Born to Kill, also known as BTK or Canal Boys, was a New York City-based street gang composed of first-generation Vietnamese immigrants.
Struggling to provide for his new family however, Thai turned to crime, and in 1983, for a short period of time, David Thai was consigned as a member of the Vietnamese Flying Dragons, a small branch of the Flying Dragons gang, and as a gang member he occasionally committed robberies but was never caught.
After a few years, Thai left the Flying Dragons and branched out on his own, establishing a budding multimillion-dollar counterfeit watch business.
With his watch business in place, Thai seized on the occasion by taking control of Canal Street, which would later become the gang's main base of operations.
This made Born to Kill a confederation of gangs, which allowed it to expand its criminal operations, exploits and territory into other cities, states, and countries such as Canada.
David Thai and his operations birthed the Canal Street counterfeit market and made it a worldwide tourist visit location for bootlegged items.
[3][4] Starting out as enforcers for Triads and established Chinese organized crime groups such as Flying Dragons, Born to Kill later organized and distanced itself from the Chinese groups, and was well known to ignore or even challenge the authority of the Triad, as the gang considered themselves as not being a part of the traditional Chinatown criminal structure.
Gang members were predominantly in their teens and 20s, although they ranged from fifteen to thirty-five,[7] and were known to target restaurant owners, storekeepers and merchants along Canal Street.
[11] Born to Kill members were also well known to have fashioned themselves after gangster movies, donning dark sunglasses and black suits along with spiked hair.
In Sacramento, California, Born to Kill was active in less-visible areas such as computer-chip theft, as well as the sale of guns to young Vietnamese.