California realtor charged with spying on Taiwan president’s family in Seattle
by Bill Gertz · The Washington TimesFBI agents arrested a California realtor suspected of spying for China by illegally gathering personal information on a relative of Taiwan President Lai Ching-te and providing it to Beijing, the Justice Department announced Monday.
Zhang Wanying, also known as Heather Yang, a real estate agent based in Irvine, has been charged with acting as an unregistered agent of the Chinese government.
She was arrested Sunday at Los Angeles International Airport as she was about to depart for Shanghai.
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Bill Essayli, a U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, posted video on X of Ms. Zhang being walked through the airport in handcuffs.
“We just arrested a Chinese foreign agent at LAX attempting to depart for China,” he stated.
The suspect was scheduled to appear in federal court in Los Angeles on Monday. A lawyer has not been appointed for Ms. Zhang, 34.
“The complaint in this case lays bare a brazen plot directed by the Chinese government to conduct a covert surveillance mission on U.S. soil targeting close relatives of a Taiwanese government official,” said FBI Assistant Director Roman Rozhavsky, chief of the counterintelligence and espionage division.
“Wanying Zhang’s arrest for allegedly acting as an unregistered agent of the Chinese government makes clear how far China’s authoritarian regime will go to advance its goals.”
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An FBI complaint in the case revealed that a counterintelligence investigation into Ms. Zhang and another Chinese official not identified by name has been underway since 2025.
The two traveled to Seattle in September 2025 and photographed the home of a senior Taiwanese official’s family. The couple made videos of the residence and sent vehicle tag numbers to Beijing, the complaint said.
The target of the alleged illegal surveillance was Lai Ting-yu, Mr. Lai’s son, CBS News reported, quoting law enforcement sources.
The younger Mr. Lai is an engineer in his 30s and attended a U.S. university. He has a wife and young son, according to Taiwanese media reports.
“If the [People’s Republic of China] were to wish to obtain leverage over the President of Taiwan during any potential conflict, the location and pictures of the close relatives of a high-ranking Taiwanese government official, including pictures of their homes and cars, could be useful to the PRC,” the affidavit said.
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In Taipei, a presidential spokeswoman denounced the activity as Chinese transnational repression after the disclosure of the surveillance target.
Presidential Office spokeswoman Karen Kuo said Taiwan strongly condemns such “barbaric” activity that seeks to threaten people or their families who advocate freedom and democracy.
“Such behavior should not be tolerated in the civilized world,” Ms. Kuo said in a brief statement reported by the outlet Focus Taiwan.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has vowed to annex Taiwan to China, the arrest affidavit noted.
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“To do this, China has prioritized modernizing its military, which includes the People’s Liberation Army, People’s Liberation Army Air Force, and the People’s Liberation Army Navy to retake Taiwan by force, if necessary,” stated Kevin Holt, an FBI counterintelligence agent specializing in Chinese operations and the author of the affidavit.
“In addition to modernizing its military, the PRC has embarked on coercive activities that go beyond normal diplomatic, economic, and security activities, which are meant to erode Taiwan’s will to fight a war against China.”
Ms. Zhang and the unnamed Chinese official both attended the University of International Relations in Beijing, which the CIA has identified as a training ground for intelligence officials closely linked to the Ministry of State Security, the main civilian intelligence agency.
A 2011 CIA analysis quotes China scholar David Shambaugh as identifying the University of International Relations as created in 1964 by then-Premier Zhou Enlai to “train intelligence personnel for the Investigation Department and (undercover) at Xinhua News Agency.”
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According to the report, most of the leadership at CICIR were trained at the university and “all share lengthy and shadowy careers in the intelligence service.”
The FBI obtained details of the surveillance from searches of Ms. Zhang’s cloud computing account and text messages that show she passed on the information to Chinese officials.
The alleged illegal surveillance comes as Taiwan’s president, elected in 2024, has become a major target of Chinese propaganda over his pro-independence views.
The PLA’s Eastern Theater Command released a cartoon that depicted Mr. Lai as a “parasite poisoning Taiwan Island” and accused him of “green lies” and of plotting independence with foreign backing.
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The image was published in the official military newspaper.
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Bill Gertz
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