thursday, June 25, in federal court in White Plains, Lewis Li tearfully asked for mercy and apologized to the victim – who he said was a good friend before the abduction – and to his own family, particularly because he won’t be with them for his father’s final months as he battles terminal cancer.
“I shouldn’t have treated him that horribly. It was a terrible decision,” Li, 36, of Huntington Beach, Calif. told U.S. District Judge Phillip Halpern, referring to the victim. Of his participation in the illegal marijuana business and eventually the abduction, he added: “I was irresponsible. I was not thinking clearly. I was not doing the righteous thing. I did not see the full picture at the time but now I do.”
Li was arrested in February 2025 and pleaded guilty this year to conspiracy to commit Hobbs Act extortion.
The marijuana business involved shipments of the product from California, where Li lived and worked, to New York, where the Peekskill man would receive payments from the New York buyers and ship the cash to California. According to court records, the business at its peak was shipping $1 million to $1.5 million per week.
In mid January, the Peekskill associate had been expected to send $930,000 to California but never did, claiming it had been seized by federal investigators and that he and his wife and child were fugitives.
Li and a co-conspirator – who the defense contends was the primary player in the abduction effort – suspected the money had been stolen and tracked the associate to a home in Peekskill, canvassing it for several days. They bought a stun gun and placed a GPS monitor on the man’s Honda. And they worked with two large men who would provide the “hired muscle”.
On Jan. 28, the victim left his home but in a Tesla. Li and the other men followed him in a Jeep to a parking garage where he went to charge the Tesla. They confronted him and forced him into the Jeep, where they beat him, bloodying his nose, and threatened him and his family if he didn’t return the money.
After initially repeating his claim that federal agents had seized the money, the man admitted to keeping the cash. Li used the man’s phone to transfer $3,000 to his Zelle account.
They had him call his wife and two female associates of the abductors went to the house and collected the bags of cash, which still contained $910,000. The man was dropped off in Elmsford after an hour and 45 minutes but not before Li and the co-conspirator told him he owed them another $100,000.
In a Signal text the next day, Li reiterated that the man still owed them money:
“You put us in a very bad position and made us look very bad,” Li wrote. “Lying and greed isn’t worth your life, or your wife’s life or your baby’s life…it’s bad karma…these ppl just want their money that they earned back. You tried to steal from them and their families. You have to understand there’s consequences for this (expletive) in this line of work.”
On February 1, he called the man and again threatened him and his family if the money wasn’t paid. But five days later Li was arrested before any money was paid.
The co-conspirator was also arrested but the status of his case was not immediately clear from online records.
The guideline sentence that Halpern had to consider for Li, but was not bound by, was just over 8 years to just over 10 years. Prosecutors Jorja Knauer and Benjamin Levander requested a sentence within the guidelines and probation recommended a 6-year prison term, citing Li’s lack of criminal record, untreated mental health and substance abuse issues and rehabilitation efforts while in custody.
Knauer said that Li’s crime wasn’t just a “single bad mistake or lapse in judgment” but that years of not getting caught in the marijuana operation encouraged him to commit the “brazen, broad-daylight abduction.”
Christopher Darden, a noted LA defense lawyer who three decades ago was one of the prosecutors in the OJ Simpson trial, argued that 18 months would be sufficient punishment for Li but if Halpern had to go higher it should be no more than what probation recommended.
He emphasized Li’s rehabilitative efforts at the Westchester County jail in the 17 months since his arrest – which a jail chaplain and an education facilitator who were among two dozen relatives and supporters in court attested to.
“He’s still broken but he’s done the good work, the necessary work to turn his life around,” Darden said of Li, adding later: “He has learned to do better. He is still learning to do better.”
Halpern said he was encouraged by that to depart from a guideline sentence but that the “brazen, violent, threatening nature of the crime” did not merit the leniency Li sought. He also addressed Li’s concern that he would not be there for his father in his dying days.
“The choices that you made created the separation. It’s not the sentence I’m imposing,” he told Li.
Halpern agreed to recommend that Li be held at the Lompoc federal prison in southern California. Li was also sentenced to three years of supervised release and ordered to pay $3,000 in restitution and forfeit $910,000.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Prison term in abduction of Peekskill man over stolen marijuana money
Reporting by Jonathan Bandler, Rockland/Westchester Journal News / Rockland/Westchester Journal News
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By Jonathan Bandler, Rockland/Westchester Journal News | USA TODAY Network
