3 have been convicted of harassing family on behalf of the Chinese government
Three men were convicted Tuesday in Brooklyn federal court of stalking a family in suburban New Jersey on behalf of the Chinese government.
The defendants, Michael McMahon, Zhu Yong and Zheng Congying, were found guilty of stalking and a related conspiracy. Mr. Zhu and Mr. McMahon, a retired New York Police Department sergeant, were also found guilty of acting as unregistered foreign agents, and Mr. Zhu was convicted of a second conspiracy charge.
The verdict marked the conclusion of a trial in which prosecutors drafted a detailed case accusing the men of playing roles in Operation Fox Hunt, a decade-long effort Chinese officials say aims to repatriate fugitives. The Justice Department claims the campaign is part of the Communist Party’s push to control Chinese nationals around the world.
The Brooklyn case was the first the Justice Department prosecuted to counter the Chinese operation, and it unfolded as tensions between the rival superpowers reached new heights, with disagreements over China’s growing military footprint and other issues. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken met with China’s leader Xi Jinping in Beijing over the weekend.
The Justice Department has made cases related to China a primary focus in recent years, and the U.S. law firm in Brooklyn is especially attuned to what it calls “transnational repression” by foreign governments.
When the charges against Fox Hunt were announced in 2020, FBI Director Christopher A. Wray accused the Chinese government of “an affront to America’s ideals of freedom, human rights and the rule of law.”
Wang Wenbin, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, accused the justice ministry on Friday of “slander and defamation,” adding that transnational repression is “an allegation that best reflects the US’s own practices.”
During the trial, Judge Pamela K. Chen warned everyone involved to focus on the specific allegations, not the international politics swirling around them. The jury began deliberating Thursday.
The case revolved around Xu Jin, a former Chinese government official who moved to the United States more than a decade ago. Prosecutors said the three defendants were key to a plot by Chinese government officials to stalk and harass Mr. Xu and his family and force him to return to China, where he could have faced the death penalty on charges of embezzlement.
The jury was presented with voluminous files documenting communications from the fall of 2016, when Mr. Zhu contacted Mr. McMahon, who worked as a private investigator in New Jersey.
The older man, who didn’t speak much English, enlisted a translation agency in Flushing, Queens, to help him communicate. Mr. McMahon understood he was working for a private company to make money back, said Lawrence Lustberg, a lawyer who represented him.
Mr. McMahon conducted surveillance for five days over six months in 2016 and 2017, finding records of Mr. Xu. He also met Hu Ji, Mr. Zhu, who turned out to be a police officer at the Public Security Bureau in Wuhan, China.
A face-to-face meeting between the men, at a Panera Bread restaurant in New Jersey, in October 2016, was captured in a photo shown to the jury as proof of their direct ties.
In the photo, Mr. McMahon stands grinning between the two with his arm around Mr. Zhu. After the meeting, Mr. Hu, under the name of Eric Yan, to contact Mr. McMahon with instructions.
Mr. Lustberg argued at trial that there was no evidence that Mr. McMahon knew that his investigation was being directed by the Chinese government. Instead, the emails about it had referred to a “company” that had requested the work.
The days for which Mr. McMahon was hired coincided with a 2017 trip to New Jersey by Mr.
The elder Mr. Xu’s daughter was already imprisoned because his son refused to return home, the jury was told. Chinese officials then plotted to send the elderly Mr. Xu to New Jersey to persuade his son to come back to China, prosecutors said. The officials did not know the younger Mr. Xu’s address and used his father as bait to lure him out and follow him, prosecutors said.
Mr. Xu’s sister-in-law testified about her shock when the elderly man showed up at her doorstep in Short Hills, NJ without warning. She had already received several threats related to Mr. Xu and knew that the Chinese government was trying to find him, she said. To thwart them, she arranged to meet at a nearby mall the next day, instead of at Mr. Xu’s house.
But the following year, two men, including Mr. Zheng, came to his home in Warren, NJ and left a threatening letter. Mr Zheng’s lawyer, Paul Goldberger, said his client was “just a kid” who had driven to the house as a favor to the other man, and that he immediately regretted his actions.
Mr. Zheng even drove back to try to write down the note, Mr. Goldberger said. But he was too late: Mr. Xu testified that he had already done so, following instructions from the FBI