A federal grand jury indicted Lu Jianwang, also known as Harry Lu, 64, on charges arising from his alleged operation of an undisclosed Chinese government outpost inside a nonprofit office in Manhattan's Chinatown [1][2]. Prosecutors brought three counts to trial in the Eastern District of New York: acting as an agent of a foreign government without notifying the Attorney General, destruction of evidence by deleting WeChat messages sent by a Chinese government handler, and conspiracy to act as a foreign agent [1][3]. The conspiracy count, which would have required the government to prove a coordinated scheme with at least one other person, survived pretrial motions and was submitted to the jury alongside the two substantive charges [2][4].
On May 13, 2026, a Brooklyn jury convicted Lu on both the foreign-agent count and the obstruction count tied to the deleted WeChat messages, while acquitting him of the conspiracy charge [1][3]. Trial evidence showed that Lu maintained and staffed the Chinatown office on behalf of the Fuzhou public security bureau, a provincial Chinese law-enforcement body, without registering with or disclosing that relationship to the U.S. Attorney General as required by federal law [2][4]. Prosecutors introduced evidence that Lu subsequently deleted communications from his Chinese government contact after learning he was under federal investigation, forming the basis of the obstruction count [1][2].
No sentencing date has been publicly reported. Lu faces potential federal imprisonment on the two counts of conviction, and the acquittal on the conspiracy charge will not affect the guidelines calculation for the surviving counts [3]. Defense counsel John Carman had argued that Lu was a community volunteer with no covert intent, a position the jury rejected on the two principal counts [3].
The verdict marks the first federal conviction directly tied to China's network of unauthorized overseas "police stations" operating on American soil, a series of law-enforcement fronts that the Justice Department and allied governments have identified as instruments of transnational repression [1][4]. The Brooklyn prosecution is expected to inform parallel investigations and prosecutions in other jurisdictions where similar outposts have been documented [2][4].