Queens DA Richard Brown

Two years after Jimmy Meng narrowly defeated incumbent Assemblyman Barry Grodenchik by less than 200 votes on his way to becoming the first Asian-American state lawmaker, an aide to Meng has surrendered to the Queens District Attorney on charges that he faked voter registration documents.

According to a spokesman for the Queens DA Richard Brown, the aide, 42-year-old Simon Ting, surrendered to authorities earlier today and is going to be arraigned with a Class E Felony in relation to at least 36 fraudulent voter registration forms.

Ting, who was an administrative aide to Meng up until December 31st, 2006, allegedly used his own home address in Flushing in order to register 17 voters and used a bookstore owned by Meng as the home address for dozens of other voters, according to Brown's spokesman.

The spokesman also said it appeared that Ting acted alone and without the cooperation of Meng, who did not stand for re-election and was succeeded this year by Ellen Young.

There had been questions about voting irregularities immediately following the election, but when the DA's office looked into the matter at the time, they were careful to refer to their actions as a review and not an investigation.

Update: Jimmy Meng, Ting's former employer, released the following statement:

While I am sad to hear of today's news, it is important to note that it had no impact on my 2004 victory which we all worked hard for. In addition, our community is forever grateful for Simon's love and concern for the community. We should not discount that fact that he has dedicated the last few years in serving and working hard for everyone in the community.

-- Azi Paybarah