{"id":230537,"date":"2026-05-13T21:46:20","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T21:46:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/230537\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T21:46:20","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T21:46:20","slug":"boss-of-nycs-secret-chinese-police-station-convicted-of-acting-as-illegal-agent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/230537\/","title":{"rendered":"Boss of NYC\u2019s \u2018secret Chinese police station\u2019 convicted of acting as illegal ‘agent’"},"content":{"rendered":"

A local Chinatown community leader who the feds say ran a secret Chinese \u201cpolice station\u201d out of a nondescript Manhattan office building was found guilty Wednesday of acting as an illegal foreign agent.<\/p>\n

\u201cHarry\u201d Lu Jianwang was convicted after evidence revealed his dealings with China\u2019s Ministry of Public Security \u2014 which ordered him to hang a banner inside the glass-clad building at 107 East Broadway proudly announcing that the site was a \u201cPolice Overseas Service Station\u201d for China\u2019s Fujian province.<\/p>\n

A Chinese security official also urged Lu, 64, to help track a prominent US-based pro-democracy dissident <\/a>in March 2022, just a month after Lu established the \u201cstation\u201d inside the Manhattan headquarters of the America Changle Association, which advocates for Fujian immigrants.<\/p>\n

\"Harry\u201cHarry\u201d Lu Jianwang was found guilty of acting as an illegal foreign agent for China. Gregory P. Mango for NY Post<\/p>\n

\u201cJust help me verify if this person exists,\u201d wrote Liu Rongyan, a Fujian security officer, of Xu Jie, a longtime critic of China\u2019s government who fled the country in 2013 and lives in California.<\/p>\n

\u201cA friend is looking for him for a personal matter,\u201d Rongyan added \u2014 punctuating her text with a sheepish grin emoji \u2014 in a chat with Lu on the Chinese messaging platform WeChat.<\/p>\n

Lu then messaged Keith Cheng, the leader of a separate Big Apple-based Fujian group,\u00a0asking for details about the outspoken Beijing regime critic.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you get a chance, please see if anyone there knows him well\u2026 anyone knows him
well who can help me with this, alright?\u201d Lu texted, in an exchange recovered by the FBI.<\/p>\n

Lu faces up to five years in prison after a Brooklyn federal jury convicted him of acting as an unregistered foreign agent of Beijing and obstructing justice by deleting some of his messages with Chinese officials when approached by the feds.<\/p>\n

He was acquitted of a separate charge of \u201cconspiring\u201d to act as an unregistered Chinese agent.<\/p>\n

The verdict came after jurors got a glimpse inside the drab six-story building at the foot of the Manhattan Bridge, where the feds claimed Lu opened the \u201cstation\u201d in February 2022 after attending a ceremony in China where officials announced that they\u2019d be opening 30 such outposts at sites all over the world.<\/p>\n

Jurors saw evidence of Officer Rongyan instructing Lu on how to hang the blue \u201cpolice station\u201d banner, which was displayed above a conference table in the site\u2019s drab office. Lu also had more than 50 contacts in his phone for officials in Chinese political and security officials, according to trial testimony.<\/p>\n

\"HarryLu Jianwang (far right) seen in China. U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of NY<\/p>\n

But prosecutors with the US Attorney\u2019s Office for the Eastern District did not reveal any further details on Lu or his partner, Chen Jinping, using the site to surveil enemies of the Chinese government.<\/p>\n

Trial evidence instead largely showed that the \u201cstation\u201d \u2014 where the FBI discovered a handful of computer monitors, the conference table and banner, and a ping-pong table covered in a red tablecloth \u2014 helped Fujian natives renew their Chinese driver\u2019s licenses remotely.<\/p>\n

Lu\u2019s lawyer, John Carman, described the license setup \u2014 which prosecutors dismissed as a \u201cfront\u201d \u2014 as evidence that Lu answered more to his neighbors than the Chinese government.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf Harry Lu is an \u2018agent,\u2019 he is the worst agent ever,\u201d Carman told jurors in his closing statement.<\/p>\n

Lu was\u00a0arrested at his Bronx home in 2023<\/a>, along with Jinping, in what the US government had touted as part of a sweeping crackdown on China\u2019s efforts to silence regime dissenters across the globe.<\/p>\n

Chen pleaded guilty in December 2024\u00a0to a charge of conspiring to act on China\u2019s behalf\u00a0<\/a>without telling US authorities. He\u2019s out on bond and will be sentenced at a later date.<\/p>\n

Lu, a Bronx resident and naturalized US citizen, cooly observed closing statements from the defense table, where he sat in a dark suit with an American flag pin affixed to its lapel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A local Chinatown community leader who the feds say ran a secret Chinese \u201cpolice station\u201d out of a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":230538,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[11827,827,9098,57,9,56,63,65,64,104,89504,58],"class_list":["post-230537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-brooklyn-federal-court","tag-china","tag-chinatown","tag-metro","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-police","tag-spies","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230537\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}