The FBI arrested a California real estate agent at the Los Angeles airport as she was leaving the country and accused her of spying for China on the president of Taiwan's family, federal officials said.
Wanying Zhang, who went by the name Heather, surveilled the Taiwanese president’s son and his family last year for the Chinese government, according to the FBI.
Zhang, 34, who lives in Irvine, was arrested Sunday at Los Angeles International Airport
on charges for working for China as an unregistered agent, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said. Zhang took photos and videos of her targets and sent license plate information to Chinese officials, according to a federal criminal complaint.
Zhang is a naturalized U.S. citizen, Essayli said on Fox News’ “The Big Weekend Show.” She was arrested as she was departing for a flight to China. It wasn't immediately clear if she had an attorney who could speak on her behalf. She was due to appear Monday afternoon in federal court in Los Angeles.
The case is the latest in a series of Justice Department prosecutions aimed at rooting out alleged covert agents advancing Beijing’s interests on American soil.
Many of the cases have centered on what the Justice Department says is China’s aggressive effort to locate and harass pro-democracy activists living in the U.S. and suppress their speech. The Justice Department also says Beijing is determined to sway American public opinion in its favor by cultivating relationships with political figures seen as having access to the levers of power.
The Chinese Embassy in the U.S. did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday and the Foreign Ministry in Beijing was closed for holidays.
Taiwan’s Presidential Office confirmed President Lai Ching-te’s relatives were the targets, without specifying if it was the president’s son, saying that “this is a classic case of transnational repression.”
“Taiwan condemns in the strongest terms such barbaric acts — which disregard human rights and national sovereignty and aim to suppress, threaten, or even harm individuals advocating for freedom and democracy or their families — as such behavior should not be tolerated in the civilized world,” spokesperson Karen Kuo said in a statement.
The criminal complaint does not name the alleged target, but the FBI's rapid response account on the social media platform X said it was the president's son. Ting-Yu Lai, the president's elder son, lives and works in the Seattle area as an engineer.
At the direction of Chinese officials, Zhang and another person flew to Seattle on Sept. 1, 2025, and conducted surveillance outside the target's home, according to the affidavit. A home security camera near the target's home recorded the pair filming the target and their family from a vehicle, the affidavit said.
Zhang then allegedly sent a Chinese official information related to the surveillance, including photos, videos and license plate information from the target's vehicles.
According to the affidavit, Zhang attended the University of International Relations in Beijing, which is affiliated closely with China’s intelligence apparatus. The affidavit said she and a classmate who became a Chinese government official had kept in contact since graduating around 2014, and he introduced her to another government official, and she was in contact with both in 2025.
Taiwan and China split after a civil war in 1949, but Beijing claims the island as part of its own territory. Lai, who was voted into office in 2024, has said that Taiwan and Beijing do not belong to each other and that the “People's Republic of China has no right to represent Taiwan.”
China considers him a separatist and has called him a “destroyer of peace.”
While in office, Lai has stepped up spending on defense for Taiwan, notably pledging to increase defense spending from 3% to 5% of the GDP, and pushing through a special budget for the construction of a T-Dome air defense system.
In May, a Southern California mayor agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government, and resigned from her city position. Eileen Wang, the mayor of Arcadia, had been charged with one count of acting in the U.S. as an illegal agent of a foreign government. She was accused of doing the bidding of Chinese officials, such as sharing articles favorable to Beijing, without prior notification to the U.S. government as required by law.
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Associated Press reporter Eric Tucker contributed from Washington.
