House China Committee Says Webull Messages Show China-Based Employee Could Access U.S. Client Accounts
A new analysis by the U.S. House Select Committee on China, exclusively obtained by CNBC, shows that internal 2021 Microsoft Teams messages at Webull indicate an employee believed to be in China participated in approving a U.S. customer's account — contradicting the company's public claim that U.S. customer data is controlled only by U.S. personnel.
The messages were exchanged between Brendan Fuller, a manager at Webull's U.S. brokerage, and Webull employee Zhenghan Wang, nicknamed "Rock." Discussing a U.S. client's trading account, Fuller wrote that the account had been approved by "one China team member and one U.S. team." Wang replied: "Yes, CIP," referring to the customer identification program.
The committee's analysis concluded Wang was most likely in China at the time — the messages' timestamps indicated he was working daytime hours in Beijing, and he had set his software to translate messages into simplified Chinese. "All the evidence in these text messages points to Zhenghan Wang, a Webull employee, being located in China with access to U.S. customer data at the time he worked for the company," a committee spokesperson told CNBC.
The analysis follows the committee's bipartisan October 7 report, which said Webull, with 28 million users, has structural ties to the Chinese government and poses a national security threat to U.S. finance. Webull's stock dropped more than 19% after the report. On October 20, the committee accused Webull of making "numerous false statements" since the report's release.
A Webull spokesperson said U.S. customer data is stored only on AWS servers in Virginia and Oregon, with access to sensitive data restricted to U.S.-based employees, and that "U.S. broker-dealer operations are directed exclusively by U.S.-based personnel." The spokesperson did not directly address whether Wang accessed U.S. customer data in 2021. According to Webull's 2025 annual report, its Hunan subsidiary employed 863 people, about 62 percent of its global workforce.
(GSM, based on CNBC)
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
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