Long Island man sentenced to prison after admitting to be an illegal agent of the Chinese government

A man from Roslyn Heights who is prominent within the US Chinese community was sentenced on Wednesday to 20 months in a federal prison for acting as an illegal agent of the Chinese government during a coercive repatriation campaign of several years.

Quanzhong An, 58, who said a government lawyer, has a net assets of $ 44 million and has a great hotel in the heart of Flushing’s Chinatown, apologized for his conduct in a statement he read in Mandarin to the Court.

“I didn’t want to cause them any pain,” Ans victims said, translated by an interpreter of the Court. “I am looking for your clemency … I will use my prayer for motivation to continue with my own growth and positively influence all those around me.”

In addition to 20 months in prison, the American district judge Kiyo A. Matsumoto also sentenced 3 Years of supervised probation. Matsumoto said he will receive credit for the seven months that he has already spent at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn after his 2022 arrest.

“This conduct raises a serious threat to our national security,” said the judge, in a courtroom of the sixth floor at the Brooklyn Federal Palace.

A resident of the United States could face deportation, said the judge. The Prosecutor’s Office said that National Security investigations have realized the Culpial Declaration of AN.

Matsumoto also ordered that he paid a financial fine of approximately $ 5 million, including approximately $ 1.3 million in restitution to the victim and his family. The judge also imposed a fine of $ 50,000.

An Benjamin Brafman’s lawyer implored the judge to sentence a time and period of detention at home, citing his client’s health problems, which were exacerbated when he was held in the MDC.

“I really think, judge, in terms of general deterrence, he did not receive a slap on the wrist … He went through hell,” Brafman told the judge.

Brafman also sought to minimize his client’s behavior, saying that he had only contacted the victim known as “John Doe #2” once. They only resumed contact, Brafman said, when the victim contacted at the request of the FBI. The victim carried a cable during his subsequent conversations.

Brafman said his client “did not act as a sinister agent”, but as someone “trying to help.”

But the United States assistant prosecutor Alexander Solomon, who prosecuted the case, said that the stature of An as owner of an outstanding business made his victims “fear him” and described the deals “an extremely coercive situation.”

“John Doe No. 2 was being very educated with someone superior to him,” said Solomon, referring to a, who said “had immense confidence of the Chinese government.”

The prosecutors requested that he received 5 five years in prison, while the Department of Probation recommended receiving 36 months in prison, the judge said.

The prosecutors said that An, as of 2017, was an outstanding member of a campaign of the People’s Republic of China to threaten and harass an American resident and his family to return to China in exchange for economic benefits.

A first visited the house of the adult son of the resident in 2017, and then the following year, he sent his daughter and two Chinese government officials to the house, prosecutors said.

Then he visited the son several times, during which “served as a nozzle for the RPC by transmitting threatening messages on behalf of the RPC government,” prosecutors said.

The harassment included the presentation of a lawsuit in the Supreme Court of New York against the victim, who along with his son suffered serious emotional and financial consequences, as a result, said the judge.

The Chinese government had appointed the victim as one of his “100 main priority fugitives” as part of his “Hunt Fox Operation” to repatriate the alleged criminals, the judge said.

The victim was accused by the Chinese government of embezzlement of 264,000 euros in public money for their personal use, said the judge. The victim faced a possible life imprisonment in China.

A guilty declared of a position of acting as a foreign agent last May, but reaffirmed his statement of guilt on Wednesday with the addition of restitution and loss to the guilt agreement.

Prosecutors said they also broke other laws, which include committing bank fraud and money laundering by transferring millions of dollars from China to the financial institutions of the United States and deceiving United States banks about where money comes from.

One smiled out of court, but told a Newsday journalist who does not speak English in response to his reaction to his sentence.

“Quanzhong acted in the direction of the Government of the RPC to harass and intimidate people who live on American soil as part of a pernicious scheme to force their repatriation to the RPC,” American prosecutor John J. Durham said in a statement on Wednesday. “Thanks to our collective efforts, the scheme failed, and the defendant has been taken before justice. Our office remains firm in their efforts to protect both the national security interests of the United States and to the people who live in our district of transnational repression schemes perpetrated by hostile foreign powers.”