NEW YORK (AP) -- Federal authorities have frozen Norman Hsu's New York City bank accounts and attached the contents of his $8,000-a-month apartment while awaiting the outcome of claims that the jailed political fundraiser stole $40 million.
The action by the U.S. attorney's office was reported Wednesday by Ronald C. Minkoff, lawyer for Source Financing Investors LLC, who had sought and won a state judge's attachment order on Hsu's property last week.
Minkoff said he wanted the asset attachments as a step toward recovering his client's money. He said Hsu stole it by claiming he had deals to buy menswear from a manufacturer in China and sell it at a profit to American companies that included Macy's, Nordstrom's, Theory, DKNY, L.L. Bean, and others.
Hsu was not represented at Wednesday's hearing. His lawyers have said that he is not guilty of any wrongdoing.
State Supreme Court Justice Shirley Kornreich said after she signed the asset attachment order that any action federal investigators and prosecutors took with regard to Hsu's property would pre-empt her orders.
Minkoff said it was unimportant that the federal authorities have Hsu's assets as long as they are later available for his client Source Financing, and other victims. He said Hsu's accounts are in Bank of America and Metrobank New York.
Minkoff had also asked Kornreich to direct the political campaigns of presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, Gov. Elliot Spitzer, state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., to either return or hold contributions they received from Hsu.
The political campaigns did not reply to the judge's informal inquiries about the campaign contributions, so she formally ordered them to report to her by Oct. 15, Minkoff said.
The judge was told recently that Clinton's people said she had sent back all money contributed by Hsu; Gillibrand's people said she had given the money to charity; Cuomo's camp was holding the money while trying to work out an escrow arrangement, and that he had not heard from Spitzer's people.
The judge also heard Jacques Debrot, lawyer for Hsu's landlord, during the Wednesday hearing. He told Kornreich that his client wanted to clear out Hsu's Lower Manhattan apartment so they can rent to another tenant.
Debrot said later outside court that Hsu's lease expired Sept. 14.
Minkoff said the judge refused to let him enter Hsu's apartment and take an inventory but that federal prosecutors agreed to tell him what they find there.
Hsu, 56, is in jail in California, where he had been wanted since 1992, when he pleaded no contest to grand theft charges in fraudulent clothing import business, then skipped town before he could be sentenced.
Investigators say they believe Hsu had fled to Hong Kong.
After being a fugitive for about 15 years, Hsu was arrested about three weeks ago after he became ill and was taken off an eastbound Amtrak train in Grand Junction, Colo., and hospitalized.
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