Yuanjun Tang, 67, a naturalized citizen of the United States and resident of Queens, New York, was charged by criminal complaint with acting and conspiring to act in the United States as an unregistered agent of China and making materially false statements to the FBI.
Tang was arrested recently in Flushing, Queens.
According to court documents, Tang is a former PRC citizen who was imprisoned in the PRC for his activities as a dissident opposing the one-party authoritarian political system controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the PRC’s sole ruling party.
In or about 2002, Tang defected to Taiwan; he was subsequently granted political asylum in the United States and has since resided in New York City, where he regularly participated in events with fellow PRC dissidents and led a non-profit promoting democracy in China.
Between at least in or about 2018 and in or about June 2023, Tang acted in the United States as an agent of the PRC by completing tasks at the direction of the PRC’s Ministry of State Security (MSS), the PRC’s principal civilian intelligence agency. The MSS is responsible for, among other things, the PRC’s foreign intelligence, counterintelligence, espionage and political security functions.
Specifically, through a particular email account, encrypted chats, text messages and audio and video calls, Tang regularly received instructions from and reported to an MSS intelligence officer regarding individuals and groups viewed by the PRC as potentially adverse to the PRC’s interests, including prominent U.S.-based Chinese democracy activists and dissidents.
He also travelled at least three times for face-to-face meetings with MSS intelligence officers and helped the MSS infiltrate a group chat on an encrypted messaging application used by numerous PRC dissidents and pro-democracy activists to communicate about pro-democracy issues and express criticism of the PRC government. Law enforcement recovered instructions Tang received from the MSS and photographs, videos and documents that he collected or created for transmission to the MSS from numerous electronic devices and accounts belonging to Tang.
Tang also made materially false statements to the FBI. He falsely claimed that he could no longer access an email account through which he had communicated with his MSS handler through draft emails.
Tang is charged with one count of conspiring to act as an agent of a foreign government without notifying the Attorney General, which carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison; one count of acting as an agent of a foreign government without notifying the Attorney General, which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison; and one count of making false statements, which carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison.
If convicted, a federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.
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