China’s spies have used local private investigators for years to watch dissidents

As US officials remain on high alert for spy balloons in the skies over North America, Chinese government operatives have already tapped into a network of local private investigators and federal agents to illegally obtain intelligence on the ground, according to a flurry of federal indictments.

Over the past few years, indictments filed against US-based private detectives allege that some have traded on their federal law enforcement connections to obtain classified documents and private information on political dissidents living in the US and targeted by the Chinese Communist Party.

In some cases, the private detectives offered their contacts in federal agencies wads of cash but they also got by with gifts of expensive cigars and a good bottle of tequila, according to a federal indictment unsealed in 2022.

Derrick Taylor, a California-based private investigator who used to work as a federal agent with the US Dept of Homeland Security, allegedly asked an unnamed co-conspirator for information on “immigration status” for an unnamed dissident who lived in the US in July 2021, according to the indictment filed in Brooklyn federal court.

Taylor, who worked for 25 years for the Department of Homeland Security, had also claimed to work as a “security specialist” for Tesla CEO Elon Musk on his company web site.

He is alleged to have destroyed evidence and lied to investigators when confronted with claims that he accessed and distributed sensitive information from a restricted federal database related to dissidents living in the US. The data included their passport information, residences, flight records, and photographs, according to the court documents.

When Taylor contacted an unnamed government agent to obtain passport information about one dissident’s passport and status in the US, he allegedly gave the agent, known in court records as “Co-conspirator 2” the dissident’s birth date and asked for his “status and passport departure.”

“‘Is there a quick way that I can check if some guy’s departed to China?’” asked Taylor.

“The same day, CC2 responded, ‘He was admitted into the US until 11/26/2021 with a B2 Visa.’” Taylor responded, “‘Thank you brother! Do you smoke cigars or what’s your favorite tequila.’”

The co-conspirator declined the offer, according to court records.

Taylor did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday, but vigorously denied the allegations last year, according to court records.

He was indicted along with Craig Miller, a longtime federal agent who works in DHS’s Emergency Relief Operations in Minneapolis. Miller was accused of scuttling an investigation when he allegedly destroyed text messages in June, 2022 between him and Taylor, according to court records. Miller, who faces 20 years in prison, changed his plea to guilty in November. Sentencing in the case has been scheduled for May.

Three others operatives — Fan “Frank” Liu, 62, of Jericho, New York, Matthew Ziburis, a 49-year-old from Oyster Bay and Qiang “Jason” Sun, 40, of China — were previously indicted. They are accused of stalking and spying on US-based dissidents on behalf of the Chinese government.

According to court papers, Miller admitted under questioning that he provided the sensitive information from a restricted government database to Taylor in exchange for a gift card. Taylor allegedly shared the information with a “co-conspirator” who was working with Liu.

In addition to private investigators, federal agents have targeted Chinese spies engaged in Operation Fox Hunt, a program spearheaded by Chinese leader Xi Jinping beginning in 2014 to crack down on dissidents abroad.

“From in or about October 2016 through in or about May 2017, Sun Hoi Ying … hired private investigators in the United States to investigate Operation Fox Hunt targets, including a US citizen who previously worked in the PRC [People’s Republic of China], worked at a PRC government-owned company and was subsequently accused by the PRC government or embezzlement,” a February 2022 indictment reads.

“During the time that Sun was collecting information about Victim-1 for the PRC government, Victim-1’s daughter (Victim-2), a US citizen who was pregnant at the time, was held against her will in the PRC for approximately eight months.”

Many of the Chinese operatives work out of “police stations” set up in urban centers around the world, including New York City. Last year, The Post revealed that a local charity on an IRS blacklist was running one such police station in Chinatown.

The non-profit America ChangLe Association NY Inc. owns and operates the “service station” located above a noodle shop on the third floor of 107 East Broadway on the Lower East Side, according to public filings.

Last year, the IRS yanked the group’s tax-exempt status for its failure to submit tax filings for three straight years, according to public records.

The Manhattan station is part of a web of more than 100 such law enforcement offices set up around the world by the People’s Republic of China, ostensibly to help Chinese nationals renew their government-issued identification and drivers’ licenses.

But the stations have more “sinister” purposes, such as spying on the Chinese diaspora for the Chinese Communist Party, according to a recent whistle-blower report.

“Openly labeled as overseas police service stations … they contribute to ‘resolutely cracking down on all kinds of illegal and criminal activities involving overseas Chinese,’” according to a September 2022 report by Safeguard Defenders, a Madrid-based human rights group that documents Chinese repression around the world.