Major Federal Cases Involving Chinese Nationals in 2026: DOJ Denaturalization Effort Includes 2 Chinese Spies, Arcadia Mayor's Guilty Plea, Irvine Agent's Espionage Case, Lu Jianwang's Secret Police Station Conviction, Linwei Ding's Google AI Espionage Case, Ex-Soldier Ruoyu Duan's Guilty Plea, FBI Files on Swalwell-Fang Fang Ties
Since 2026 began, a series of major federal cases involving Chinese nationals has unfolded in the United States, from the Justice Department's largest denaturalization push in modern history (2 of 40 cases China-related), to a guilty plea by a former California mayor as an unregistered agent of China, to declassified FBI files confirming a former congressman's ties to a suspected Chinese spy, the arrest of an Irvine-based Chinese real estate agent on espionage charges, the conviction of Lu Jianwang in the New York 'secret police station' case, the SI espionage prosecution of former Google engineer Linwei Ding, and a guilty plea by ex-soldier Ruoyu Duan for transmitting defense information to China. All were led by federal law enforcement and have drawn sustained national media attention.
On October 5, the Justice Department announced that between August 21 and October 2, 2026, it had filed 40 denaturalization civil lawsuits in 19 federal district courts, accusing 40 naturalized citizens of concealing criminal records or material facts during naturalization. Only two of the 40 cases are China-related, both convicted Chinese spies. The Attorney General called it the largest denaturalization effort in modern history.
Two of the defendants are Chinese spies. Jinchao Wei, 26, a former U.S. Navy sailor, joined the Navy in 2021, naturalized in May 2022, and began the same year providing Chinese intelligence officers with warship photos, technical documents and other military secrets for more than $12,000. In August 2025, a federal jury convicted him on six counts including espionage and export control violations; on January 12, 2026, he was sentenced to 200 months in prison, about 16 years and 8 months. The Justice Department now alleges in civil proceedings that he concealed criminal conduct during naturalization and failed to meet honorable service standards, seeking to strip his U.S. citizenship.
The other is Ping Li, 61, a Florida resident. In August 2024, Li pleaded guilty to acting at the direction of China's Ministry of State Security since 2012, gathering intelligence on Chinese dissidents, pro-democracy advocates and Falun Gong practitioners, and leaking internal information from the telecom and tech companies where he worked, including cybersecurity training programs and details of hacking incidents targeting U.S. companies. On November 25, 2024, Li was sentenced to four years in prison and is now also on the denaturalization list.
Another nationally watched case involves former Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell. In August 2026, the White House Transparency Task Force released declassified FBI files confirming for the first time that Swalwell had physical relations with Christine Fang, known as Fang Fang, whom U.S. authorities have identified as a suspected Chinese spy, on at least two occasions.
According to the FBI files, Swalwell told federal investigators in 2015 that he met Fang in 2012 at a Chinese American community event and had physical relations with her on a handful of occasions, though he never dated her or had a romantic relationship. The FBI investigated from 2014 whether Fang made illegal campaign contributions in exchange for internships in Swalwell's office. The probe found no direct evidence of a quid pro quo but determined Fang violated other federal criminal laws, including international bulk cash smuggling and acting as an unregistered foreign agent. Fang has since left the United States and is barred from reentry.
The declassified files also show Fang offered $5,000 for access to Swalwell and said internships would cost even more. The documents described Fang as a Chinese foreign national residing in the United States who facilitated a scheme trading access to Swalwell and internships in his congressional office for campaign contributions, with at least two contributions concealed through conduits to hide her prohibited foreign-national status, in potential violation of federal law.
Swalwell served as a California congressman from 2013 until April 2026. In April 2026, multiple women accused him of rape and sexual misconduct, after which he suspended his California gubernatorial campaign and resigned from Congress. The House Ethics Committee concluded a two-year investigation into his interactions with Fang in 2023 and decided to take no further action. Swalwell's lawyer said the declassified files reveal nothing new and criticized the release as political retaliation against a known critic of President Donald Trump.
Another nationally watched federal case is the guilty plea of Eileen Wang (王爱玲), former mayor of Arcadia, California, as an unregistered agent of China. On May 12, 2026, the 58-year-old Wang reached a plea agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice, admitting to violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act, and resigned as mayor and city councilmember the same day.
According to the Justice Department, from late 2020 through 2022, Wang and her fiancé, businessman Yaoning "Mike" Sun, operated a website called "U.S. News Center" that presented itself as a local news site serving the Chinese American community but in fact published pro-Beijing propaganda content at the direction of Chinese officials conveyed via WeChat. Wang admitted that in June 2021, a Chinese official sent her a pre-written article denying genocide in Xinjiang, which she published as instructed, and reported readership figures back to her handler.
Arcadia, in Los Angeles County's San Gabriel Valley, is a city with a large Chinese American population. Wang was elected to the city council in November 2022 and had already ceased the illicit activities before being sworn in that December. Her fiancé Sun has already been sentenced to four years in federal prison on the same charge. Wang faces up to 10 years in prison.
Another case drawing intense attention in Southern California's Chinese American community is the espionage case against Zhang Wanying, a Chinese real estate agent based in Irvine. In early October 2026, the FBI arrested Zhang at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), charging her with acting as an unregistered agent of China.
Prosecutors allege Zhang spied on the U.S.-based family of the son of Taiwan leader Lai Ching-te, passing related intelligence to Beijing over an extended period. On October 7, a federal judge ruled at a bail hearing that Zhang posed a serious flight risk, denied bail, and ordered her to remain in federal custody pending trial.
At the hearing, prosecutors disclosed that Zhang held a secret cryptocurrency account worth about $190,000, bank deposits in China, an unrecovered Chinese passport, and had traveled to China 12 times. A co-conspirator identified as "Person 1" fled back to China in late September. Zhang's next court date is a preliminary hearing on October 19, with further developments worth watching.
Another landmark case is the New York "secret police station" prosecution. On May 13, 2026, a federal jury in Brooklyn convicted Lu Jianwang, 64, a U.S. citizen also known as Harry Lu, of acting as an unregistered agent of China and obstruction of justice. Lu was arrested in April 2023. Prosecutors said that in 2022 he helped set up a "Fuzhou Police Overseas Service Station" under the guidance of China's Ministry of Public Security inside the offices of the America ChangLe Association on East Broadway in Manhattan's Chinatown — ostensibly helping Chinese nationals with driver's license renewals, but in fact helping Beijing monitor Chinese dissidents in the United States, including locating a pro-democracy activist in California. The jury also found he deleted text messages with his Chinese handler after the FBI began investigating. Lu faces up to 30 years in prison. It is the first criminal conviction in the U.S. judicial system against an operator in China's global "overseas police station" network, which the FBI called a major win against what it terms "transnational repression." His co-defendant Chen Jinping pleaded guilty in December 2024.
On January 29, 2026, a federal jury in the Northern District of California convicted Linwei Ding, 38, a former Google software engineer, on all 14 counts — seven of economic espionage and seven of theft of trade secrets. Prosecutors said that between May 2022 and late 2023, while employed at Google, Ding stole more than 1,000 files — roughly 14,000 pages — of confidential information about Google's proprietary Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) chips, GPU systems and supercomputing architecture, while secretly serving as chief technology officer of a China-based SI startup and applying to a Shanghai government "talent plan," pledging to help China develop SI capabilities "on par with the international level." The Justice Department called it the first SI-related economic espionage conviction in U.S. history. However, on August 20, 2026, the presiding judge ruled prosecutors had failed to prove Ding knew his actions would benefit the Chinese government, throwing out the seven economic espionage convictions while leaving the seven trade-secret theft convictions intact. In September, Ding was sentenced to nearly one year in federal prison followed by two years of supervised release.
On September 16, 2026, Ruoyu Duan, 41, a former U.S. Army soldier from Hillsboro, Oregon, pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiracy to gather and transmit national defense information. According to the Justice Department, between November 2021 and March 2025, Duan paid active-duty U.S. Army soldiers to obtain technical manuals, training materials and intelligence reports on U.S. weapon systems — including the Bradley and Stryker combat vehicles and the HIMARS rocket artillery system — and transferred that information to people in China. Duan served in the U.S. Army from 2013 to 2017 and had been trained in handling classified military information. Arrested by the FBI on March 6, 2025, he faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine; sentencing is scheduled for December 10, 2026.
These seven cases show federal law enforcement maintaining a high-pressure posture on counterespionage and foreign-agent enforcement in 2026, with the cases spanning traditional spying, SI technology theft, U.S. weapons-system intelligence and what officials call 'transnational repression.' Zhang Wanying's preliminary hearing is set for October 19; sentencing in Duan's case is scheduled for December 10; sentencing in Wang's case and the progress of the denaturalization suits are also worth watching.
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: Eric Swalwell 官方国会肖像，美国国会，公有领域（Wikimedia Commons）
