Three men have been convicted of stalking a family in New Jersey on behalf of the Chinese government.
Michael McMahon, a retired NYPD sergeant, Zhu Yong, 66, and Zheng Congying, 27, both Chinese citizens, were found guilty of stalking and a related conspiracy charge at Brooklyn Federal Court.
Yong and McMahon, 55, were also found guilty of acting as unregistered foreign agents, and Yong was convicted on a second conspiracy charge.
Each of the men played a role in Operation Fox Hunt – a campaign that the Justice Department says is part of the Communist Party’s push to control Chinese nationals around the world.
All three men worked to track down dissidents who had fled China and intimidate them into returning.
Michael McMahon (pictured), a retired NYPD sergeant, Zhu Yong and Zheng Congying were found guilty of stalking and a related conspiracy charge at Brooklyn Federal Court
Yong (right) and McMahon were also found guilty of acting as unregistered foreign agents. Zheng Congying (left) gave a thumbs-up outside of the court
The case is the first that the Justice Department prosecuted to battle the operation, with charges against the three men announced in 2020.
Xu Jin, a former Chinese government official who moved to the US over a decade ago, was targeted in the plot organized by government officials.
Jin appeared on China’s most-wanted list in 2015 facing charges of bribe-taking, but the US case did not look into his alleged crimes in Beijing.
Communications between the men started in 2016 when Yong reached out to McMahon, who had been working as a private investigator.
McMahon’s lawyer claims that he believed Yong was working for a private company seeking to recoup money.
He then carried out surveillance for five days, spread out over six months, in 2016 and 2017 as well as unearthing records relating to Jin’s whereabouts.
Court documents say that McMahon used unauthorised police contacts to find Ji’s address, vehicle registration, social security number, bank account and overseas trip details, passing these onto Chinese agents.
Prosecutors say that the days McMahon was hired coincided with Jin’s 82-year-old father making a trip to see his son in a bid to get him to return to China.
Beijing authorities forced the elderly man to make the trip, and had previously jailed Jin’s sister because her brother had refused to come home.
The officials reportedly did not know Jin’s address, and used the meeting with his father the lure him out to track his whereabouts.
Chinese operatives surveilled and harassed Ji’s daughter in California and sent a video of Ji’s mother and sister crying and distraught, hoping to intimidate him into returning.
The former cop also met Yong’s associate Hu Ji – a police officer in the Public Security Bureau in Wuhan, China.
All three met at a Panera Bread restaurant in October 2016, with a picture showing McMahon grinning and putting his arm around Yong.
In 2018, Congying traveled to the man’s house in New Jersey and taped a note on his door which read: ‘If you are willing to go back to the homeland and spend 10 years in prison, your wife and children will be safe and well.’
Congying’s lawyer, Paul Goldberger, said that his client was ‘just a kid’ who had driven to the home as a favor to Yong, and that he had immediately regretted his actions.
McMahon claimed he thought he was working for a Chinese construction company and says the fact that he alerted the authorities to his work proves it.
All three denied the charges and claim they had no idea they were working for the Chinese government.
‘I did everything by the book,’ McMahon said outside the courtroom. ‘This is outrageous. What happened? Absolutely outrageous.’
The defendants will be sentenced at a later date and potentially face decades in prison for the charges.
A jury deliberated for two days over the charges, and was interrupted after a juror reported receiving anti-Chinese Communist Party literature.
It is unclear if this was targeted, and she was allowed to return to the pool where discussions continued.
