California woman Zhang Wanying is suspected of being ordered by the Chinese Communist Party to monitor President Lai Qingde's son, and she is still in custody after offering a property guarantee of more than US$120. (AP)
Wanying Zhang, a 34-year-old female real estate agent in California, was arrested by the FBI on the 4th when she was trying to fly from Los Angeles Airport to Shanghai, China, on suspicion of being ordered by the Chinese Communist Party to monitor President Lai Qingde’s son Lai Tingyu in Seattle, Washington. Zhang Wanying proposed a real estate guarantee of US$1.2 million (approximately NT$38.58 million) in the hope of being released on bail. However, she was still ordered to be detained by the judge when she appeared in court on the 7th. The prosecutor pointed out that she had ties to China and was in danger of absconding.
According to "CBS" reports, when Zhang Wanying first appeared in court on the 5th, she appointed public defender Chad Pennington. Pennington told the judge that Zhang Wanying wanted to hire a lawyer, so the judge postponed the detention court to the 7th to give Zhang Wanying more time to find a lawyer.
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Zhang Wanying later proposed to use a house worth more than 1.2 million U.S. dollars as security. However, when the court opened on the 7th, the prosecutor accused Zhang that the asset declaration form she filled out after her arrest was full of lies, claiming that she only owned one property, but actually owned multiple real estate properties.
Although Zhang Wanying's defense lawyer Craig Harbaugh emphasized that this was a misunderstanding, the judge believed that there was indeed something fishy about Zhang's property, the amount of assets, and the source of funds. In addition, prosecutor Amanda Elbogen revealed that Zhang owns a company in China and regularly deposits funds into Chinese bank accounts, and her parents, siblings currently live in China.
Elbogen said that Zhang Wanying received US$190,000 (approximately NT$6.07 million) from an unregistered cryptocurrency exchange, deposited it into a Chinese bank account, and had hundreds of thousands of US dollars available in China. In addition, since 2014, Zhang has flown to China 12 times and traveled abroad 29 times, including to France, Japan and other places.
Albogen pointed out that Zhang Wanying had a Chinese passport, but the FBI did not find it when searching her residence. The criminal complaint also shows that Zhang Wanying studied at the School of International Relations in Beijing, China, from 2010 to 2014. This school is operated by the Ministry of National Security of China, and the Ministry of National Security also recruits a large number of personnel from the school.
Zhang Wanying is also associated with the "All American Chinese Association (AACA)". When Chinese President Xi Jinping visited the United States in 2023, Zhang's daughter and the AACA group went to Xi Jinping's stay in San Francisco to cheer and greet him. These pro-China people also attacked protesters outside the hotel. However, there is currently no evidence that Zhang's daughter participated in the violent actions at that time.
When Zhang Wanying appeared in court on the 7th, her husband Eric Ding, who worked in the same real estate company as her, appeared in the gallery accompanied by lawyer Elaine Lori. In the end, the prosecutor successfully allowed the judge to order Zhang Wanying to be detained for reasons such as the risk of absconding.
