Congressman Ritchie Torres (NY-15) issued a statement on Monday, April 17, in response to news of the arrests and charging of two men, accused of conspiring as agents of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and destroying evidence in connection to an illegal police station operated in New York City.

 

Torres, a Democrat who represents a large section of The Bronx stretching from the north to the south of the borough, including parts of Bronx Community District 7, said of the arrests and charges, “A few weeks ago, I joined Rep. Mike Gallagher, chairman of the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the United States and China, in New York City to raise the alarm about the presence of these illegal, not-so-secretive police stations that are singularly designed by the Chinese Communist Party to terrorize, threaten, surveil, and harass Chinese nationals living in America and those who defy the CCP.

 

The congressman added, “I am incredibly grateful to the counterintelligence officers at the FBI, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, the U.S. Department of Justice, and all our law enforcement partners for embarking on this historic investigation, which today resulted in the announcement of multiple criminal charges against two men – the first arrests in the world outside of China with connection to the CCP’s overseas police stations.”

 

Torres said the United States must continue to make abundantly clear that it will not tolerate what he referred to “as flagrant violations of American sovereignty, transitional aggression by the CCP on our soil, and coordinated attempts to suppress the fundamental right of individuals to free speech and expression.”

 

He continued, “We are also reminded in this moment of our steadfast commitment to protecting the voices of all AAPI residents and standing up to acts of all violence, hate, and discrimination against their communities.”

 

The congressman concluded, “This case sends a powerful message to the world that the U.S. will not allow any foreign adversary to conspire here at home and that we will hold them and their bad actors accountable to the fullest extent of the law.”

 

Earlier on Monday, the FBI reported that two criminal complaints filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York were unsealed in federal court in Brooklyn charging 44 defendants with various crimes related to efforts by the national police of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the Ministry of Public Security (MPS), to harass Chinese nationals residing in the New York metropolitan area and elsewhere in the United States.

 

According to the FBI, the defendants, including 40 MPS officers and two officials in the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), allegedly perpetrated transnational repression schemes targeting U.S. residents whose political views and actions are disfavored by the PRC government, such as advocating for democracy in the PRC.

 

As part of a disclosure, the FBI noted in Monday’s press release that U.S. Attorney Breon Peace for the Eastern District of New York is recused from and has not participated in the case captioned United States v. Julien Jin et al., 20-mj-1103.

United States v. Yunpeng Bai, et al.

The two-count complaint charges 34 MPS officers with conspiracy to transmit interstate threats and conspiracy to commit interstate harassment. All the defendants are believed to reside in the PRC, and they remain at large.

 

As alleged, the officers worked with Beijing’s MPS bureau and are or were assigned to an elite task force called the “912 Special Project Working Group” (the Group). The purpose of the Group is to target Chinese dissidents located throughout the world, including in the United States.

 

“As alleged, the PRC government deploys its national police and the 912 Special Project Working Group not as an instrument to uphold the law and protect public safety, but rather as a troll farm that attacks persons in our country for exercising free speech in a manner that the PRC government finds disagreeable, and also spreads propaganda whose sole purpose is to sow divisions within the United States,” said Peace. “I commend the investigative team for comprehensively revealing the insidiousness of a state-directed criminal scheme directed at residents of the United States.”

 

The complaint alleges how members of the Group created thousands of fake online personas on social media sites, including Twitter, to target Chinese dissidents through online harassment and threats. These online personas also allegedly disseminated official PRC government propaganda and narratives to counter the pro-democracy speech of the Chinese dissidents.

 

As alleged, for example, Group members created and maintained the fake social media accounts through temporary email addresses, posted official PRC government content, and interacted with other online users to avoid the appearance that the Group accounts were “flooding” a given social media platform. The Group tracks the performances of members in fulfilling their online responsibilities and rewards Group members who successfully operate multiple online personas without detection by the social media companies who host the platforms or by other users of the platforms.

 

The investigation also uncovered official MPS taskings to Group members to compose articles and videos based on certain themes targeting, for example, the activities of Chinese dissidents located abroad or the policies of the U.S. government.

 

As alleged, the defendants also attempted to recruit U.S. persons to act as unwitting agents of the PRC government by disseminating propaganda or narratives of the PRC government. On several occasions, the defendants used online personas to contact individuals assessed to be sympathetic and supportive of the PRC government’s narratives and asked these individuals to disseminate Group content.

 

In addition, Group members took repeated affirmative actions to have Chinese dissidents and their meetings removed from the platform of Company-1. For example, Group members disrupted a dissident’s efforts to commemorate the Tiananmen Square Massacre through a videoconference by posting threats against the participants through the platform’s chat function. In another Company-1 videoconference on the topic of countering communism organized by a PRC dissident, Group members flooded the videoconference and drowned out the meeting with loud music and vulgar screams and threats directed at the pro-democracy participants.

 

As reported, Torres previously called for an investigation into the so-called “Russian compound” based in The Bronx, which houses a delegation of Russian U.N. diplomats, after four Russian government employees were charged with hacking various entities. He also previously called on the Federal Elections Commission to investigate New York Congressman George Santos’ campaign finances, as reported. Santos, a Republican, was elected last year and represents New York’s 3rd congressional district, which includes parts of Long Island.

 

Below is a breakdown of the latest charges brought against the 44 defendants in the latest Chinese probe.

United States v. Julien Jin, et al.

This amended complaint charges 10 individuals, including a former PRC-based Company-1 employee, six MPS officers, and two officials with the CAC, with conspiracy to commit interstate harassment and unlawful conspiracy to transfer means of identification. Nine of the defendants are believed to reside in the PRC and remain at large. The tenth defendant is believed to reside in Indonesia or the PRC and also remains at large.

 

“The amended complaint charging a former PRC-based employee of a U.S. telecommunications company illustrates the insider threat faced by U.S. companies operating in the PRC,” said First Assistant U.S. Attorney Pokorny for the Eastern District of New York, who thanked Company-1 for its cooperation in the government’s investigation.

 

“As alleged, Julien Jin and his co-conspirators in the Ministry of Public Security and Cyberspace Administration of China weaponized the U.S. telecommunications company he worked for to intimidate and silence dissenters and enforce PRC law to the detriment of Chinese activists in New York, among other places, who had sought refuge in this country to peacefully express their pro-democracy views,” Pokorny said.

 

Meanwhile, Assistant Director in Charge David Sundberg of the FBI Washington field office, said, “These cases demonstrate that the Chinese Communist Party, once again, attempted to intimidate, harass, and suppress Chinese dissidents in the United States.”

 

He added,  “In the United States, the freedom of speech is a cornerstone of our democracy, and the FBI will work tirelessly to defend everyone’s right to speak freely without fear of retribution from the CCP. These complex investigations revealed an MPS-wide effort to repress individuals by using the U.S. communications platform and fake social media accounts to censor political and religious speech.”

 

In December 2020, the Department first announced charges against Julien Jin in connection with his efforts to disrupt a series of meetings on the Company-1 platform held in May and June 2020 commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre. Jin allegedly served as Company-1’s primary liaison with PRC government law enforcement and intelligence services. In that capacity, he allegedly regularly responded to requests from the PRC government to terminate meetings and block users on Company-1’s video communications platform.

 

As detailed in the original complaint, Jin and others allegedly conspired to use Company-1’s U.S. systems to censor the political and religious speech of individuals located in the United States and elsewhere at the direction of the PRC government.

 

For example, Jin and others allegedly disrupted meetings held on the Company-1 platform to discuss politically sensitive topics unacceptable to the PRC government, including the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Jin and his co-conspirators allegedly fabricated evidence of purported misconduct to cause U.S.-based employees of Company-1 to terminate the meetings.

 

The allegations in the amended complaint reveal that Jin worked directly with, and took orders from, defendants at the MPS and the CAC to disrupt meetings on the Company-1 platform and that the co-defendants had targeted U.S.-based dissidents’ speech on Company-1’s platform since 2018.

 

Starting in 2018, Jin and his co-defendants allegedly repeatedly sought to terminate video chat meetings organized by a Chinese dissident residing in New York City who has been a vocal critic of the PRC government and the Chinese Communist Party.

 

After the CAC requested that Company-1 terminate the dissident’s meetings on the Company-1 platform, Jin allegedly worked to identify all accounts associated with the dissident, caused meetings related to the dissident to be hosted in a “quarantine zone,” meaning on a server with known lags in response time, and later allegedly worked to block all accounts associated with the dissident. Similarly, in 2019, Jin allegedly collaborated with the MPS and CAC to block accounts seeking to commemorate the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

 

The FBI Washington Field Office investigated the cases. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Alexander A. Solomon, Antoinette N. Rangel, Ian C. Richardson, Nicholas J. Moscow and Jessica K. Weigel of the Eastern District of New York, and Trial Attorney Scott A. Claffee of the National Security Division’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section are prosecuting the cases.

 

The FBI has created a website for victims to report efforts by foreign governments to stalk, intimidate, or assault people in the United States. Please visit www.fbi.gov/investigate/counterintelligence/transnational-repression for details.

 

A person arrested and charged with a crime is deemed innocent unless and until convicted in a court of law.