(NY Post) – It’s the most expensive airport ride to Manhattan in history.
A Hong Kong businessman, traveling by private jet to Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, was picked up by a car-service driver and taken to the city for a 13-mile trip — that wound up costing him nearly $800,000.
Brooklyn federal prosecutors say that megamillionaire feng shui master Tony Chan paid for the trip with his American Express card — and that car-service driver Peter Rahhaoui, of Flushing, Queens, then used the card number to rack up thousands of dollars in charges over the next few months.
Amazingly, the controversial Chan is so rich that he didn’t even realize he was being bilked, records show.
It was only after a bank-security specialist noticed a suspicious pattern of activity on the card — Rahhaoui’s charges, some of which hit $19,000 in one month alone — and notified authorities that the alleged $794,986 scam was uncovered.
In papers filed recently in Brooklyn federal court, prosecutors say Rahhaoui’s scam began after he picked up Chan at the New Jersey airport in July 2008.
Soon after the trip, large monthly charges from the limousine service began posting to Chan’s AmEx and ranged from $4,300 to nearly $20,000. Other than the initial charge to pay for Chan’s single Teterboro-to-Manhattan trip, prosecutors say, all of the bills were unauthorized and fraudulent.
The Secret Service, which investigates credit-card fraud, says in court papers that the money went into Rahhaoui’s bank account. The driver was busted by agents in January.
But Chan’s misfortunes in Hong Kong are complicating the issue.
A month after Rahhaoui’s bust, Hong Kong police arrested Chan at his $30 million residence in the island’s Peak neighborhood — where hilltop homes of the mega-wealthy command sweeping views of the harbor below — for his own alleged, unrelated, shenanigans.
Chan is an internationally renowned feng shui designer who served as a spiritual adviser to Nina Wang, Asia’s richest woman. He later became Wang’s paramour — although she was two decades his elder — before her death in 2007 at 69.
Chan’s arrest in Hong Kong stemmed from allegations that he presented a forged will that made him the sole heir to Wang’s fortune. Shortly before her death, Wang’s net worth was listed by Forbes at $4.2 billion.
Legal experts say his troubles could undermine his credibility as a victim if the New York case gets to a jury.
Complicating the matter further, Hong Kong tax collectors hit Chan with a $41 million charge after hearing that he had allegedly been paid billions for feng shui advice by Wang.
These developments, experts said, open the door for Rahhaoui to claim that Chan had authorized the AmEx charges for a range of limousine services over several months and was now claiming fraud only because he faces tax and legal woes in Hong Kong.
Rahhaoui declined comment to The Post. He has pleaded not guilty in the case.
