Sauce: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_United_States_campaign_finance_controversy#Yah-Lin_%22Charlie%22_Trie
Yah-Lin "Charlie" Trie
The most significant activity by Yah-Lin "Charlie" Trie was a $450,000 attempted donation from him to Clinton's legal defense fund, which Trie allegedly delivered in two envelopes each containing several checks and money orders. The fund immediately rejected $70,000 and deposited the remainder, but ordered an investigation of the source. The investigation found that some of the money orders were made out in different names but with the same handwriting, and sequentially numbered. The fund then rejected the donation entirely, and returned the deposited funds two months after the initial contribution.[6]
Born in Taiwan, Trie emigrated to the U.S. in 1974. He eventually became an American citizen and co-owner of a restaurant in Little Rock, Arkansas. The 1997 special investigation describes Trie as having attempted to develop an international trading business (Daihatsu International Trading Corporation), having maintained or accessed accounts in Little Rock and Washington, D.C. into which Macau-based real estate businessman Ng Lap Seng wired >$1M USD from Macau and Hong Kong accounts, and as having never succeeded in the trading business (based on bank and tax records indicating substantive income only from Ng).[7][page needed]
In Little Rock, Trie befriended Clinton, then governor of Arkansas. In addition to the attempted donation to Clinton's defense fund, Trie and his immediate family donated $220,000 to the DNC which was also later returned.[7][page needed] Immediately after the donation to Clinton's defense fund, Trie sent a letter to President Clinton that expressed concern about America's intervention in tensions arising from China's military exercises being conducted near Taiwan. Trie told the President in his letter that war with China was a possibility should U.S. intervention continue:
…[O]nce the hard parties of the Chinese military incline to grasp U.S. involvement as foreign intervention, is [sic] U.S. ready to face such [a] challenge[?]… [I]t is highly possible for China to launch [sic] real war based on its past behavior in [sic] Sino-Vietnam War and Zhen Bao Tao war with Russia. (Charlie Trie, letter to President Clinton, March 21, 1996)."[7][page needed]
After Congressional investigations turned to Trie in late 1996, he left the country for China.[7][page needed] Trie returned to the U.S. in 1998 and was convicted and sentenced to three years probation and four months home detention for violating federal campaign finance laws by making political contributions in someone else's name and for causing a false statement to be made to the Federal Election Commission (FEC).[8]