They Thought They Were Safe. The FBI Had Been Watching for Years.

Over the past week or two, the U.S. has been cracking down on spies. On October 1st, the owner of a Chinese-American computer company in Southern California was arrested for smuggling over $300 million worth of NVIDIA servers to China. On October 4th, a female real estate agent in Irvine, California, was arrested before flying back to China for allegedly taking photos of the residence of Taiwan President Lai Ching-te's son on behalf of the CCP. On October 5th, the Department of Justice announced it would revoke the U.S. citizenship of a Chinese-American man for selling U.S. Navy ship manuals to the CCP. On October 6, former Arcadia, California, Mayor Eileen Wong pleaded guilty to acting as an agent for the CCP. I've gone through the indictments and plea agreements for these cases one by one, and the biggest takeaway is just one thing. They all thought nobody knew what they were doing. In reality, the FBI has known everything about them for a long time, and now is the time for them to close the net. So today, let's try looking at this from a different angle, the FBI's perspective. How did the FBI get on to them, and how did they decide when to move in and make the arrests? At Zhang Guandian, Debating Viewpoints, we bring you content you won't see anywhere else. That's my goal, so please give me a like to show your support. Make sure to watch until the very end of today's episode. It contains the most cautionary part for our Chinese friends. Let's start by talking about Wei Jingchao. On February 14, 2022, Valentine's Day, Wei Jingchao, a machinist in his early 20s, stationed on the amphibious assault ship USS Essex at the San Diego Naval Base in California suddenly received a private message on social media. The person on the other end claimed to be a naval enthusiast working for the China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation. Wei Jingchao added him, and the two started chatting about ships. You might be wondering, how did Wei Jingchao get so friendly with a stranger online? Would you add a stranger online and start chatting with them? Let me know in the comments. Let's first take a look at what kind of person Wei Jingchao is. He grew up without a father, and when he was 10, his mother went to work in Africa and sent him to a boarding school. In 2016, he immigrated to Wisconsin in the United States with his mother. His mother remarried, and his stepfather, in his own words, was a terrible person who destroyed his self-esteem and self-confidence. In 2019, Wei Jingchao graduated from high school, and in July 2021, he joined the U.S. Navy. He was assigned to the main engine room of the USS Essex and held a security clearance, giving him access to information regarding the ship's weapons, propulsion, steering, and seawater desalination systems. As for the USS Essex, it is a backbone of the U.S. Navy's amphibious warfare capabilities. It looks like a small aircraft carrier and can carry over 2,000 Marines. It really does look like a small aircraft carrier. Just like that, a young sailor who was introverted, lonely, and didn't really have any friends suddenly had a Chinese person who also liked ships come to chat with him. He wholeheartedly believed that the other person was just a friend who loved the ocean just like him. He just didn't know that the other person wasn't sending these kinds of private messages to just him alone. The head of the FBI's counterintelligence division said that CCP intelligence officers cast a wide net on professional networking sites, specifically targeting U.S. military personnel and those with security clearances. Low risk, high reward. And Jin Shaowei was the one who took the bait. However, he realized it. Eight days later, Jin Shaowei told a friend who was also in the Navy, I think I'm being targeted by a CCP intelligence agency. This guy is extremely suspicious. He's asking about warship maintenance schedules, asking me to walk along the pier every day to see which ships are docked, and paying me $500 a pop. Then he said, I'm not stupid. This is clearly espionage. His friend quickly advised him to delete this person. But Jin Chao Wei didn't delete him. The next day, he moved the conversation to another encrypted app that he felt was more secure. Starting in March, he officially began the work, taking photos and videos of the USS Essex for the other party, reporting where each warship was docked and describing the defensive weapons on board. The opponent's appetite also grew step by step. In June 2022, the other party asked him to find out how many U.S. Marines would be participating in an upcoming international maritime exercise, how they would be training, and also requested photos of equipment such as firearms, vehicles, and aircraft. Then came the manuals. Jin Chao Wei copied documents one by one from the Navy's internal restricted computer system, including those on propulsion, steering, and weapons control, and sent them out. At one point, he leaked 30 documents in a single go. During this time, Wei Jingchao's relationship with the other party grew closer, and he started calling him Brother Andy. Brother Andy provided him with a new computer and a new phone, taught him how to use several encryption programs, and reminded him to delete their chats and accounts after they were done. The two of them even used a digital dead drop that automatically deleted messages after 72 hours to exchange files. Every time Wei Jinchao delivered a batch of goods, he would handwrite a receipt, take a photo of it, send it over, and wait to get paid. In May 2022, Wei Jinchao took the oath of citizenship and became a U.S. citizen. Military personnel go through an expedited naturalization process. By that time, he was already working for Brother Andy. It's not that he didn't know the consequences. The Navy had given him training, specifically teaching him how to identify recruitment attempts by foreign intelligence agencies. He even searched online for another case where a Navy sailor was sentenced for espionage and read the Department of Justice's press release from beginning to end. Note that this part is a detail of the evidence from the Department of Justice's indictment. So how does the Department of Justice know what Wei Jinchao looked up online? Well, keep listening. In 2023, Wei Jinshao messaged his mother, saying other Chinese people serving in the U.S. Navy were still trying to figure out how to make some extra cash, like driving taxis, while he was just leaking secrets. He was very clear about what he was doing. But his mother replied with three words, well done. Prosecutors say his mother not only knew about it, but encouraged him to keep going, thinking that it might help him land a job with the Chinese government later on. Andy became increasingly generous with his payments, and later even offered to pay for him and his mother to take a trip to China. According to reports, before Wei Jinshao was arrested, he was even looking up flights to China online. Over that year and a half, Wei Jinshao received a total of more than $12,000. On August 2, 2023, Wei Jinchao went to work on the USS Essex as usual, but that morning, the FBI was already waiting for him at the pier. During the interrogation, he said, I'm done for. In August 2025, a jury found him guilty on six counts, including espionage. He was sentenced in January 2026 to 16 years and eight months in prison. On September 30th of this year, the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit in the federal court in San Diego to strip him of his U.S. citizenship. On October 5th, Attorney General Blanche announced a batch of 40 denaturalization cases, calling it the largest in modern history, and Wei Jinchao was the first person named. So how did the Department of Justice find out that Wei Jinchao was leaking information. By the time he was arrested, federal agents had already been monitoring Wei Jinchao's apartment and phone for over six months with court authorization. During the surveillance, the FBI even set a trap, finding a way to separate him from his phone for a short while while he was working on the ship. It was during this brief moment that FBI agents got hold of his phone, downloaded all the data from it, and then put it back exactly as it was. And Wei Jinchao didn't notice a thing. So when exactly did the FBI start targeting Wei Jinchao? The FBI hasn't disclosed the earliest lead, but in court there was one piece of evidence that really speaks volumes. The jury saw photos of Brother Andy himself and his ID documents in court, and these materials were retrieved from Brother Andy's own electronic account. Folks, do you feel that? How could the FBI retrieve information from Brother Andy's account? You have to realize, Brother Andy was all the way over in China. This just goes to show that the FBI didn't just have a handle on Wei Jinchao's end, but also on the Beijing end. That CCP spy sitting behind a desk in China thinking he was invisible, the Americans could see his ID documents clearly. As for who this person is, the outside world doesn't know yet. And who else he might be manipulating, only the FBI knows. So, one possibility is that this Brother Andy had long been on the FBI's surveillance radar. Whoever he reached out to, the U.S. followed the trail and found Wei Jinchao. But the FBI didn't move in immediately. During the more than six months he was under surveillance, Brother Andy kept assigning tasks to Wei Jinchao, and Wei Jinchao kept delivering the goods as usual. The FBI watched the whole process and copied the evidence, only stopping him at the pier in August. In the Wei Jinchao case, the FBI had obtained information about the CCP intelligence officer who was in contact with Wei Jinchao. Now, in the next case I'm going to talk about, we can see how the FBI used a sting operation to lure out a CCP intelligence officer and then used him to uncover a string of Chinese Americans working for the CCP. 13 miles northeast of Los Angeles, there is a city with a population of over 50,000 called Arcadia. Here, more than half of the population is Asian, and it's known as the Chinese Beverly Hills. In June 2021, right when the Xinjiang issue was being hyped up the most internationally, a CCP official sent a link via WeChat to a person named Wang Ailing, which contained an article from the CCP's consul general in Los Angeles claiming there was no genocide or forced labor in Xinjiang. After receiving it, this Wang Ailing posted the article on the website she runs, the American News Center, within minutes and sent the link back. The other party replied, So fast! Thank you, everyone! Two months later, the other party asked her to revise an article again. After she finished, the other party replied, Excellent! And she replied, Thank you, leader. This website claims to be a news platform serving the local Chinese community. Then, in November 2022, this Wang Ailing was elected as a city council member for the city of Arcadia. In February 2026, she became mayor on a rotational basis. However, less than three months later, on May 11th of this year, the Department of Justice announced that Wang Ailing had signed a plea agreement with the charge being acting as an agent of the CCP. A few hours later, she resigned. On October 6th, the court found her guilty. From running for city council in 2022 to being caught as mayor in 2026, how did the FBI lock on to Wang Ailing? This, well, has to start with a series of investigations targeting her, and the starting point of this story is a man named Chen Jun. Chen Jun, who resides in Los Angeles and is over 70 years old, was a Chinese citizen in his early years and later became a naturalized U.S. citizen. In the Southern California Chinese community, he was quite a figure, organizing associations, hosting events, and acting like brothers with people from the consulate. And he never hid his identity, either. Of course, in the earlier years, he didn't need to hide it at all. Back in 2018, the Los Angeles Times wrote about him, describing him as the former CCP official who held an honorary title as an overseas advisor to the Chinese government, and there were photos of him shaking hands with Xi Jinping online. In 1919, for the 70th anniversary of the founding of the PRC, he even went to Beijing to attend the ceremony. In January 2023, this Chen Jun, well, he took on a job, and the target was Shen Yun. As for Shen Yun, we've recommended them before. They are a classical Chinese dance and traditional music performing arts group, and I personally really like their dance and music. Now, Shen Yun is a tax-exempt non-profit organization in the United States. What does tax-exempt status actually mean? It means that donations made to them are tax-deductible, And as for their performance revenue, they don't have to pay a large amount of taxes on that either. If the IRS were to find issues and revoke this status, for an organization that relies on performances and donations to operate, that would be a devastating blow. And what Beijing wanted was to get rid of this status for Shen Yun. How to do it? Chen Jun's method was very American. Go and report him to the IRS. The U.S. Internal Revenue Service has a whistleblower program. If someone reports others for tax evasion or violations and it's verified, the whistleblower can even receive a reward. Then, in February of that year, Chen Jun submitted a whistleblower complaint to an IRS office in New York State, demanding the revocation of Shen Yun's tax-exempt status. This complaint was full of holes, and the language used was identical to the official propaganda of the Chinese Communist Party. IRS officials later said that this kind of complaint would have been rejected anyway. For Chen Jun, just reporting them wasn't enough. He needed someone inside the IRS to help him get things done. As it happened, he had an acquaintance who could connect him with an IRS official. Chen Zhen told his acquaintance over the phone, Give him money. Our leaders are very generous. A week later, he added that once the matter was settled, the promised payment for their trouble would definitely be paid. In February, Chen Zhen flew back to China, and during that time, he introduced this acquaintance to a CCP official, introducing the other party as a leader. Soon after, this leader personally called the acquaintance, saying he wanted to meet with that IRS official in person. On May 8th, Chen Zhen flew back to Los Angeles, carrying $10,400 in cash, of which $10,000 was in stacks of $100 bills. Picking him up at the airport was his old partner, Lin Feng, who was in his early 40s, a Chinese citizen and a U.S. green card holder. Just one week later, at a restaurant in New York State, Chen Zhen, Lin Feng, and that IRS official, the three of them actually sat down to have a meal together. After the meal, in the IRS official's car, Chen Zhen made his offer. As long as you initiate an audit of Shen Yun at the IRS, we will give you $50,000. And if the whistleblowing is successful, we will give you 60% of the reward money the IRS pays us. After saying this, he immediately took out $1,000 in cash and handed it over. A few days later, Chen Zhen received an email with an attachment bearing the IRS letterhead showing that his report had been forwarded to the audit department. Chen Zhen was so excited that he immediately called Lin Feng to tell him that the IRS had opened a case against Falun Gong. Soon, Chen Zhen arranged to meet with this IRS official again, and on the spot, he handed over another $4,000 in cash. Chen Zhen made an agreement with the other party, saying, I'll be heading back to China soon to raise some more money. Around late July, early August, Lin Feng will send you two more payments, $25,000 each. At this point, everything was under control. The tasks assigned by the leadership were handled, the people were taken care of, and the money had been paid out. The crucial thing was that the complaint had reached the stage of a real audit. But Chen Jun didn't return to China. A week later, on the morning of May 26, Chen Jun and Lin Feng were arrested in Los Angeles. Why? You would never guess. That friend who said they knew an IRS official was actually an informant on the FBI's payroll. From the moment Chen Jun first brought this matter up to him in January 2023, the FBI knew everything. That IRS official sitting in the New York restaurant who accepted $1,000 and later another $4,000 was an undercover FBI agent, and every conversation the two of them had with Chen Jun was recorded. That letter with the IRS letterhead was fake. In other words, from January to May, Chen Jun thought he was running errands for his superiors, and that things were going smoothly. But in reality, every step he took was right into a trap set by the FBI. So how did the FBI end up targeting Chen Jun? The Department of Justice didn't say, But a footnote in the indictment hides an even earlier clue. As early as November 2022, Chen Jun had already come onto the FBI's radar. At that time, he flew into Los Angeles airport and was pulled aside by customs for secondary inspection, where they immediately discovered he was carrying $52,000 in cash that he hadn't declared. Coincidentally, that same day, a CCP official messaged him on WeChat telling him to remember to delete their chat history, and Chen Jun did just that. However, these deleted chat messages later appeared word for word in someone else's indictment. Who is this person? We will get to that very soon. In other words, as early as a year ago in 2022, the FBI had already set its sights on Chen Jun, so the job he took in January 2023 to target Chen Yun was actually a trap set specifically for him by the FBI, with the goal of obtaining evidence to convict him. And on the day the FBI arrested Chen Jun, they also seized his mobile phone. Inside Chen Jun's phone, there was a large volume of conversations between him and Chinese Communist Party officials, and the thing they talked about the most was how to influence American politicians in Southern California. Two names appeared repeatedly in those conversations. The first is Sun Yaoning, who was in his 60s, served in the Chinese military, came to the United States in the early 1990s, and served as Chen Jun's right-hand man for decades. And the second one is a woman. In 2002, she ran for Arcadia City Council for the first time, and Sun Yoning was her campaign manager at the time, as well as her fiancé. And this woman is Wang Ailing. Let's rewind to October 13, 2022, one month before Wang Ailing's election, when a CCP official told Chen Jun that the higher-ups would consider providing funding support for your work. The day after Wang Ailing was elected, Chen Jun started claiming credit in Beijing. He asked Sun Yoning to write a report detailing the election process. In a message, he told Sun Yoning, You must write a document on how you won this election so I can report it to the United Front Work Department. Chen Jun also instructed Sun Yoning to make a list of the American politicians he knew. The more the better, and the higher their positions, the better. In 2023, when Tsai Ing-wen transited through California, Chen Jun instructed Sun Yoning to keep an eye on her and report her whereabouts to an official at the Chinese consulate in Los Angeles. And what did Wang Ailing do? Just what we mentioned earlier, she posted an article sent by the Chinese side on the website and revised the draft according to their requirements. That's all. Looking at just this, would you think she was working for the CCP? But she has now pleaded guilty to acting as an unregistered agent of the CCP. And all of this was under the FBI surveillance. But the FBI wasn't in any rush at the time. You see, Chen Jun was arrested in May 2023. Yet Sun Yaning continued to maintain contact with officials from the Los Angeles Consulate General, keeping at it until January 2024. And even then, the FBI still hadn't made a move. It wasn't until July 2024, more than half a year later, after Chen Jun had pleaded guilty and been sentenced, that they finally moved on Sun Yaning at the end of 2024. And at that time, Wang Ailing was also safe. At the time, Sun Yaning's indictment only referred to the political candidate he was supporting as Candidate 1, without mentioning their name. Another year and two months later, in February 2026, Sun Yaning was sentenced to four years in prison. At the same time, Wang Ailing became the mayor of Arcadia, and it wasn't until three months after that that she signed a plea agreement. From Chen Jun to Sun Yaning, and then to Wang Ailing, it took the FBI three years. Finally, let's talk about Zhang Wanying, whom everyone has been discussing quite a bit lately. Her story has already been told by many, so we won't repeat it here. Instead, we will focus on how the FBI set their sights on her. Starting in September 2025, Zhang Wanying began carrying out the tasks requested by the CCP to monitor Lai Ching-te's son. That's when she started. By March 2026, the FBI had already secretly obtained a search warrant from a judge to access all of her electronic accounts. In other words, just six months after Zhang Wanying began carrying out her mission, the FBI was already secretly investigating her information. During her operations, Zhang Wanying also exhibited many anti-surveillance tactics. For instance, when she went to Seattle, she invited a male companion to go with her, using his credit card to pay for the car rental and hotel expenses. Even when taking photos, she used her companion's phone instead of her own. Furthermore, while under surveillance, Zhang Wanying was sitting in the passenger seat and specifically reclined it all the way back, effectively lying down so she couldn't be seen from the outside. However, she was still captured on camera by the surveillance system of the neighbor living next to Lai Ching-te's son. Furthermore, when she asked her companion to send her the photos, she specifically instructed them not to use WeChat or text messages, but to use AirDrop instead so as not to leave a record. These were all anti-surveillance techniques demonstrated by Zhang Wanying. However, the FBI still caught on to her just six months after she began her mission. So everything we've mentioned here is evidence that has now been made public by the judicial authorities. Why? We don't have a way to know more of the inside story for now, but we might gradually learn more in the future. So friends, be sure to subscribe to TrueView, and I will share more with you as soon as possible in short videos. Although we can't know more of the inside story, there is an earlier clue. Back in 2023, when Xi Jinping visited San Francisco, a Chinese community group from Southern California organized a trip to welcome him, and Zhang Wanying was among them, wearing a red hat. So these people are actually all in the same circle. Just like with Chen Jun, once you find one, you pull them out, and you can bring out a whole string of others. It's possible that the people active in these Chinese community groups back then were already on the FBI's blacklist. The FBI just needed to gather evidence, wait for the right moment, and then finally close the net. The part that serves as the biggest warning for our Chinese friends is how the U.S. currently determines whether someone is an agent of the CCP and what the legal threshold is for being an agent. I think this threshold is extremely low. The lowest bar is acting as an agent of a foreign government without registration. How is it defined? As long as you are acting under the direction or control of a foreign government within the United States, without notifying the U.S. Attorney General in advance, it constitutes a crime, punishable by up to 10 years in prison. It doesn't require you to steal classified information. Look, what Zhang Wangying did was take pictures of a house and two license plates, and what Wang Ailing did was just help the Chinese consulate forward an article and modify an article according to their instructions. all of these constituted crimes. As for how these instructions are determined, it depends on whether you knew the other party was a government official and whether you were acting according to their requests. In Zhang Wanying's case, she asked her old classmate, which bureau of which department are you in now? This shows she knew her old classmate was a person from the CCP government. Then in Wang Ailing's case, she replied to the other party, thank you, leader. She knew the other party was a leader in the CCP. All of these are now being used by the prosecution to prove they were aware and thereby secure a conviction. Many people assume that those Chinese individuals caught up in espionage cases knew from the very beginning that they were doing something wrong. In reality, the vast majority of them were ensnared without any knowledge, becoming sacrificial lambs. A common tactic used by the CCP is that the first step is often very small, inviting you to a meal or, more overtly, to attend an event hosted by an embassy or an overseas Chinese association. Of course, many friends can identify this aspect, but it's not so easy when it comes to just having a meal. Then the second step, it's very likely that at this dinner, there'll be friends from back home or friends of friends, and this friend of a friend has a very sensitive identity. After that, everyone has a great chat at this dinner, and then this friend of a friend, well, makes a request of you. For example, I have friends from back home coming over. Could you please help play the host? Or I have something I need to do. For instance, I want to buy a house in the U.S. Could you help me out as a real estate agent? For Chinese friends living in the U.S., That's practically just a small favor. Then, taking it a step further, for example, I want to invest, I'd like to meet some of your local officials, this is also very easy to help with. Finally, the other party might have something more significant in mind. I want to organize an event, let's have the overseas Chinese community get together, host a cultural exchange event, and I'd like you to step up and help me coordinate it. Every step of the way, they'll flatter you and build you up, making it hard for you to refuse. Each step, taken on its own, seems perfectly reasonable, and might even make you feel like, hey, I've got real status and connections. But then, step by step, you get drawn in, until finally you're in too deep to get out, and it ends up becoming a crime. For those friends who don't participate in any of this at all and consider themselves completely risk-free, there is one question worth pondering. Against the backdrop of U.S.-China rivalry, as more and more ethnic Chinese are arrested for involvement in espionage cases, the cost of trust for the entire ethnic Chinese community and American society has effectively been driven up. It's like saying, one bad apple spoils the whole bunch. When a conflict between the U.S. and China eventually breaks out, for the sake of its own security, the U.S. will inevitably have to address the question of whether this ethnic group is loyal or not. So when that time comes, how exactly will the loyalty of the entire Chinese community be judged? Friends, what do you think? Let me know in the comments. All right, that's all for today. Do you friends like this perspective? I didn't want to repeat content that you've probably already seen a lot of, so I chose this angle of how the FBI catches people and how they target these individuals. If you like this kind of perspective, don't forget to give me a like. New friends, welcome to subscribe to TrueView, and you are also welcome to forward and share my videos with more Chinese friends. I believe every Chinese friend needs to know this kind of information, so forwarding it to more people not only helps others, but it's also helping our entire Chinese community. Alright, thank you all for watching. We'll wrap things up here for today. If you have anything you'd like to say, please share it with me in the comment section. I read every single one of your comments and don't forget. We'll see you again on Saturday right here on TrueView. Bye. Bye