A former New York police officer and two Chinese nationals were accused of attempting to intimidate a Chinese dissident and his family in the US, as the first federal trial over Beijing’s alleged co-ordinated attempts to forcibly repatriate citizens got under way in Brooklyn.
Michael McMahon, a retired New York Police Department sergeant working as a private investigator, along with Zhu Yong of Queens and Zheng Congying of Brooklyn, were directly or indirectly “instructed by Chinese government officials to track down” the alleged victim at his home in suburban New Jersey, assistant US attorney Irisa Chen said in opening statements on Wednesday.
Zheng drove to the property in September 2018 and taped a handwritten note that read: “If you are willing to go back to the homeland and spend 10 years in prison, your wife and children will be safe and well,” Chen said, adding that Zheng’s fingerprints were found on the flyer.
The trial, which is set to last up to three weeks, could make an important precedent for other cases brought by the Department of Justice as it has ramped up its crackdown on a Chinese government campaign known as “Operation Fox Hunt”, which Beijing says is aimed at repatriating fugitives.
Merrick Garland, US attorney-general, has said China has a “history of targeting political dissidents and critics of the government who have sought relief and refuge in other countries”. FBI director Christopher Wray has defined “Operation Fox Hunt” as a “part of the Chinese government’s diverse campaign of theft and malign influence”.
The defendants on trial in Brooklyn were originally charged in 2020. The Chinese government had relied on McMahon’s help to find the alleged victim’s address, prosecutors said, telling jurors the former police officer followed the dissident home from a meeting with his elderly father, who had been flown in from China in an alleged attempt to lure him to a specific location from which he could be tracked.
A lawyer for McMahon, Lawrence Lustberg, said his client was a “hero cop” who had “no idea that he was working for China” and thought he was in the employ of a Chinese construction company that had been a victim of embezzlement.
Zhu’s lawyer, Kevin Tung, said his client thought he was helping to recover “private debt” and was in fact being “used by the Chinese government”.
Paul Goldberger, a lawyer for Zheng, said his client “did nothing more than drive up to New Jersey and put a note on the door”, which he returned to remove.
He added that the 27-year-old was never told anything that would have “led him to believe that at any time that he was working for the government of China”.
If convicted, the defendants — each of whom face four charges — face up to 10 years in prison.
In another Operation Fox Hunt-related case, the DoJ in October charged seven Chinese citizens with conspiring to repatriate a Chinese national from the US by force, alleging they had harassed the US resident and his relatives for years. Authorities also alleged the Chinese government had “harassed” the targets by filing a case in the New York state court accusing them of misappropriating money from a former China-based employer.
The Chinese embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment at the time.