A man accused of running a secret Chinese spy outpost in a New York City police station has been convicted of acting as an illegal foreign agent.
Lu Jianwang, a U.S. citizen also known as “Harry Lu,” opened the station in lower Manhattan in 2022 on behalf of China’s Ministry of Public Security. The MPS is China’s primary domestic law enforcement and intelligence agency.
On Wednesday he was convicted on one count of acting as an illegal agent of the government of the People’s Republic of China and one count of obstruction of justice for destroying related evidence. Now, he faces up to 30 years behind bars.
“Lu Jianwang used a police station in New York City to target PRC dissidents in furtherance of the Chinese government’s political agenda,” James C. Barnacle Jr., the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s New York Field Office, said.
Beginning in January 2022, under orders from an official at the MPS, Lu, his co-defendant Chen Jinping, and others established the first known overseas police station in the United States.
Located in Manhattan’s Chinatown, the police station was part of a global scheme to create similar sites all over the world, prosecutors say.
Lu’s MPS handler tasked him with collecting information on behalf of the Chinese government, including the location of a pro-democracy advocate who had fled China for the United States.
In October 2022, the FBI conducted a search of the police station.
Lu and Chen were interviewed in connection with the search, and their phones were seized, with authorities noting that WeChat messages between the pair and their MPS handler had been deleted.
A blue banner reading “Fuzhou Police Overseas Service Station, New York, USA,” was also recovered from the site.
Chen pleaded guilty to conspiring to act as an agent of the PRC in connection with the station in December 2024. He currently awaits sentencing.
Lu, who also awaits sentencing, remains free on bail, according to The Associated Press. He faces 10 years behind bars for acting as an illegal foreign agent and up to 20 years in prison for the obstruction of justice.
The 64-year-old’s defense team claims that the police station was really a community center where people could renew their Chinese driver’s licenses remotely without having to go back to China, amid travel restrictions related to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Lu’s lawyer, John Carman, also claimed that people would meet there to play ping-pong and mahjong. He told reporters that he would appeal the verdict.
“This is not espionage. This is not spying. This is not intelligence gathering,” Carman said. “He wasn’t charged with any of that.”
According to prosecutors, the MPS has used contacts both within China and around the world to “influence, threaten, and coerce political dissidents abroad,” in an effort to silence them, prosecutors say.
