A man known on the street as “China Man” is headed to federal prison for more than 16 years after a judge sentenced him for running a string of schemes to steal money from banks. Laquan Williams was sentenced to 200 months in prison, according to prosecutors, in a case out of the Southern District of New York that officials are framing as a warning to repeat offenders.
U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Jamie McDonald announced the sentence, which was handed down by U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain, according to the Southern District of New York. The office's announcement credits Williams, who also went by the alias “China Man,” with orchestrating a series of schemes aimed at stealing money from banks, though the office's statement did not detail the specific institutions targeted, the total losses involved, or who the victims were.
McDonald framed the sentence as a message to others running similar operations. “Today's prison sentence protects New Yorkers and should be a reminder that we and our law enforcement partners will aggressively pursue serial fraudsters and hold them accountable,” McDonald said, according to a post from US Attorney SDNY
on X. The account, which posts under the handle sdnynews, is run out of the Southern District of New York's office.
Sentence Lands Far Above Recent Comparable Cases
A 200-month term — more than 16 years — puts Williams's punishment well beyond other bank fraud sentences that have come out of the same federal district in recent years. Mendel Zilberberg, for instance, was sentenced to 30 months in prison for a scheme to obtain a fraudulent $1.4 million loan from Park Avenue Bank, per the Southern District of New York's office.
An even larger-dollar case produced a comparatively lighter sentence elsewhere in the same court system. A New York compliance lawyer was sentenced to 12 months and a day in prison for his role in a scheme to steal $20 million from an Emigrant Bank unit, according to the ABA Journal. That lawyer, John Arthur Hanratty, was convicted in August 2025 of wire fraud, bank fraud and money laundering, the outlet reported, and Senior U.S. District Judge Lorna Schofield later ordered him to forfeit nearly $18 million. Hanratty's sentencing hearing took place in federal court in Manhattan.
What Remains Unknown About the Williams Case
The publicly available account of Williams's case is thin on specifics. It does not establish the exact date he was sentenced, nor does it spell out how much money was allegedly stolen, which banks were targeted, or who the victims were. It also does not say whether Williams pleaded guilty or was convicted at trial, and no supervised-release, forfeiture or restitution terms have been disclosed.
What is clear is the length of the punishment itself: 200 months, described by prosecutors as over sixteen years, imposed in Manhattan federal court. McDonald's office has repeatedly pointed to such sentences, including the Zilberberg case, as part of a broader effort to pursue fraud targeting New York financial institutions.
