Chinese Fox Hunt agent convicted by New York jury seeks new trial, alleging racism

Precedent setting FBI case faces an acquittal motion from Connecticut man that hired former NYPD officer in Chinese Communist Party conspiracy

Zhu Yong, the 66-year-old Chinese national convicted in June of conspiring with People’s Republic agents including a former NYPD sergeant to forcibly repatriate a former Chinese official living in New Jersey, is now seeking an acquittal — claiming the former New York cop, a “lone white” co-defendant, influenced the jury with “racial animus” against “the Chinese codefendants.”

Zhu’s motion seeking a new trial — reported first by The Bureau — is the latest twist in a precedent-setting case involving at least 19 Chinese and American operatives in a chilling rendition conspiracy that ran from Beijing to Wuhan to New York and California, revealing high-level links to similar networks in Canada, and demonstrating how Chinese security officials travelling with fake work or tourist visas into North America, employ terrifying leverage in Chinese immigrant communities to target ex-patriots that have crossed powerful Chinese Communist Party officials.

The Bureau’s review of dozens of legal records in the case of Zhu and former NYPD officer Michael McMahon — the first successful prosecution of Beijing’s so-called “Fox Hunt” repatriations — also shows how the FBI, armed with a foreign agent registry and gritty investigative techniques — decoded Beijing’s ruthless, mafia-like operations in North American cities.

One of the more menacing examples, involved a third co-defendant in the case.

In September 2018, a security camera captured then 24-year-old Zheng Conying sauntering towards the Fox Hunt target’s home with another young thug, attempting to force in a door, before leaving this note: “If you are willing to go back to the mainland and spend 10 years in prison, your wife and children will be all right. That’s the end of this matter!” 

“Before I saw this, I felt that the threats from the Chinese Communist Party was only a mental threat to me,” the victim Xu Jin testified in court. “However, when I saw that note, I realized that it had become a physical threat.”

Xu, a former Wuhan city official, had moved to the United States in 2010.

Five years later his face was broadcast globally on an Interpol wanted list plastered across the pages of China Daily, with 99 other alleged corrupted officials believed to be hiding in Canada, United States and Australia.

Xu and his wife were accused of taking millions in bribes, but denied this, saying their only sin was making enemies in the Communist Party.

In October 2020, announcing the charges and broader concerns discovered in the investigation that focused on Zhu and McMahon, FBI director Chris Wray explained how secret Chinese police units terrorize Fox Hunt targets and their families in the United States.

“Their family members, both here in the United States and in China, have been threatened and coerced; and those back in China have even been arrested for leverage,” Wray said. “These are not the actions we would expect from a responsible nation state. Instead, it’s more like something we’d expect from an organized criminal syndicate.”

In a different Fox Hunt case, Wray added, Chinese police sent an “emissary” to the family of a target they couldn’t locate.

“The message they said to pass on,” Wray said, “[was] the target had two options: return to China promptly, or commit suicide.”

The same notorious China Daily wanted list that named Xu Jin included numerous Canadian Fox Hunt targets, most living in Vancouver and Toronto, according to Canadian police sources.

Some of these Fox Hunt cases are now being investigated as foreign interference by the RCMP, a national force seemingly overmatched by aggressive Chinese state actors, while lacking the foreign agent registry laws that have been crucial to FBI cases.

“In Canada we just knock on doors and talk to people,” said a Canadian law enforcement source familiar with FBI investigations, and knowledgeable on suspected Fox Hunt collaborators in Canada.

These RCMP targets allegedly include several wealthy businessmen in Vancouver and Toronto with links to the Communist Party’s overseas interference arm, the United Front Work Department, according to The Bureau’s national security sources, as well as suspected ties to underground casinos and transnational organized crime.

“In the U.S. they go in and make arrests,” added the Canadian law enforcement source, who was not authorized to speak publicly, “because their laws have more teeth.”

The source said the type of threats cited by FBI director Wray — such as Beijing’s Fox Hunt emissaries referring to suicide — “are not new” and have been conveyed in Canadian Chinese communities by Chinese gangsters.

Answering questions fromThe Bureau regarding RCMP investigations and knowledge of connections between organized crime groups and Communist Party foreign interference operations, the force issued this response.

“The RCMP is aware of a broad range of activities that may contribute to foreign actor interference by foreign entities such as the Chinese Communist Party. This can include overt, covert, legal, and criminal activity such as the use of organized criminal groups with ties to the People’s Republic of China.

Due to operational concerns, we cannot elaborate further on the link between organized crime and foreign actor interference.”