PRC spying in Queens, NYC. Attention!!! Chinese American artists, democracy advocates, religious leaders, and politicians. You are being spied upon. Blackmail, bugging, and butchery plotted.
“But in the end, violence would be fine too. Huh? Beat him,” China’s alledged spy chuckles as he imagines the US Army chaplain, a war hero, laying on the ground.
One person in Queens was killed, perhaps related to these plots. Chinese Muslims and Tibetans were particularly targeted.
Two Federal complaints were unsealed, and one amended complaint was authorized today in federal court charging five defendants with various crimes related to efforts by the secret police of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to stalk, harass and spy on Chinese nationals residing in Queens, New York, and elsewhere in the United States. Of course, an indictment is merely an allegation, and all defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law. The following is based on the Federal criminal complaint documents.
Qiming Lin, 59, of the PRC, is charged with conspiracy to commit interstate harassment, as well as conspiracy and attempt to use of a means of identification in connection with the interstate harassment conspiracy.
Fan “Frank” Liu and Matthew Ziburis were arrested yesterday in the Eastern District of New York, while Shujun Wang was arrested this morning in the Eastern District of New York. Their initial appearances are scheduled this afternoon in Brooklyn before U.S. Magistrate Judge James R. Cho. The other two defendants remain at large.
According to court documents, all the defendants allegedly perpetrated transnational repression schemes to target U.S. residents whose political views and actions are disfavored by the PRC government, such as advocating for democracy in the PRC. In one of these schemes, the co-conspirators sought to interfere with federal elections by allegedly orchestrating a campaign to undermine the U.S. congressional candidacy of a U.S. military veteran who was a leader of the 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing, PRC. In another of these schemes, three defendants planned to destroy the artwork of a PRC national residing in Los Angeles that was critical of the PRC government and planted surveillance equipment in the artist’s workplace and car to spy on him from the PRC.
Beginning in September 2021, Lin hired a private investigator (the PI) in New York to allegedly disrupt the campaign of a Brooklyn resident currently running for U.S. Congress (the Victim), including by physically attacking the Victim.
The Victim was a student leader of the pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in 1989, who later escaped to the United States, served in the U.S. military, and became a naturalized U.S. citizen.
The candidate was not named in the complaint but matches the description of Yan Xiong, who last fall announced his candidacy for the U.S. House of Representatives in New York. After we broke this story, The New York Times published an interview with the candidate. Yan said that he had been unaware of an effort to discredit him, adding, “I appreciate the prosecutors who are trying to protect me.”
Yan Xiong was a pastor in Queens and joined the Army after the 9/11 incident when the Nation needed frontline military chaplains. He served in Iraq and has written about his experiences in the book The Chaplain’s Battlefield Diaries.
Yan and his wife Qian Liyun were notable Chinese dissidents. Yan was one of the leaders of the Democracy protest in Tienanmen Square. He and his wife were arrested after hundreds of soldiers were sent out to search for them, but eventually were able to make their way to the United States. Yan had a law degree from Beijing University, which the Chinese government stripped from him. He became a Christian in China, and in the U.S., studied English at Harvard University. He took degrees from Covenant Theological Seminary, Trinity Evangelical Seminary, and a doctorate of ministry from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. He has written five books.
In September 2021, the Victim (as he is called in the federal complaint) was then living in Long Island and announced his intention to run for a U.S. congressional seat on Long Island in the November 2022 general election. He also promised that “we will have a lot more-more of this [work] in the future…Including right now [a] New York State legislator.”
Lin also allegedly requested that the PI unearth derogatory information about the Victim or, if no such information could be found, “manufacture something. But in the end, violence would be fine too. Huh? Beat him [chuckles], beat him until he cannot run for election. Heh, that’s the-the last resort. You-you think about it. Car accident, [he] will be completely wrecked [chuckles], right?”
As alleged, Wang is a former visiting scholar and author who helped start a pro-democracy organization in Queens that memorializes two former leaders of the Chinese Communist Party who promoted political and economic reforms within the PRC and were eventually forced from power. Since at least 2015, however, Wang allegedly has secretly operated at the direction and control of several MSS officers.
At the direction of the MSS, Wang allegedly used his position and status within the Chinese diaspora community in New York City to collect information about prominent activists, dissidents, and human rights leaders to report that information to the PRC government.
The victims of Wang’s efforts included individuals and groups located in New York City and elsewhere that the PRC considers subversive, such as Hong Kong pro-democracy activists, advocates for Taiwanese independence, and Uyghur and Tibetan activists, both in the United States and abroad. Wang allegedly sent email “diaries” to the MSS that contained details of his conversations with prominent dissidents, the activities of pro-democracy activists, as well as relevant phone numbers and other contact information for the targets of the PRC government.
On Monday, Wang’s co-founder of the Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang Memorial Foundation, Jim Li — a Tiananmen Square activist who emigrated to the United States after being held in a Chinese prison — was fatally stabbed in his law office in Queens. His assailant has been identified by police and witnesses as a young Chinese woman, Xiaoning Zhang, who — according to a colleague of Li’s — draped a Chinese flag on a chair in Li’s office before attacking him. It is uncertain whether this incident is related to Wang’s plots.
At least one Hong Kong democracy activist about whom Wang allegedly reported to his handlers was subsequently arrested by Chinese authorities, according to the complaint. Wang allegedly told his handlers about his meetings and conversations with the dissident, who was identified in the complaint as a human rights lawyer and former member of Hong Kong’s Legislative Council.
According to the complaint, Liu is president of a purported media company based in New York City, while Ziburis is a former correctional officer for the State of Florida and a bodyguard. Sun is a PRC-based employee of an international technology company.
According to the complaint, Liu and Ziburis have been operating under Sun’s direction and control to discredit pro-democracy PRC dissidents residing in the United States – including in New York City, California, and Indiana – by spying on them and disseminating negative information about them. For example, at Sun’s direction, Liu allegedly paid a private investigator in Queens to bribe an IRS employee to obtain the federal tax returns of one of the dissidents. The private investigator was cooperating with law enforcement, and no Internal Revenue Service employee received a bribe payment.
The co-conspirators also allegedly made plans to destroy the artwork of a dissident artist whose work is critical of the PRC government, and the artist’s sculpture depicting PRC President Xi Jinping as a coronavirus molecule was demolished in Spring 2021. Sun has paid both Liu and Ziburis for these efforts to stalk, harass and surveil dissidents residing in the United States.
The artist is unnamed in the complaint, but it meets the description of Chen Weiming, a Chinese-born sculptor known for his political activism and artistic protests against the Chinese government.
In the spring of 2021, one of Chen’s installations in California — which depicted Chinese President Xi Jinping as a coronavirus molecule — was destroyed by vandalism. The complaint quotes communications in which Mr. Sun, the businessman, encouraged Liu to have Ziburis destroy the sculpture, saying: “Destroy all sculptures and things that are not good to our leaders.”
As part of their efforts, the defendants electronically allegedly spied on the pro-democracy activists. For example, posing as an art dealer interested in purchasing the artwork of the dissident artist, Ziburis secretly installed surveillance cameras and GPS devices at a dissident’s workplace and in his car.
Prosecutors also said that in late 2021 Ziburis claimed that he had posed as a member of an international sports committee to gain access to a California-based dissident’s home. That dissident, a person familiar with the case said, is Bay Area lawyer Arthur Liu, the father of U.S. figure skater Alysa Liu.
In a November 2021 report to Liu quoted in the complaint, Ziburis described going to Arthur Liu’s house in the Bay Area, and asked to check the family’s passports to ensure he and an unnamed family member were set for international travel. He described Liu growing angry and telling him to leave. However, from the federal complaint, it appears that Ziburis made up the incident to collect a paycheck.
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If you are in the United States, including a U.S. territory, your freedom of speech is protected, regardless of your citizenship. To report threats or intimidation by a foreign government, contact the FBI online at tips.fbi.gov or call 1-800-CALL-FBI (1-800-225-5324).
