A Chinese American man living in the Bronx was convicted by a federal jury on Wednesday on charges that he ran an unofficial "police station" in New York City on behalf of the Chinese government.
Lu Jianwang, 64, was found guilty by a jury in Brooklyn of acting as a foreign government agent and obstruction of justice but acquitted of a federal conspiracy charge. He faces up to 30 years in prison.
Federal prosecutors argued at trial that Lu, a U.S. citizen who also has a home in China, helped boost the Chinese government’s public image and quash dissent in America. They accused Lu of aiding the Chinese government in its efforts to identify people of interest in the United States, including critics of the regime.
Prosecutors said Lu and a co-defendant were operating the unauthorized police station from a floor of an office building in Manhattan’s Chinatown. They said the station operated at the direction of the Chinese government’s Ministry of Public Security, which routinely monitors political opponents.
It was the first known overseas police station operating on behalf of the agency, officials said.
“A police station operating in New York City at the direction of the Chinese government has been exposed, its sinister purpose disrupted, and its founder held accountable for blatantly disregarding the law and our country’s sovereignty,” U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella said in a statement. “Our Office remains resolute in protecting the rights of people seeking freedom from repression and speaking out to bring democracy, reform, and human rights to China.”
An attorney for Lu did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The defense contended the office was merely a community center created to help people renew their Chinese driver’s licenses.
But the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York argued that Lu’s assistance to the Chinese government dates back to at least 2015. When President Xi Jinping visited the U.S. that year, prosecutors alleged, Lu helped to send counterprotesters to Washington, D.C., to oppose protesters critical of the government’s suppression of the Falun Gong religion.
In 2022, prosecutors said, Lu and his co-defendant, Chen Jinping, helped the Chinese government to open the unauthorized police station in Manhattan.
Prosecutors said Lu admitted to the FBI that he attended a ceremony in Fuzhou, China, in January 2022, announcing plans to open overseas police service stations around the world.
A photograph in the indictment shows Lu posing with a government official at the ceremony, holding a sign that reads: “Fuzhou Public Security Bureau, Overseas 110 Report to Police Service Station.”
The next month, Lu and Chen established the security bureau in lower Manhattan, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.
Federal law requires people to notify the attorney general if they are acting within the U.S. as agents of a foreign government — a step prosecutors said Lu never took.
In October 2022, the FBI searched the Manhattan location where prosecutors said Lu and his co-defendant had been operating the unauthorized police station. Investigators also interviewed several people involved with the property and searched their cellphones. They contended that multiple WeChat communications with Chinese government officials had been deleted from the devices.
Lu admitted to investigators that he deleted messages from his phone and initially said he did not know why, according to the indictment. When agents told Lu that deleting the messages seemed suspicious, he apologized and said some of the deletions were accidental, the indictment states.
Lu also told investigators that he rarely went to the lower Manhattan site and that Chen was the main point of contact with the Chinese government.
Chen pleaded guilty in December 2024 to conspiring to act as an illegal agent of the government of the People’s Republic of China.
