FBI agents arrested a Southern California woman at Los Angeles International Airport on Sunday as she prepared to board a flight to China, and federal prosecutors charged her with acting as an undeclared agent of the Chinese government, including by surveilling relatives of a high-ranking Taiwanese official who live in the United States.
The Justice Department identified her as Wanying Zhang, 34, of Irvine, who also goes by Heather. She works as a licensed real estate agent, and First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said on Fox News that she is a naturalized U.S. citizen. The complaint's single count accuses her of working for Beijing from June to September 2025 without first notifying the attorney general, as federal law requires, and carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.
The complaint does not name the family, but the FBI said on social media that the target was a son of Taiwan's president, Lai Ching-te, and law enforcement sources gave CBS News the same identification. Taiwan's Presidential Office confirmed that relatives of the president were the targets, without saying which ones.
By the department's account, Zhang traveled from Southern California to China in June 2025, where she met with Chinese officials and was given the job of conducting surveillance in the United States. On Aug. 29, 2025, she and another person flew from John Wayne Airport in Orange County to Las Vegas, and on Sept. 1 they continued to the Pacific Northwest, where the family lives. That day, prosecutors say, she messaged a Chinese official that she was "Boarding now" and sent a photograph of her boarding pass.
Upon arrival, the department says, the two went to the family's residence and conducted surveillance. Zhang wrote to the same official, "Saw him, young male, it's the young one," and when the official asked her to join an audio call, she answered, "I am videorecording." She also sent the license plate numbers of the two vehicles parked in front of the home, and the affidavit says she passed photos and videos from the surveillance to Chinese officials as well. Images from a neighbor's security camera that are included in the complaint allegedly show the pair "appearing to film" the family as they arrived home that evening, CBS News reported.
In the complaint, dated Oct. 3, FBI Special Agent Kevin Holt wrote that if China wished "to obtain leverage over the President of Taiwan during any potential conflict," the location and pictures of the official's close relatives, including pictures of their homes and cars, "could be useful to the PRC." He added that the messages, exchanged over the Chinese app WeChat, were obtained through a search warrant for Zhang's iCloud account, and that she "was in contact with at least two people whom she appeared to acknowledge worked for the PRC government."
The affidavit says Zhang attended the University of International Relations in Beijing, which Holt described as having close ties to China's Ministry of State Security. According to the same filing, a former classmate who became a Chinese government official introduced her to a second official, and she was in contact with both of them in 2025.
Assistant Attorney General John A. Eisenberg, who leads the department's National Security Division, called the central allegation "deeply troubling." Roman Rozhavsky, assistant director of the FBI's Counterintelligence and Espionage Division, said the case showed the bureau's commitment to "defending the sovereignty of our democratic allies" and to combating attempts by the Chinese government to "conduct transnational repression within our borders."
In Taipei, Presidential Office spokesperson Karen Kuo condemned what she called "barbaric" acts that disregard human rights and national sovereignty. She described the alleged surveillance as a "typical case of transnational repression," thanked the United States for protecting Taiwanese citizens and said Taiwan would keep working with Washington and other democratic allies to fight such acts.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately answer the Associated Press's request for comment on Monday, and the Foreign Ministry in Beijing was closed for holidays. It was not immediately clear whether Zhang had a lawyer. She was scheduled to make her first appearance Monday afternoon in federal court in downtown Los Angeles, and the department noted that a criminal complaint is merely an allegation and that every defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty.
Zhang's case joins a run of federal prosecutions of people accused of covertly working for Beijing inside the United States, and the Justice Department says many of them involve Chinese efforts to find and harass pro-democracy activists who live in the country. Beijing claims Taiwan as its own territory and regards Lai as a separatist.