A former NYPD cop turned private investigator and two Chinese citizens were found guilty Wednesday in a landmark case taking aim at the Chinese government’s illegal efforts to extort dissidents living overseas.
The three men played a part in China’s years-long pressure campaign against dissident Xu Jin, a former Wuhan municipal government official, and his family, with McMahon using his investigative skills to track down where Xu lived in New Jersey, prosecutors said during the two-week trail in Brooklyn federal court.
Michael McMahon, 55, a retired NYPD sergeant, and another man, Zhu Yong, 66, were convicted of acting as a foreign agent and interstate stalking, while a third, Zheng Chongring, 27, was convicted of stalking charges but cleared of being a foreign agent.
McMahon could face up to 20 years behind bars, Zhu 25 years, and Zheng 10 years
Prosecutors described the scheme as part of a sweeping Chinese initiative, dubbed “Operation Fox Hunt,” aimed at finding so-called corruption suspects living overseas and forcing them to return to China to face charges. The Chinese government bypassed U.S. officials and acted illegally on American soil to harass Xu in an operation run by a Chinese cop and prosecutor, prosecutors said.
“McMahon knew exactly what was going on right from the beginning,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Meredith Arfa said in her closing argument Wednesday. “McMahon, of course, knew the overall purpose of this multi-day scheme. He knew the purpose was to coerce Xu Jin to return to China.”
The plot involved flying forcing Xu’s elderly father to fly to the U.S. and dropping him on Xu’s sister-in-law’s doorstep on April 5, 2017 with a mission: get his son to come back and face the charges against him.
“It was very shocking,” Xu said on the stand. “I was very angry because the Wuhan officials and the prosecutor’s office did things like this to an 80 somewhat-year-old man and he had a bad health condition and he was being forced to come to the U.S.”
Zheng came into the picture in 2018, when prosecutors said he and another man banged on Xu’s door, then left a menacing note reading, “If you are willing to go back to the mainland and spend 10 years in prison, your wife and children will be all right. That’s the end of this matter!”
Xu testified that the visit brought the harassment to a new, terrifying level.
“Before I saw this I felt that the threats from the Chinese Communist Party was only a mental threat to me,” he told the jury. “However, when I saw that note, I realized that it had become a physical threat.”
McMahon, who was paid more than $19,000, was asked to dig up information on Xu and his family, then surveilled the sister-in-law’s house during the elderly man’s visit, all in the hopes of following Xu to his Warren, N.J., home, prosecutors said.
McMahon’s basic research turned up articles and other information that the Chinese government wanted to force him back to China and arrest him, prosecutors said, and some of his payment came as wire transfers from Chinese officials.
McMahon gave up the game in a post-arrest statement, Arfa said, when he admitted, “I think he had mentioned to me that they were trying to get him to come back to China.... So they could prosecute him.”
His lawyer, Lawrence Lustberg, argued that the government didn’t show any evidence proving that he knew he was working for China, and that McMahon thought he was working for a private company.
“That family is a victim of Chinese misconduct. But ladies and gentlemen, so is Mike McMahon,” he said.
The other two defendants’ lawyers made similar arguments.
His wife, Martha Byrne McMahon, expressed relief when her husband was acquitted of the charge against him, a conspiracy count relating to acting as a foreign agent, then wept bitterly as the jury foreman read the remaining counts as guilty.
“Was I in the same courtroom as everybody else? The man committed no crime!” the veteran “As The World Turns” actress fumed as she left the courtroom. “It’s a disgrace! My husband is a hero.”
McMahon’s family members and supporters burst into a round of applause at one point as she defended her husband.
McMahon said he was “devastated” by the verdict, and he plans to appeal.
“I did everything by the book as a licensed private investigator,” he said. “Nothing in this case was out of the ordinary in what I’ve done in hundreds of cases … If I knew they were a foreign government, I would never have worked on this case.”
He added that his wife reached out to private investigation associations across the country after his arrest to warn them of China’s tactics.
“Our government didn’t protect me and my family. They knew about these Fox Hunt operations as early as 2014-15,” he said. “Why is my wife doing that and not our own government?”
All three men remain free on bond until their sentencing date, which has not yet been scheduled.
