Fei Fei Wang and US Navy Captain Peihua Ku - The abusers

Professor Ping-Hsing Ku is an internationally renowned Chinese-American artist and educator. 

A neurologist in New York City diagnosed him with vascular dementia in 2009, and he has been degrading ever since. Professor Ku’s relationship with his wife, Fei Fei Wang, and son, US Navy Captain Peihua Ku, was complicated. Based on what I’ve seen and stories I’ve heard from other relatives, Fei Fei Wang has long mentally abused all members of her family, including her husband. Americans usually laugh it off as a “tiger mom” personality type. It is not funny. It is actually quite pathetic in this case as Fei Fei Wang is an such an unaccomplished person herself.

The hatred should have been an early indicator that Fei Fei Wang and Captain Ku shouldn’t be trusted with the welfare of Professor Ku. In 2011, Wang and Captain Ku enlisted the help of a Brooklyn law firm, Grimaldi & Yeung LLP, to procure an invalid power of attorney over Professor Ku. Professor Ku was clearly already suffering from dementia, so the law firm was either complicit or their staff was too incompetent to recognize they needed to properly seek guardianship for Professor Ku through court. A New York State enforcement investigator was recently assigned to this matter, so the truth around that is forthcoming. The law firm then helped Wang steal Professor Ku’s New York property using that invalid power of attorney.

At that time, Professor Ku was living in Woodhaven, Queens, NY at the home he had owned with his wife since 1975. Since he spent most of his career teaching at National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei, Professor Ku had some assets in Taiwan. Since Taiwan doesn’t have a simple power of attorney concept like the US, it forced them to pursue a guardianship application in the Taipei courts.

Fei Fei Wang described her husband, Professor Ping-Hsing Ku, in the following manner in her 2012 guardianship petition to the Taipei courts:  

“All of Ping-Hsing’s property in Taiwan is under his personal name. His wife and children never dared to question him. He is short-tempered, selfish and irresponsible. Now that he is old and retired, there is no one in Taiwan who is dependable and capable of taking care of him. This is rather pitiful!”  

The Taipei courts granted guardianship to Fei Fei Wang. Wang was correct. There was nobody else in Taiwan to take care of him since his children and siblings are all Americans who live in the United States. After getting guardianship, Wang and Captain Ku partially succeeded in transferring Professor Ku’s Taiwan assets to the United States. Wang attempted to sell a condo he owned in Taiwan, and she needed the judge’s permission. The judge didn’t allow the sale since Wang misrepresented her husband’s financial position. She claimed she needed the money to pay for her husband’s care, which the judge confirmed was inaccurate, and the judge in Taiwan admonished Wang in his written opinion. 

After Wang and Captain Ku stole as much as they could from Professor Ku, they then shipped Professor Ku to live in a nursing home in Taipei. They left him there alone while his children and siblings lived in the US. The first nursing home he lived in didn’t like that Professor Ku could walk, so they tied him into a chair for 8 hours per day. Once he ultimately lost the ability to walk, which isn’t surprising considering he was tied to a chair for most of the day, the nursing home told Wang to transfer him elsewhere.  

They forced Wang to return to Taiwan to deal with Professor Ku’s living arrangements, and in her haste, she found another nursing home that was running more like a prison. The Aiai Nursing Home in Taipei is an incompetent operation where Professor Ku gets further abused in solitude. He has suffered from 5 hospitalizations in the past four years because of pneumonia and urinary tract infections---all of which were caused by the force-feeding and the poor hygiene practices at Aiai Nursing Home. 

Wang would never return to Taipei to be with her husband whenever her Professor Ku fell seriously ill. Instead, Professor Ku’s daughter and my wife, Pei-Lan Ku, took on that responsibility to make sure Professor Ku was never alone during his worst moments. Pei-Lan and I made considerable efforts to split our time between New York City and Taipei over the past several years so we both could spend time with our respective aging fathers.

Wang and Captain Ku got away with their evil for a while without personal consequence, but Professor Ku's torture suffered at Aiai Nursing Home proved to be too much for Pei-Lan. She suffered from panic attacks and vertigo due to the stress. Abusers impact the lives of those who care about the victim. Pei-Lan was forced to take more drastic action to protect her father.

As is typical with most criminals, Wang and Captain Ku grew more brazen with their criminality as time went by. They doubled down on their abusive behavior to cover up their past criminal activity while underestimating Pei-Lan---that will prove to be their biggest mistake.

This year, Pei-Lan took her father out of the abusive Aiai Nursing Home as she had enough with them. Wang and her lawyer in Taiwan called in a fraudulent police report to exercise her guardianship authority. The judge ordered Professor Ku to be returned to the nursing home until the guardianship review was complete. We know the judge did this to protect Pei-Lan from her mother as she sees Wang for what she is. The law and process in Taiwan differ significantly from what we’re used to in the United States, and therefore the United States will ultimately have to come to the rescue.

The most recent events include wrongful imprisonment of Pei-Lan and her father by the Ai Ai Nursing Home to coerce Pei-Lan to sign a legal document, extortion by Wang and Captain Ku, lying to the police on multiple occasions, and intimidation of Pei-Lan by Wang’s relatives in Taiwan. However, Pei-Lan is determined to stay in Taiwan to protect her father by whatever means necessary. 

Since Wang and Captain Ku both currently live in the US, US government agencies are taking notice. A couple of New York State agencies have enforcement investigators collecting evidence against the lawyers and their employees who helped Wang and Captain Ku get the invalid power of attorney over Professor Ku. A New York City DA’s office is working with me to build a case around several potential felony counts against Wang and Captain Ku. At the suggestion of the DA’s office, Captain Ku was reported to the Navy Inspector General, and a Judge Advocate General was assigned to deal with Captain Ku.

You’re probably thinking Wang and Captain Ku deserve what is coming to them. I agree, but that is easy to say, as Wang isn’t my mother. A family is being further torn apart, as the hubris and criminality of Wang and Captain Ku may result in jail time and a destroyed career. Pei-Lan didn’t want any of this. 

They showed her they will take any illegal means necessary to cover up their past criminal acts while getting their sadistic joy by torturing Professor Ku. It will forever haunt Pei-Lan that she made the mistake of trusting they would do the right thing with her father. She didn’t think they could be so evil. Pei-Lan made the wrong assumption that her mother couldn’t be this evil.

Could this have been prevented? Probably. Should Pei-Lan have sued her mother much earlier to stop her? Yes. It’s easy to make that judgment in hindsight. While it would’ve protected her mother from herself, it would never look that way. Pei-Lan and her father are lucky to be Americans as it is US agencies that will protect her and her father, but it will come at a tragic price.