An American citizen pleaded guilty in federal court to opening and operating a secret police station in New York City to aid the Chinese government.
Chen Jinping, 60, entered the plea Wednesday in federal court in Brooklyn for conspiring to act as an illegal agent of the government of the People's Republic of China, the Justice Department said.
Chen and co-defendant "Harry " Lu Jianwang were accused of establishing the clandestine police station in Chinatown as a branch of China's Ministry of Public Security at the start of 2022.
The station, which occupied a full floor of an office building in Chinatown, performed such mundane tasks as helping Chinese citizens renew with Chinese driver's licenses and also identified pro-democracy activists living in the United States, the Associated Press reported.
"This illegal police station was not opened in the interest of public safety, but to further the nefarious and repressive aims of the PRC in direct violation of American sovereignty," Matthew Olson, an assistant attorney general in the Justice Department, said in a statement, the AP reported.
"Today's guilty plea holds the defendant accountable for his brazen efforts to operate an undeclared overseas police station on behalf of the PRC's national police force — a clear affront to American sovereignty and danger to our community that will not be tolerated."
The station closed in the fall of 2022 as the FBI launched an investigation.
Chen faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison.
Lu has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial.
The Justice Department claims Lu had a longstanding relationship of trust with PRC law enforcement. Since 2015, and through the operation of the secret police station, prosecutors say Lu was tasked with carrying out various activities, including to assist the PRC government's repressive activities on U.S. soil.
"It is simply outrageous that China's Ministry of Public Security thinks it can get away with establishing a secret, illegal police station on U.S. soil to aid its efforts to export repression and subvert our rule of law," said Acting Assistant Director Kurt Ronnow of the FBI Counterintelligence Division at the time of the arrests.
"This case serves as a powerful reminder that the People's Republic of China will stop at nothing to bend people to their will and silence messages they don't want anyone to hear.
