A California real estate agent accused of spying for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is tied through her romantic partner to a house the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) identified as a stash house for a Sinaloa Cartel money-laundering network. Her partner’s business connections also lead to the alleged enforcer of a Cambodian scam empire.
FBI agents arrested Wanying “Heather” Zhang, 34, of Irvine, at Los Angeles International Airport on October 4, 2026, as she prepared to board a flight to Shanghai. A federal grand jury indicted her on October 9 on charges of conspiracy and acting as an unregistered agent of the People’s Republic of China. Her trial is scheduled for November 30 in federal court in Santa Ana.
Investigators believe Zhang received the surveillance assignment during a June 2025 meeting with a Chinese government contact in Changsha, China. On September 1, 2025, she and a companion identified in the complaint as “Individual 1” flew from Las Vegas to Seattle, rented a car, and drove to the home of Ting-Yu Lai, the son of Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te.
Outside the home, she allegedly messaged the contact, “Saw him. Young male. It’s that young one,” and then sent two license plate numbers. FBI Special Agent Kevin Holt wrote that information on the relatives’ homes and cars could give Beijing leverage over Taiwan’s president during a conflict. Taiwan’s Presidential Office condemned the surveillance as a “typical case of transnational repression.”
The complaint states that a former classmate from Beijing’s University of International Relations introduced Zhang to a Chinese official. The FBI describes the university as closely affiliated with China’s Ministry of State Security. The FBI affidavit states that Zhang graduated first in her class there.
Prosecutors have also accused Zhang of moving money out of China. In a sworn declaration opposing her release, Holt wrote that her messages suggest she coordinated unlicensed money transfers from China to the United States. He also cited at least $190,000 sent to Chinese bank accounts in 2024 and 2025.
At her October 7 detention hearing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Amanda Elbogen told the court that Zhang received the money from an “unregistered cryptocurrency exchange” business. Magistrate Judge Steve Kim ordered her held without bail.
Holt wrote that Zhang was still in a romantic relationship with Individual 1. CBS News identified him as Fatai Miao, 54, a Chinese-born construction entrepreneur. Prosecutors said Miao flew to China on a one-way ticket days before the FBI searched his Irvine home.
His company, Yuanjin Development & Construction LLC, is registered at a $4.5 million house on Interstellar Street in Irvine. A May 2023 DEA complaint identifies that house as a stash house for a Chinese money-laundering organization working with the Sinaloa Cartel. In the complaint, a DEA task force officer describes watching a member of the group deliver a weighted tote bag to the property, which he believed contained drug proceeds.
The organization was charged in a 24-defendant indictment in April 2024. In that case, the Justice Department said more than $50 million in drug proceeds flowed between Sinaloa Cartel associates and Chinese underground money exchanges. Miao was not named or charged in that case and has not been charged with any crime.
Miao’s business partner, Cheng Zhang, co-manages Big Bow LLC, a California company, with M Capital Global California LLC, a firm that CBS reports is controlled by Chen Sokly. The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), an international investigative nonprofit, identified Sokly as “Co-Conspirator-2” in the Justice Department’s indictment of Prince Group chairman Chen Zhi.
In 2024, Wanying Zhang posted a photo of herself in a Bugatti Chiron that she called her friend’s car. Cryptocurrency trader Wenzhi Fei told CBS he had borrowed the car from Sokly and said he does not know Zhang. Fei’s social media posts show him at the Yorba Linda home of Brendon Luo, whom Treasury sanctioned in June 2026 as an investor in a Prince Group scam compound.
CBS reports that no federal filing connects Zhang herself to the Prince Group or to cartel money laundering.
The Prince Group indictment describes ties between the scam syndicate and Chinese officials. Unsealed in October 2025, it charges Chen Zhi with wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy for directing forced-labor scam compounds in Cambodia. It was filed alongside a forfeiture action against about $15 billion in bitcoin, the largest in Justice Department history.
The indictment states that Co-Conspirator-2 used “corrupt and violent means” to keep the group dominant among scam operators. It alleges that in May 2023 he communicated with a Chinese government official who promised to get Prince Group associates “off the hook.” It also alleges that he directed a Chinese law enforcement official to have local Cambodian police extort businesses for the group.
Chen Zhi was deported to China in January 2026. Sokly has not been charged, and the Prince Group denies the allegations.
Zhang’s case follows other CCP-agent prosecutions in Southern California. In February 2026, Yaoning “Mike” Sun of Chino Hills was sentenced to 48 months in federal prison for acting as an illegal agent of China. Sun had served as a campaign adviser to a city council candidate and surveilled Taiwan’s then-president, Tsai Ing-wen, during her 2023 visit to Southern California. Prosecutors said he worked with John Chen, whom they described as a high-level member of the PRC intelligence apparatus.
In May 2026, then-Arcadia Mayor Eileen Wang was charged with acting as an illegal agent of China, resigned, and agreed to plead guilty. According to her plea agreement, Wang and Sun posted content directed by Chinese officials on a website they ran for the local Chinese American community.
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Violence against Beijing’s critics has also reached American streets. During Chinese President Xi Jinping’s November 2023 visit to San Francisco for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, the leaders of the House Select Committee on the CCP wrote that pro-democracy protesters were violently assaulted by CCP-aligned actors.
Taiwan has documented the use of gangs and underground money channels at home. In January 2025, Taiwan’s National Security Bureau (NSB) reported that China colludes with gangs to develop “internal armed co-optees,” instructing them to raise the five-star flag and carry out sabotage during an invasion. The bureau said the CCP recruits gang members to target indebted service members and uses gang-controlled currency exchanges to funnel money into Taiwan.
After Zhang’s arrest, Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, the cabinet agency handling China policy, said at least 126 Taiwanese in 140 cases have been subjected to Chinese transnational repression.
In Southeast Asia, the Treasury Department sanctioned Wan Kuok-koi, leader of the 14K Triad, in December 2020. Treasury named him a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), a CCP advisory body, and said he attached his criminal operations to Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative. Beijing denied that Wan is a CPPCC member.
Chinese law requires citizens to assist the state. Article 7 of China’s National Intelligence Law states that all organizations and citizens “shall support, assist, and cooperate with” national intelligence efforts.
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