May 11 (UPI) — Eileen Wang, the mayor of Arcadia, Calif., has agreed to plead guilty to a charge of acting as an illegal agent for China, federal prosecutors announced Monday, the same day she resigned from office.
The 58-year-old is expected to formally plead guilty in the coming weeks to the charge of acting in the United States as an illegal agent, which is punishable by up to 10 years’ imprisonment.
The Justice Department said in a release that Wang admits in her plea agreement to working with Yaoning “Mike” Sun, 65, to operate U.S. News Center, which purported to be a news source for the Chinese-American community, but was used to spread pro-People’s Republic of China content.
Sun was sentenced to four years behind bars in February after pleading guilty to the same charge as Wang in October. Sun had served as Wang’s campaign adviser. She was elected to the five-person Arcadia City Council in November 2022, and then was appointed the city’s mayor.
“Individuals elected to public office in the United States should act only for the people of the United States that they represent,” Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Eisenberg said in a statement.
“It is deeply concerning that someone who previously received and executed directives from PRC government officials is now in a position of public trust at all, but particularly so because that relationship with that foreign government had never been disclosed.”
Wang’s plea agreement stipulates that she worked with Sun, of Chino Hills, from late 2020 through 2022 at the direction of PRC government officials and coordinated with people in the United States to promote pro-China propaganda in the United States.
Justice Department officials said that a PRC official contacted Wang and others via the WeChat encrypted messaging application in June 2021 with a pre-written article that Wang allegedly posted on her personal website within minutes for receiving it.
She then sent a link to the post to the unidentified official, who responded, “So fast, thank you everyone,” according to an excerpt of the exchange the Justice Department included in its release.
According to prosecutors, Wang also communicated with John Chen, a high-level member of the PRC intelligence apparatus, who was sentenced to 20 months in federal prison in November 2024 after pleading guilty for his role in a conspiracy that sought to revoke the tax-exempt status of the Shen Yun Performing Arts Center, which is run and maintained by practitioners of Falun Gong, a religiouus movement prohibited in China.
Federal prosecutors allege that Wang and Chen communicated in November 2021.
“Let this serve as a clear warning: Individuals who act on behalf of foreign governments to influence our democracy will be identified, investigated and brought to justice,” Assistant Director Roman Rozhavsky of the FBI’s Counterintelligence and Espionage Division said in a statement.
Wang on Monday resigned from the Arcadia City Council, vacating her position as mayor. Her successor will be selected by the City Council from among the remaining council members at its next meeting, Arcadia City Manager Dominic Lazzaretto said.
“The allegations at the center of this case, that a foreign government sought to exert influence over a local elected official, are deeply troubling. We take them seriously,” Lazzaretto said in a statement.
“We want to be clear: this investigation concerns individual conduct, and the charges are for conduct that ceased after Ms. Wang was sworn into office in December 2022. Following an internal review, we can confirm that no city finances, staff or decision-making processes were involved.”
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