Tipnar Goon is dead: Not a new thriller, but a fact that could help determine whether a Chinatown restaurant gets to stay open

What started as a 911 call in July about a larceny on Beach Street in Chinatown has spiraled into a licensing issue that could see a Chinatown restaurant lose its right to serve beer and wine - or even to stay open at all.

At a hearing this morning, the Boston Licensing Board heard a complex - and far from complete - story about the ownership and operation of Bubor Cha Cha, 45 Beach Street.

One of the current owners, Hui Lin, says she doesn't know why one of the former owners continues to sign the restaurant's liquor-license renewal form even though he and his partners sold the place to her and her partners in 2019 - and she was listed separately as the restaurant's new manager.

Meanwhile, she is suing the three people with whom she bought the restaurant for allegedly freezing her out of the restaurant operations. They counter that she was doing the freezing out - locking them out of restaurant financial records, embezzling funds and hiring undocumented immigrants and that they were forced to fire her as a manager to protect their investments in the restaurant they all bought for $550,000.

Licensing-board records still show the owners as the people who sold the place in 2019 - Chester Wu, Gloria Chin and Tipnar Goon - even though, as board Chairwoman Kathleen Joyce exclaimed at one point, "Tipnar Goon is dead." In fact, Wu signed the restaurant's most recent beer-and-wine license renewal, for 2022.

Oh, and that license may no longer valid, not just because Wu, Chin and Goon are no longer owners, but because Bubor Cha Cha has a "restricted" license that can't be sold - it has to be returned to the board once a restaurant is sold or closed.

Gar Chiang, the lawyer who says he represented Wu, Goon and Chin in the sale of the restaurant and its assets, including the alcohol license, in 2019, says he never looked at the alcohol license, which has that "restricted" condition marked prominently in red ink.

The board gave Chiang, Lin and two lawyers representing Lin's ostensible partners a week to file additional paperwork in the case so it can determine who actually owns and runs Bubor Cha Cha and whether to take away the alcohol license.

The board first became aware of the restaurant's ownership issues in July.

Reading from a report this morning, BPD Det. Eddie Hernandez told the board that around 1:45 p.m. on July 20, an officer from BPD District A-1 responded to 45 Beach St. on a report of a larceny - a Bubor Cha Cha employee told the officer an unknown person had come in, taken a restaurant VCR used to record video from surveillance cameras and ripped the restaurant's alcohol license off the wall.

Two days later, Lin walked into A-1 to file a report on the theft - she said two people had come in around 11 a.m. on the 20th, took the recording device, the cables connecting it to the cameras and the alcohol license and threatened to have the restaurant's utilities shut off.

But the ownership issues go back even further. In June, 2021, Lin, who has a 30% stake in the LLC that now owns the restaurant, sued her three partners in Suffolk Superior Court for allegedly freezing her out of their LLC's operations and firing her as the restaurant manager.

She alleges that on May 3 of that year, the other three padlocked the front door to Bubor Cha Cha and put signs on the windows reading "Notice of Closure" that said the place was shut pending an audit and that Hui Lin was no longer the manager. In her complaint, she says she removed the padlock and re-opened the restaurant. Three days later, she charges, they padlocked the front door again - and this time the rear door - removed the camera system and took whatever cash they could find inside.

She claims she does not know why the other three are doing this, although in one filing, she suggests that one of the three, Zhichao Chang, invested specifically to drive Bubor Cha Cha out of business because he also owns competing Chinatown restaurants. She argues she has always provided them with whatever financial information they needed and that the reason the LLC paid no dividends in 2020 and 2021 was because of the pandemic.

In an answer to her suit, Chang says Lin was bleeding the LLC dry, paying herself nearly twice the salary the partners had agreed to and using $12,000 in restaurant money for personal purchases at, among other places, Ikea, Target and Wayfair and at two Chinatown restaurants, Hei La Moon and Hot Pot Buffet, and at Tiger Sugar, a Chinatown boba place. She did so even as she was ignoring $45,000 in bills from their own restaurant's seafood suppliers, contractors and utilities, Chang charges.

She wouldn't let the other owners see the books and got a $130,000 PPP loan without telling the other partners, Chang alleges, adding she was also hiring undocumented workers.

He adds that since the other three partners voted to remove Lin as manager and took control of the restaurant accounts, the place has consistently made money. He says the idea he would invest heavily in a restaurant just to make it fail is absurd.

Lin's complete complaint (205k PDF).
Chang's response (2.4M PDF).