A former NYPD cop turned private investigator and two Chinese citizens were found guilty Wednesday in a landmark case taking aim at the Chinese government’s illegal efforts to extort dissidents living overseas.
The three men played a part in China’s years-long pressure campaign against dissident Xu Jin, a former Wuhan municipal government official, and his family, with McMahon using his investigative skills to track down where Xu lived in New Jersey, prosecutors said during the two-week trail in Brooklyn federal court.
Michael McMahon, 55, a retired NYPD sergeant, and another man, Zhu Yong, 66, were convicted of acting as a foreign agent and interstate stalking, while a third, Zheng Chongring, 27, was convicted of stalking charges but cleared of being a foreign agent.
Prosecutors described the scheme as part of a sweeping Chinese initiative, dubbed “Operation Fox Hunt,” aimed at finding so-called corruption suspects living overseas and forcing them to return to China to face charges. The Chinese government bypassed U.S. officials and acted illegally on American soil to harass Xu in an operation run by a Chinese cop and prosecutor, prosecutors said.
“McMahon knew exactly what was going on right from the beginning,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Meredith Arfa said in her closing argument Wednesday. “McMahon, of course, knew the overall purpose of this multi-day scheme. He knew the purpose was to coerce Xu Jin to return to China.”
The plot involved flying forcing Xu’s elderly father to fly to the U.S. and dropping him on Xu’s sister-in-law’s doorstep on April 5, 2017 with a mission: get his son to come back and face the charges against him.
“It was very shocking,” Xu said on the stand. “I was very angry because the Wuhan officials and the prosecutor’s office did things like this to an 80 somewhat-year-old man and he had a bad health condition and he was being forced to come to the U.S.”
Zheng came into the picture in 2018, when prosecutors said…
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