Three separate criminal complaints were filed in federal court by the prosecution alleging that the defendants harassed, stalked and spied upon Chinese nationals in New York and across the U.S. They allegedly acted on orders from China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) and engaged in various schemes. These included trying to blackmail a candidate for Congress with false prostitution claims, as well as trying to bribe an Internal Revenue Service employee so that one victim could get her tax returns. One of these criminal schemes led to at least one victim being jailed in Hong Kong.
Qiming Lin was accused of trying intimidate a dissident planning to run for Congress. The victim, who has not been identified, is a former student leader in the 1989 Tiananmen square protests. He later moved to the U.S. and joined the military before becoming a naturalized citizen.
According to the criminal complaint Lin hired a private investigator in September 2021 to try to subvert the candidate’s chances of being elected. Investigators claim Lin communicated with a private detective “to determine if there was any scandal regarding the Victim that could become public, such as an extramarital affair or theft of money.” Lin asked if there were any scandals and was told that he could not find them.
According to Lin’s indictment, Lin stated that “Right now, we don’t want to him being elected.”
Lin even suggested to the private detective, “You go look for a victim, see if you would take the bait,” in an attempt to get the candidate to marry a prostitute. He instructed the private investigator “to dig up everything from 1989 to now t” to see if there were any flaws, before he participated in the election.
According to court documents, Lin left a voicemail to the private investigator suggesting that physical violence might also be acceptable to get the dissident to give up his campaign.
Lin said that Lin had said, in the message, “In the End, violence would also be fine,” and “beat him until [he] cannot run for office.”
Lin, a Chinese national aged 59, is still at large. Lin is being charged with conspiracy to perpetrate interstate harassment, and other charges.
Shujun Wang, a naturalized American citizen, was accused of spying on his own community members using his leadership role in New York diaspora groups.
Wang, a member the pro-democray Memorial Foundation, is alleged to have acted under four MSS handlers, and provided information about protests and dissident groups organizations to them. Prosecutors claim that Wang was in possession of contact information and a list of names for Hong Kong democracy activists in 2019.
Wang to MSS mentioned that a Hong Kong activist was arrested for organizing a Chinese-banned protest and was charged with political crimes. In another case, Wang’s MSS handler ordered him to engage in conversation with “Tibetans Uyghurs, and Mongolians”, all Chinese opposition members at a Queens, New York, pro-democracy gathering.
Wang was detained Wednesday morning.
In the third criminal case, investigators claim that three men conspired to bribe and silence a dissident artist.
Qiang “Jason Sun is accused of leading Matthew Ziburis and Fan “Frank” Liu to spy on dissidents, and spreading negative information in apparent blackmail efforts.
Liu is alleged to have hired a private investigator in January 2021 to bribe an IRS employee to obtain U.S. federal tax return of a visual artist in Southern California. This was so that he could reveal tax liabilities and publicly discredit him.
A bust of a COVID-19 particle was sculpted by the dissident artist with the head and shoulders of Xi Jinping, a sculpture Sun ordered Ziburis destruction.
Sun said, “Destroy all sculptures and other things that are not beneficial to our leaders,” according to court documents. Ziburis is also charged with installing surveillance and GPS equipment in the artist’s workspace, which Sun later observed.
They also plotted against a Chinese dissident living and working in Indiana. The men are accused of trying to lure the dissident into an interview with Liu’s media firm. The recording was to be used in Chinese propaganda videos that targeted the dissident.
Sun is still at large, but Liu and Ziburis were both detained Tuesday.
The charges on Wednesday come almost a month after Justice Department announced that it would end the controversial “China Initiative”, which was launched under Trump’s administration to find Chinese spy spies. This initiative was often criticized for its racial bias towards Chinese-American academics. It was eventually replaced by a more comprehensive approach to addressing national security threats within the department.
A review of China Initiative cases found no evidence of prejudice or racial bias. The Justice Department claimed that the China Initiative was “myopic”, chilled scientific research, and gave the impression that the department used different standards for people with Chinese heritage.
“Transnational repression harms Americans and the world, and threatens the rule and law itself,” stated Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen, of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, Wednesday. “This activity is antithetical American fundamental values, and it will not be tolerated when it violates U.S. law.”
