New York — Man accused of running Secret Chinese spy website He was convicted in New York City on Wednesday of acting as an illegal foreign agent and destroying text messages from a Chinese government processor.
Lu Jianwang, 64, was acquitted of a related conspiracy charge in a case that raised U.S. concerns about China’s crackdown on pro-democracy dissidents against a defense claim that prosecutors twisted a bureaucratic error on a well-intentioned Chinese American community leader to put him in prison.
Law spoke to supporters as he left the federal courthouse in Brooklyn but refused to answer reporters’ questions. His lawyer, John Carman, said federal prosecutors falsified an ordinary paperwork case with deceptive suggestions that Le was involved in espionage and intelligence gathering.
Law, who is also known as Harry Law, remains free on bail awaiting sentencing, which has not yet been scheduled.
According to federal prosecutors, Lu and his co-defendant, Chen Jinping, established the outpost in Manhattan’s Chinatown neighborhood in 2022 after Lu attended a celebration in his home province of Fujian where China’s Ministry of Public Security announced it would open 30 secret police outposts around the world.
The Chinese Communist government uses outposts to monitor people it considers enemies of its interests. During the trial, jurors were shown a large sign from the Chinatown location that said: “Fuzhou Overseas Police Service Station, New York, USA.”
Chin He pleaded guilty in December 2024 Charged with conspiracy to act as a foreign agent.
Lu’s lawyers contend that the outpost was in fact a community center where members of the Chinese diaspora could renew their Chinese driver’s licenses remotely amid COVID-19 pandemic-era travel restrictions and meet to play table tennis and mahjong. Even if Lu’s only connection to China was through driver’s licenses, that would be enough to violate the Foreign Agents Act, prosecutors said.
The Manhattan outpost shared its offices with the American Changley Association, a community organization that Lou, an American citizen for decades, and his brother Jimmy helped run. The organization described itself on tax forms as a “social gathering place for the people of Fujian.” “ChangLe” means “eternal joy,” Carman said.
The FBI, prompted by a report by an organization monitoring transnational Chinese repression, raided the alleged outpost in New York City on October 3, 2022, stealing drawers and papers, breaking into locked cabinets and a safe, and seizing a computer and cell phones.
Prosecutors said Lu admitted to FBI agents the next day that he set up the Manhattan outpost, that he kept in touch with his handler via WeChat, and that he deleted those messages.