Sunny Espionage Delight

 

NBC News 

A former top aide to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul was arrested Tuesday on federal charges of acting as a secret agent of the Chinese government, authorities said.

Linda Sun, 41, is accused of using her high-ranking positions in state government to serve the interests of the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party in exchange for millions of dollars. Her husband, Chris Hu, 40, was also arrested in the alleged scheme.

Sun was charged with violating and conspiring to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act, visa fraud, alien smuggling and money laundering. Hu was charged with money laundering conspiracy, conspiracy to commit bank fraud and misuse of means of identification.

Both pleaded not guilty Tuesday afternoon. Sun was set to be released on a $1.5 million bond, her husband on a $500,000 bond.

“We are disappointed by the filing of these charges, which are inflammatory and appear to be the product of an overly aggressive prosecution," Sun's lawyers, Jarrod Schaeffer and Kenneth Abell, said in a statement after the hearing. "We are also troubled by aspects of the government’s investigation. As we said today in court, our client is eager to exercise her right to a speedy trial and to defend against these accusations in the proper forum—a court of law.”

The arrests come six weeks after FBI agents searched the couple's $3.5 million home in a gated community in Manhasset on Long Island. 

Sun worked in state government for roughly 15 years, holding positions in the administration of then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo before becoming Hochul’s deputy chief of staff, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Avi Small, a spokesman for Hochul, said Sun was hired more than a decade ago and fired in March 2023 after "evidence of misconduct" was discovered. Small said Hochul's staff immediately reported her actions to law enforcement and have assisted the authorities working the case.

According to the 64-page indictment, Sun blocked Taiwanese government representatives from getting access to high-ranking New York state officials and altered the messaging of state officials on issues of importance to the Chinese government — all at the request of Chinese officials. Sun also helped Chinese government officials travel to the U.S. and meet with New York officials by providing unauthorized invitation letters from high-level state officers, according to the indictment.

"Sun’s unauthorized invitation letters for the PRC government delegation constituted false statements made in connection with immigration documents and induced the foreign citizens into unlawfully entering the United States," Brooklyn federal prosecutors said in a press release.

"Sun never registered as a foreign agent with the Attorney General, and in fact actively concealed that she took actions at the order, request, or direction of PRC government and the CCP representatives."

NYPD China spy exonerated

 

NY Post 

Federal prosecutors have shockingly dropped their case against an NYPD cop accused of being a spy for the Chinese government.

Prosecutors in the Brooklyn US Attorney Breon’s office signed off Friday on vague legal papers, asking federal Judge Eric R. Komitee to dismiss an indictment against Baimadajie Angwang. The feds said they reached the decision after examining “additional information bearing on the charges,” but they offered no specifics.

Angwang, an NYPD cop and US Army reservist who had secret-level security clearance from the Department of Defense, was charged in 2020 with spying on fellow Tibetan immigrants in the Big Apple.

At the time, FBI New York Assistant Director-in-Charge William Sweeney Jr. called Angwang, who worked as a community affairs officer in the 111th Precinct in Queens, “the definition of an insider threat.”

He said the Tibetan-American allegedly “operated on behalf of a foreign government; lied to gain his clearance, and used his position as an NYPD police officer to aid the Chinese government’s subversive and illegal attempts to recruit intelligence sources.”

 

China sent a spy to work for the NYPD

 

 

NY Post

An NYPD cop and US Army reservist was charged Monday with secretly serving as a spy for the Chinese government who passed on information to a handler involved in “neutralizing” Tibetan opponents in America.

Baimadajie Angwang, who works a community affairs officer in the 111th Precinct in Queens, allegedly began acting on behalf of the People’s Republic of China in May 2018 after being recruited by an unidentified “handler” stationed in the Chinese consulate in Manhattan, according to a complaint unsealed in Brooklyn federal court.

Angwang, 33, allegedly “served as an intelligence asset” whose duties included gathering information on potential opponents of the Chinese government, including members of “religious and ethnic minorities.”

His handler, identified only as “PRC Official-2,” is believed to have been assigned to the “China Association for Preservation and Development of Tibetan Culture,” a division of the Chinese United Front Work Department that’s responsible for “neutralizing sources of potential opposition to the policies and authority of the PRC,” court papers say.

Angwang, an ethnic Tibetan, is accused of reporting on the activities of fellow ethnic Tibetans, including by scoping out “potential ethnic Tibetan intelligence sources in the New York metropolitan area and beyond,” as well as potential troublemakers.

During a wiretapped phone call on Nov. 14, 2019, Angwang informed his handler — whom he routinely greeted as “Boss” — that several ethnic Tibetans were working in the offices of unspecified elected New York officials, according to court papers.

“They are mainly, mainly, mainly, in Queens, at the Queens area state legislator’s office. These offices all have our people working there, because our population is getting larger. They hire them to pull in more votes, to pull in more votes,” he allegedly said.

“But I also feel that some community groups may use their relationships to associate with them, to chant slogans, to utter nonsense. They may, may, may create more work for you.”

Angwang also “asked PRC Official-2 for taskings and volunteered to assist PRC Official-2 by providing information from NYPD systems,” court papers say.

George The Atheist eyewitnesses Flags of China displayed during Lunar Parade in Flushing.

 

George The Atheist

  
EXCLUSIVE. Who's In Charge Here? (February 9, 2019)

During the 2019 Flushing Lunar New Year parade the New York City Police Department's ceremonial color guard carries 2 new additional flags:  that of communist China and free Korea.  Conspicuously absent: that of free Taiwan. Note in the photos below, the prominent position of the communist flag next to that of the American.  Who decided this?





 Flags of Red China spotted at the annual Lunar Parade in Downtown Flushing along Main Street.   Parade officials have no idea who sponsored this outpouring of support for mainland China.

 

"Birth tourism house" is quite illegal

From PIX11:

An unlicensed day care facility where three infants and two adults were stabbed allegedly catered to Asian mothers lured to the United States by laws granting citizenship to anyone born on American soil, a New York law enforcement official said Saturday.

Investigators believe the foreign women would give birth at the facility before returning to their home country and applying for US citizenship, the law enforcement official said. The return allows them to remain in good standing with authorities back home and, at the same time, claim to have a direct relative in need of care in the United States.

"If they're playing it right, they go back so that they don't get a negative status," the official said. "Then they come back."

An underground "birth tourism" network stretching from the United States to China has sprung up in recent years to cater to growing numbers of Chinese mothers who travel stateside to give birth, according to affidavits filed by federal law enforcement officers.

Federal agents have carried out "birth tourism" raids as part of larger criminal investigations targeting US companies that have netted millions helping pregnant Chinese women fraudulently secure visas and other services.

The residential facility in the Flushing section of Queens was used mostly by Chinese women who give birth and stayed there before returning to China, a law enforcement source said Friday.

China in talks to buy Steinway company

From Bloomberg News:

Steinway Musical Instruments Inc., the legendary piano maker controlled by U.S. hedge fund billionaire John Paulson, has attracted takeover interest from China Poly Group Corp., people familiar with the matter said.

The state-owned conglomerate is holding preliminary talks about a purchase of Steinway, according to one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the deliberations are private. The company, whose iconic pianos have been used by virtuosos such as Lang Lang, could fetch about $1 billion in a sale, the people said.

Poly Group is doing due diligence work on Steinway as well as seeking financing and government approvals for an offer, the people said. The piano maker has also attracted other potential buyers such as private-equity firms and companies, the people said.

Steinway should be able to fetch a high valuation given that the company may reach 30 percent to 40 percent annual sales growth in China, according to Shaun Rein, founder and managing director of the China Market Research Group. A Chinese company like Poly Group could help improve Steinway’s distribution network in the country, which has been weak so far, he said.

Chinese spy headed to prison

From Metro:

A former FBI employee in New York was sentenced to two years in prison on Friday after admitting that he illegally acted at the direction of a Chinese official to gather sensitive information.

Kun Shan Chun, also known as Joey Chun, was also ordered by U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero in Manhattan to pay $10,000 after pleading guilty in August to having illegally acted as an agent of a foreign government.

"I'm so sorry," a tearful Chun said in court. "I take full responsibility."

Chun, a U.S. citizen who was born in China, was arrested in March in connection with what prosecutors called a duplicitous betrayal of the FBI, which had employed him in its New York field office since 1997.

Prosecutors said that beginning in 2005, Chinese individuals claiming to be affiliated with a China-based printer products manufacturer called Zhuhai Kolion Technology Company Ltd solicited an investment from one of Chun's parents.

Chun, 47, first met purported Kolion associates during a 2005 trip, and met them abroad at several other times, eventually meeting a Chinese official who asked him about the FBI and surveillance practices and targets, prosecutors said.

In turn, Chun provided the official an FBI organizational chart and photographs related to surveillance technologies, prosecutors said.

In exchange, Chun's associates paid for him to go on international trips, and they sometimes also paid for prostitutes for him while he was abroad, prosecutors said.

Maybe we should learn from China's mistakes, if not our own

From Forbes:

As the storm sewers of many of China’s cities have been pushed beyond their capacity, spewing deluges of water into the streets, many are blaming the disaster on the country’s breakneck pace of urbanization.

China has built cities faster and more extensively than any other civilization in history. In hardly 35 years, the country built over 450 new cities, urbanized 40,000 square kilometers of countryside, threw up hundreds of millions of homes, constructed a 19,000 kilometer high-speed rail network, dug 26 new subway systems, paved more than 60,000 kilometers of highways, and erected nearly a hundred new airports.

This urbanization push was backed by economic and political incentives. At the peak of China’s new city building boom urbanization was responsible for 16 to 25% of total GDP, 33% of fixed asset investment, 10% of urban employment, 15% of bank loans, and fueled 40 industries. Stimulating the local economy and complying with national urbanization goals were also core KPI criteria for the promotion of officials within the government. So China built and built, and are only now starting to realize the full impact of what they’ve created.

In this explosion of development, natural water management systems — rivers and streams, ponds and lakes, as well as the soil — have been asphyxiated with endless expanses of pavement and concrete. In Wuhan, a city that has been leveled by this year’s flooding, saw 87 lakes, two-thirds of its total, filled in or otherwise destroyed between 1949 and 2015. According to Kongjian Yu, the dean of Peking University’s College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, heavily urbanized eastern China lost upwards of 50% of its wetlands in the past thirty years, which drastically reduces flood retention capacities.

These impermeable urban surfaces which have been replacing natural features in China’s cities at an astonishing rate prevent rainwater from finding its way into the ground below, funneling it instead into a Soviet-style system of pipes and drains, which are becoming more and more overtaxed and inadequate.

Momentum builds to protect small rowhouses

From the NY Times:

Some blocks are graced by quaint two-bedroom, one-story rowhouses — with small front yards, tiny porches and peaked roofs. These houses have become the latest focus in a clash throughout New York between homeowners who want to develop their properties to the limits allowed by law, and preservationists lobbying for stronger laws to protect those properties from development.

The preservationists argue that single-family rowhouses imbue some neighborhoods — particularly in Queens — with their essential character. But under existing zoning laws, there is no specific designation for single-family rowhouses that provides protection against increasing the number of units, or against out-of-scale and out-of-character expansions.

“It’s an absolute disgrace,” said Richard Hellenbrecht, the vice president of the Queens Civic Congress, an umbrella association of more than 100 community groups. “Lovely, affordable homes being squeezed out by monstrosities.”

The architecture is secondary, said Paul Graziano, an urban planning consultant from Flushing. “What it is is affordable rowhouses of modest means, and for people of modest means.”

“It’s stuff worth protecting,” he said. “We’re talking about the basic character of a neighborhood.”

Ms. Lin — unwittingly, she says — thrust herself into the center of the debate soon after buying her rowhouse at 146-15 56th Road for $558,000 in 2013. She had started to renovate, but quickly determined that it would make more sense financially to tear the house down and build a bigger place.

It also made logistical and emotional sense: She wanted a home big enough to house not only her two young children but also her father and brother.

Melinda Katz, a Democrat and the Queens borough president, has vowed to press for protections for single-family rowhouses.

“The rowhouses and the communities that form around that are so important to our future,” she said in an interview. “We value the low-density portion of our neighborhoods.”

“Where will our parents live when they come over from China?” asked Lin Xin, an employee with a contracting firm that had been involved in several of the projects in Queensboro Hill. “Why do you think we work so hard? Why do we scrimp and save? This is why. We want to be reunited with our families. We want to sit around the same table together.”

EB-5 under fire

From DNA Info:

A Manhattan-based immigration lawyer and real estate broker wants to connect wealthy Chinese investors looking for green cards with small developers and nonprofits to build affordable housing, recreation centers, assisted living facilities and other projects across the city.

Min Chan hopes to tap the controversial federal immigration program known as EB-5, which grants visas to foreigners who invest $500,000 in U.S. projects that create 10 full-time jobs within 2 years. The program also gives visas to their families and children.

Roughly 85 percent of applicants last year were from China, thanks to the county's soaring number of millionaires in recent years, according to a report from commercial real estate firm Savills Studley. The State Department announced this month that the U.S. already reached its quota for its 10,000 EB-5 visas to be given out this fiscal year because of demand from China — marking the second year in a row the program hit its limit.

The program, which enables developers to tap low-interest funding, is intended to be a job-generator for high-poverty and high-unemployment areas.

In reality, EB-5 is helping fund some of the city's swankiest projects from some of the top developers like Silverstein Properties' towering, ultra-luxurious Four Seasons Hotel New York Downtown rising at 30 Park Place, the Durst Organization's Danish-desinged glassy pyramid-shaped high-end rental rising on West 57th Street and Kushner Real Estate Group's NoMad tower at 281 Fifth Ave.

The EB-5 program — which is up for review in Congress this September — has come under fire for lax regulations that have led to shadowy transactions and scams. Some watchdogs have raised national security concerns since the fast-tracked EB-5 visas aren't required to have the same background checks as other visa applicants.

Will Chinese investors go for a residential fantasy on Newtown Creek?

From Curbed:

As with the equally polluted (give or take) Gowanus Canal, it seems like only a matter of time before the banks of Newtown Creek give way to large-scale residential development, and to get things started architectural firms Avoid Obvious Architects and Studio C Architects have designed just such a development for a currently industrial East Williamsburg site, on spec. One of the architects told NY YIMBY, "we hope to find the right investors in China." The plan consists of three glassy towers connected by planted walkways. One of the towers would be condos (naturally), one would be a hotel, and the third would be "dedicated as artist's studio." (The entire thing? Apparently.) The renderings do raise some questions, though, such as: at what point did the barren industrial wasteland of East Williamsburg turn into a lush forest?

Fresh Meadows hotel plans revealed

From Queens Courier:

A new hotel in Fresh Meadows is positioning itself to be the 21st-century Ellis Island of Queens.

The hotel will serve as a stepping stone for Chinese immigrants and students looking to stay in the country or study here, according to several people close to the planning. The 11-story Hilton hotel on 186th Street is set to open in May 2016 and the developers, Mayflower Business Group of Great Neck, are positioning their hotel to serve a mixture of Chinese businesspeople, students and immigrants who can use the hotel as a base while house hunting.

This is what she gets paid to do?

From NBC:

A Manhattan congresswoman is accusing Mayor de Blasio of not supporting her efforts to bring two pandas from China to New York City.

In August, Rep. Carolyn Maloney visited panda preserves in China with hopes of bringing two of the bears to the Central Park Zoo. After the trip, Chinese officials asked for a letter from the mayor or governor supporting her plan, Maloney said Sunday morning on John Catsimatidis’ radio show on AM 970.

"The mayor was not interested," Maloney said.

She then approached Gov. Cuomo who sent a letter earlier this month in support of bringing the pandas to the Big Apple, she said. She is now awaiting a response from Chinese officials.

According to the New York Post, though, a city official said that neither the Central Park Zoo nor Bronx Zoo were interested in housing the pandas, which are "incredibly expensive to maintain."

A spokeswoman from the mayor's office said regarding Maloney's pandas there were "more pressing concerns for New York City at the moment."

Ya think?

John Liu had a bad night in Flushing

From the Epoch Times:

Three weeks before he faces incumbent Tony Avella in the Democratic Primary for New York’s 11th state senate district, John Liu was once again haunted by the skeletons in his closet.

At a candidate forum hosted by the MinKown non-profit, right before he was supposed to deliver a 1-minute and 15-second speech summarizing his platform to a ballroom of concerned citizens, protesters unfurled in front of Liu a banner that read “Arrest John Liu to Prevent his further Harm to the U.S.”

A female protester started lambasting Liu in Mandarin about connections to the Chinese Communist Party, which drew loud, forceful responses from Liu’s supporters in the crowd, creating a brouhaha that lasted over 10 minutes and needed quelling by the hotel’s security guards.

Liu was phlegmatic about the disturbance, sarcastically referring to the protesters as “friends” who had been “following him for years.”

“I’ve been told that they are a part of my friends at the Falun Gong who have been following me for years, mainly because they firmly believe I’m a communist spy from China,” Liu added.

Fu Yuxia, the female protester, later told the Epoch Times that she was there to draw attention to Liu’s ties to the Chinese regime, which she said seized her home in Shanghai in 1997.

When asked about Liu’s claims, Yuxia said that she was not associated with Falun Gong.

“I’ve heard of Falun Gong, but I’m not a part of Falun Gong,” Yuxia said.

From the NY Observer:

On actual policy positions, Mr. Liu and Mr. Avella differed little. Each backed a higher minimum wage, the Dream Act, public financing of state elections and other liberal priorities. While Mr. Avella did not take aim at Mr. Liu, the former comptroller assailed Mr. Avella once more for betraying Democrats and progressives by joining a group of breakaway Democrats that governs the senate with the Republican Party (the Independent Democratic Conference recently agreed to ally themselves with the mainline Democrats after the fall elections.)

Policy, however, took a back seat to the brief chaos.

Here's a list of the reasons why John Liu is the perfect candidate to represent Joe Crowley's Machine.

Secret Agent Man

From the Epoch Times:

On Oct. 1, 2009, a man the New York Times called one of New York’s “real mayors” looked down on the Chinese military as it marched past his seat on the reviewing stand in the Gate Tower of Tiananmen during the 60th anniversary celebration of the Chinese Communist Party.

That special seating area is reserved for elites of the Chinese Communist Party and key people doing United Front work.

When Michael Chu returned to New York, he told China’s state-run media, “When I watched the heroic, mighty, majestic Chinese army men uniformly marching on Tiananmen Square, when I saw the all made-in-China sophisticated weapons and equipment shown to the world, [I was so excited] as if the blood in my body suddenly is boiling up.”

Chu’s seat at Tiananmen Square was a reward. He has demonstrated his support for the Chinese regime repeatedly over the years.

Chu was one of the organizers of anti-American protests in New York after the United States accidentally bombed a Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia in 1999.

His business card says he’s the “commander” of the New York Defend Diaoyu Islands Anti-Japan Demonstrations.

Chu has engaged in similar operations through the years. In June 2008 China News identified Chu as a “loyal and committed Marxist” who continued taking part in politics when he emigrated from Taiwan to New York in 1983.

In a newspaper article about his experience on Tiananmen Square in 2009, Chu quoted favorably the words spoken by the editor of a newspaper closely linked to the Chinese Communist Party, “This lifetime’s hard work has not been wasted.”

Chu runs a free Chinese-language newspaper, the Asian American Times, which is regularly filled with criticism of the United States, praise of the Chinese Communist Party, and attacks on the Chinese regime’s “enemies.”

He has a travel agency, and is a busy man. His business card has nine titles on it.

Chu has ties to two of China’s main departments for foreign espionage and propaganda, which are directly under the command of the top levels of the Chinese regime.

In a phone call, Chu declined to comment.

Pandas a priority for Carolyn Maloney

From the Daily News:

A New York congresswoman is hoping a pair of giant pandas will become the city’s next great attraction.

Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-Manhattan) will travel to a nature preserve in China next month to explore the possibility of bringing two giant pandas to Gotham. “The greatest city in the world deserves two pandas,” she told the Daily News. “They’re a symbol of good luck.”

Chinese come to US illegally thru Mexico

From the NY Post:

The signs at the Texas border offer a glimpse of the enormity of the problem of unaccompanied minors trying to sneak into the US.

The instructions are printed in English and Spanish, of course — but also, surprisingly, they’re instructions for help are also in Chinese.

Hundreds of Chinese teens are slipping into the US a year, immigration groups say, mostly through Central America and Cuba.

They make their way to New York City, typically on buses, where they are farmed out across the country to work in Chinese restaurants.

What a tangled web they tweed

From the NY Post:

Brooklyn’s borough president and a top deputy spent 11 days traveling in China at the expense of a nonprofit run by one of their own volunteer staffers, The Post has learned.

The Sino-America New York Brooklyn Archway Association Corp. shelled out nearly $7,000 for Beep Eric Adams and his deputy, Diana Reyna, to visit seven Chinese districts between May 22 and June 1.

The Chinese government kicked in an additional $787 for hotels, meals and travel in the city of Yiwu.

Winnie Greco, Borough Hall’s honorary ambassador to the local Chinese community for the past several years, formed the corporation as a noncharitable group in October 2012 — meaning it’s not required to file annual reports with the state attorney general.

Adams’ staffers say the trip, which was intended to promote economic development and tourism by signing two sister-city agreements and by securing a “Friendship Archway” for the Chinese community in Sunset Park, was cleared by the city’s Conflict of Interest Board one day before the departure date.

But they refused to provide a copy of the board’s letter clearing the trip, citing a policy of not releasing “interagency communications regarding official counsel.”

An itinerary of the trip shows the delegation, which included Greco and several members of the nonprofit, toured local schools on five of the six days that listed planned events — but the visits produced just a single proposal for a “teacher exchange and classroom learning exchange through Skype.”

Discussions for securing the archway, which would be donated by the Chinese government, but installed and maintained at Brooklyn’s expense, took up just one day.

Guy who did fake paintings fled to China

From the NY Times:

Glafira Rosales’ brush with the good life is coming to an end.

The Long Island art dealer behind a long-running counterfeit painting swindle that scammed wealthy collectors out of more than $80 million pleaded guilty Monday in Manhattan federal court and now faces up to a century in prison.

Mexican-born Rosales sold more than 60 worthless paintings, claiming they were unknown works by Expressionist masters such as Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock.

"These works of art were actually fakes," Rosales told Judge Katherine Failla.

The Woodhaven man who painted the artworks, Pei-Shen Qian, 73, won't be charged and has returned to his native China, said Nicholas Gravante Jr., lawyer for Anne Freedman, the former president of an upper East Side art gallery that was one of at least two people duped by Rosales.

So what's up with Flushing Commons?

From Crains:

In 2005, Flushing-based TDC Development, backed by the blue-chip Rockefeller Group, won the rights to knock down a five-acre city-owned parking lot on the edge of downtown and build 600 apartments, plus 420,000 square feet of retail and office space. For good measure, the developer would throw in a 62,000-square-foot YMCA, 36,000 square feet of community space and 1,600 parking spaces.

First to hold up the project was Comptroller John Liu, then the local councilman. He threatened to oppose the plan until developers added more parking. Not until 2010 did Flushing Commons finally win needed City Council approval.

Having cleared that crucial hurdle, Flushing Commons still has gone nowhere. TDC's website still projects a completion date of 2013 or 2014, but that is highly unlikely given that construction is expected to take more than three years.

Even worse, a spokesman for the city's Economic Development Corp., which is selling the lot to the developers, said that TDC has yet to raise enough money to buy the land from the city.

The most recent public update about the project came in July, when TDC Development President Michael Meyer said that traditional funding had dried up and that he was trying to secure loans from Chinese businesses in what is the city's largest Chinese neighborhood.

He and TDC Chief Executive Michael Lee, a native of Taiwan, are also seeking to tap into the federal EB-5 program, which provides a path to green cards for foreigners in exchange for investments of $500,000 or more in development projects.

A spokesman for the EDC declined to say how much funding the developers had raised, but noted that under the original contract they are required to come up with the cash by "this fall," and must begin construction by year's end.