LOS ANGELES — A California woman accused of acting as a Chinese spy inside the U.S. will remain jailed pending her trial after a judge sided Wednesday with federal prosecutors who argued that she poses a flight risk.
Wanying Zhang, 34, who sometimes goes by Heather, will remain in pretrial detention following the ruling by U.S. Magistrate Judge Steve Kim. The FBI arrested her Sunday at Los Angeles International Airport before she could board a flight to China.
In a criminal complaint, prosecutors accused Zhang of spying on a son of Taiwan’s president outside his residence in the Seattle area at the behest of Chinese officials. Zhang, of Irvine, about 42 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles, hadn’t registered as a foreign agent as required, they said.
Zhang was represented in court Wednesday by veteran criminal defense attorney Craig Harbaugh, who argued she wouldn’t flee in part because of her strong family connections to Southern California, where she lives with her husband and two young daughters.
“The government’s theory — she’s been a sleeper agent for the last 10 years, working as a real estate agent, raising her family and will choose to go to China and abandon her work, her family and her home — it’s not supported,” Harbaugh said.
Zhang’s family had been willing to put up their home equity — valued at $700,000 — combined with bonds from her husband, his sister, his father and a family friend totaling $120,000 as an assurance that she would appear in court.
But prosecutors countered that she had “hundreds of thousands of dollars available to her” in China, as well as investments in a business and contacts that could allow her to flee easily.
“I don’t think it’s a very strong argument that she’s that tied to her family here,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Amanda Elbogen said, casting Zhang as a lying foreign agent with the skills and resources to evade detection and capture.
An investigation found Zhang attended China’s University of International Relations, which an FBI investigator said in court documents is “closely affiliated with China’s intelligence apparatus.”
The charging document alleges Zhang had been communicating with a former classmate, who is now believed to be a Chinese official, through whom she had arranged an agreement to conduct surveillance of the Taiwanese president’s son. The document says she later captured photos, video and license plate information about him and sent them to her alleged Chinese handler.
She is alleged to have done all of that alongside an unidentified “Individual 1,” according to the complaint, who prosecutors said Wednesday had already fled to China two weeks ago.
Zhang wore a white jail jumpsuit and remained shackled for the entirety of Wednesday’s proceedings, a departure from her initial appearance Monday, when she was uncuffed and wore street clothes, with her hair neatly styled.
Wednesday’s hearing had several testy moments among prosecutors, Harbaugh and Kim, largely over whether Zhang’s pattern of one-way flights overseas was a credible defense that she wasn’t a flight risk and whether she had other U.S. properties to rely on for monetary assets.
Discussion in court revealed Zhang had disclosed only one residence to pretrial services, while her husband later revealed they owned two more, which her attorney said was a misunderstanding.
“She lied to pretrial services. She’s a real estate agent; she should know what properties she owns,” Elbogen countered.
Zhang is due back in court as early as Oct. 19 for a preliminary hearing — if federal prosecutors don’t indict her before then.
