OTTAWA — While the case of Biwei Zhang moves through the courts in Brussels, where an appeals court has extended the detention of the Canadian intern from China accused of espionage inside the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s military high command, a second file involving a Chinese national living and studying in Ontario — whose phone, United States officials found, held photographs of himself and others in tactical formations holding rifle-styled firearms, after he was caught photographing American aircraft in Chicago and admitted to a similar operation at Toronto’s airport — is opening in federal court in Michigan.
Weiheng Zeng, a citizen of China who lives in Cambridge, Ontario, and is an undergraduate at the University of Waterloo, was charged on August 26 with one count of making false statements to federal officers.
The criminal complaint is supported by a 19-page affidavit sworn by Robert Holbrook, a special agent assigned to the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division. Holbrook alleges that a Chinese contact assigned Zeng specific aircraft and tail numbers, paid him $20 to $30 for each accepted photograph in yuan transferred to a Bank of China account, mailed him China Telecom SIM cards that allowed him to bypass Canadian cellular networks and sent him on two assignments involving FedEx facilities — one at Toronto Pearson International Airport in October 2025 and another at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago the following April.
For the Chicago assignment, Zeng allegedly admitted that a contact he believed was a Chinese government security official gave him a cover story in advance to recite if anyone stopped him. Zeng, who was born in 2004, is not charged with espionage.
The tactical photographs surfaced during the first of three interviews at the Ambassador Bridge, which links Windsor, Ontario, with Detroit, Michigan.
“ZENG’s phone was also found to contain pictures of him and other individuals in tactical clothing and in tactical formations, holding rifle-styled firearms,” the affidavit states. “When asked about those pictures, ZENG stated that the weapon was an ‘airsoft’ gun. ZENG stated that he had fired weapons before in Europe, but denied having any military service or training, or having any family who served in the military.”
Zeng was issued a United States B1/B2 visitor visa on October 11, 2022, and has entered the country approximately 24 times since then, Holbrook’s affidavit says.