A Chino Hills man was sentenced to 48 months in federal prison for acting as an illegal agent of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), including while serving as a campaign advisor to a political candidate who won election to a Southern California city council, the U.S. Department of Justice announced.
Yaoning “Mike” Sun, 65, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner after pleading guilty in October 2025 to one count of acting as an illegal agent of a foreign government.
“Federal law enforcement will not allow hostile foreign nations to infiltrate the governance of our nation’s political bodies,” First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said in a statement. “The relentlessness of PRC intelligence operations in our country must be met by equal relentlessness on our part to secure, protect, and defend the United States.”
“When Americans vote for elected officials, they expect them to represent the interests of their constituents – not those of a foreign adversary like the Chinese government,” said Assistant Director Roman Rozhavsky of the FBI’s Counterintelligence and Espionage Division. “By exploiting his position as a campaign advisor, Yaoning Sun attempted to undermine our political processes and democratic institutions for the benefit of the Chinese Communist Party. Today’s sentencing underscores the unwavering commitment of the FBI and our partners to defending the homeland and holding accountable anyone who tries to subvert the will of American voters at the behest of our adversaries.”
According to court documents, Sun acted in the United States as an agent of the PRC and its officials from at least 2022 to January 2024 without notifying the Attorney General, as required by law. At the direction and control of PRC government officials, Sun coordinated with U.S.-based individuals to promote the PRC’s interests by, among other efforts, “orchestrating” a team to help elect a politician identified in court papers as “Individual 1” to political office and by promoting pro-PRC propaganda in the United States.
From 2020 through 2023, Sun and Individual 1 operated a purported news website for the local Chinese American community and received and executed directives from PRC officials to post pro-PRC content, court documents state. Throughout 2022, Sun worked as Individual 1’s campaign advisor; Individual 1 was elected to a city council in November 2022. In December 2022, Sun attended a Southern California meeting with a group that included Individual 1; PRC officials were told this was a “team dedicated” to PRC interests, according to Sun’s plea agreement.
Prosecutors said Sun also closely surveilled the then-President of Taiwan during her April 2023 visit to Southern California, reporting her movements directly to PRC officials. During that visit, Sun sent real-time updates on President Tsai Ing-Wen’s movements to a Los Angeles-based PRC consular official, sought that official’s approval to publish an article about her visit on the website he operated with Individual 1, and photographed individuals protesting for and against President Tsai, sending those images to the consular official.
In February 2023, Sun drafted a report to PRC officials to solicit additional funding and taskings, summarizing his personal background, including past service in China’s People’s Liberation Army. In the report, he wrote that he had led “delegations of U.S. dignitaries and cultural workers to China,” would “persist in resisting any hostile forces that undermine the friendship of U.S.-China relations, and Chinese secessionist forces,” and “most of all, during the 2022 U.S. midterm elections, I orchestrated and organized my team to win the election for city council” for Individual 1, whom Sun called a “new political star,” according to the plea agreement.
Sun’s report also outlined issues concerning “anti-China forces” overseas, including opposition to independence for Taiwan, Tibet, and Xinjiang, as well as matters involving Falun Gong, a spiritual movement banned in China. He proposed “using part of our Los Angeles organization’s professional core team” to counter those groups and requested $80,000 from the PRC government to fund a pro-PRC demonstration at a Fourth of July parade in Washington, D.C.
Throughout 2023 and 2024, Sun communicated with an official at the Consulate General of the PRC in Los Angeles regarding Southern California activities related to Taiwan, according to the Justice Department.
“As an agent for the PRC, \[Sun] worked covertly in the United States with his primary co-conspirator John Chen, a/k/a ‘Chen Jun,’” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum. They described Chen as a high-level member of the PRC intelligence apparatus who regularly attended elite Chinese Communist Party functions, including military parades, and met personally with PRC President Xi Jinping. “Per his own report, and other communications between Chen and PRC officials, \[Sun] served as Chen’s right-hand man in the United States for decades,” prosecutors said.
Chen was sentenced in November 2024 to 20 months in federal prison in the Southern District of New York after pleading guilty to acting as an illegal agent of the PRC and conspiracy to bribe a public official.
The FBI investigated the case. Assistant U.S. Attorney Amanda B. Elbogen of the National Security Division prosecuted it, with assistance from Trial Attorney Garrett Coyle of the Department of Justice’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section.
Comments
0 Comments deleted by Administrator