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Snakeheads are transnational human traffickers that smuggle illegal immigrants from China to Westernized countries such as Europe, North America, Australia, Taiwan, and Japan. They have multiple networks of air and sea smuggling methods including airplanes, oceangoing ships, and container ships. Even though a majority of snakeheads also have gang ties, not all snakeheads are gang members. Originally, snakeheads and smugglers were seen as separate groups of people. Snakeheads were in charge of collecting money from the illegal immigrants or their families, while smugglers were responsible for the actual transportation of the immigrants. Because of the huge profit generated by this trade, snakeheads became more involved in human trafficking. Additionally, they often became gang members or had close ties with gangs to help with the fee collection, bribing, and obtaining visas. Each transport’s fee can range from $30,000 to $70,000 depending on the method of transportation, routes, and number of people in the group. The illegal immigrants have to pay from 5%-10% as down payment regardless of whether or not the smuggling is successful. Snakeheads use various methods including stolen or altered passports, improperly obtained visas, and bribes from nation to nation until the immigrant arrives at their final destination. They have also been known to use tour groups to beat immigration controls.

One notable Snakehead member is Cheng Chui Ping or "Sister Ping".

Snakehead Roles
Snakeheads would not be so successful without an intricate network of people. There are ranks and roles including:
 * Big snakeheads (arrangers/investors): They are usually Chinese people living outside of China. They invest money in a smuggling operation and oversee the entire operation, but usually are not known by those being smuggled.  Many big snakeheads are based in New York.
 * Little snakeheads (recruiters): They usually live in China and work as middlemen between big snakeheads and customers; they are mainly responsible for finding and screening customers and collecting down payments.
 * Transporters: Some are based in China and others are based in the U.S. Transporters in China are responsible for helping immigrants travel by land or sea to make their way to the border or smuggling ship.  Transporters based in the U.S. are responsible for taking smuggled immigrants from airports or seaports to safe houses.
 * Corrupt Chinese government officials: They are needed to accept bribes in return for Chinese passports. Law enforcement authorities in many transit countries are also paid to aid the illegal Chinese immigrants entering and exiting their countries.
 * Guides: They move illegal immigrants from one transit point to another and aid immigrants entering the United States by land or air. Crew members are employed by snakeheads to charter or work on smuggling ships
 * Enforcers: They are mostly also illegal immigrants. They are hired by big snakeheads to work on the smuggling ships.  They are responsible for maintain order and for distributing food and drinking water.
 * Debt Collectors: U.S.-based debt collectors are responsible for locking up illegal immigrants in safe houses until their debt is paid and for collecting smuggling fees. There are also China-based debt collectors to collect from families of the immigrant.

Snakeheads and Drug Trade
Some U.S. authorities are convinced that Chinese smugglers of immigrants also bring heroin from Southeast Asia into the United States (U.S. Senate, 1992). Some human smugglers were former drug dealers (Burdman, 1993a). One of the first groups of Chinese to be charged with human smuggling had previously been indicted for heroin trafficking (“INS Undercover Operation,” 1985), and a Chinese American who owned a garment factory in NYC’s Chinatown was charged for both heroin and human trafficking (“Chinese Merchant Arrested,” 1992). This is usually a result of an immigrant being too poor to pay the fee. U.S. officials also claim that smuggled Chinese are asked by snakeheads to carry heroin into the United States, presumably to finance their illegal passage (Chan and Dao, 1990c). “Smugglers make even more when illegals, who can’t raise the fee, carry heroin in exchange for their trip” (Chan and Dao, 1990a: 14). More than 50% of the illegal immigrants who successfully made the trip to their destination still owed money to the snakehead gangs.

Due to the vast network of snakeheads and illegal immigration, Chinese trade in human smuggling is no longer a form of organized crime, but rather a “business” controlled by many legitimate groups, both small and large. These groups work independently, each with its own organization, connections, methods, and routes.

In popular culture

 * In the Lincoln Rhyme novel, The Stone Monkey by Jeffery Deaver, the villain is a shadowy snakehead, nicknamed "the Ghost," who is intent on killing a family of Chinese immigrants who are the only witnesses alive who can identify him to the authorities.
 * The Alex Rider novel Snakehead by Anthony Horowitz features snakeheads as the villains.
 * In the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, one of the operations puts the player on a ship carrying illegal Vietnamese immigrants. The gangster running the operation is referred to as "the Snakehead."
 * In the "Laughing Magician" story arc of the comic book Hellblazer, John Constantine enlists the aid of a snakehead gang boss.
 * The 1980 Shaw Brothers production Lost Souls directed by Mou Tun Fei concerns the exploitation of illegal immigrants and features a gang of nasty snakeheads as the villains.
 * The Oregon Files novel Dark Watch by Clive Cussler features snakeheads as minor villains.
 * The Fringe episode "Snakehead" features a gang that smuggles immune-boosting parasites by feeding them to the Chinese immigrants that they are transporting.
 * In an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit called "Debt", the detectives fight against a snakehead gang.
 * The TV series Hawaii Five-0 (2010) featured a snakehead in the pilot episode who is sentenced to life imprisonment - later to be revealed as a subordinate of the archvillain Wo Fat.
 * The zombie fiction novel World War Z, by Max Brooks features a Snakehead gang member as a character, revealing how they helped transport infected refugees outside of mainland China to the West and Central Asia.