Alleged Chinese Agent Tied to $15 Billion Cambodian Scams

This just in: China is not a nation friendly to the United States. 

We've known this for some time, of course. China is at best a rival, at worst, an adversary. It may one day be an outright enemy. We've seen time and again reports of Chinese nationals in the United States, up to various nefarious schemes. One such is the supposed Irvine, California realtor Wanying "Heather" Zhang, who is in hot water with the FBI over accusations that she is an unregistered foreign agent.

Now, it seems she is also involved with a Cambodian crime syndicate that has allegedly bilked Americans out of millions in various fraud schemes.

Last week, the FBI charged Irvine realtor Wanying "Heather" Zhang, 34, with operating as an unregistered foreign agent after they allegedly caught her surveilling the Taiwanese president's son in Seattle in 2025. She was accompanied by a travel companion whom CBS News has identified as Fatai Miao, 54.

Zhang seems to be doing very well indeed for a realtor. Now that's a profession where it's possible to make some pretty good money, if one is a good salesman, but Zhang appears to have been part of a circle of people living the lifestyles of the rich and notorious.

During her time in California, Zhang appears to have traveled in wealthy circles, posing for photos on the Chinese social media site Xiaohongshu in a Bugatti sports car. She wrote that the car belonged to her friend. The car appears to be owned by a man described by the Justice Department as the "enforcer" in an alleged multibillion-dollar fraud ring fueled by modern slavery.

The U.S. government claims international conglomerate the Prince Group conducted at least $15 billion of online scams targeting Americans, using workers in at least 10 alleged forced labor camps in Cambodia.

This is an industrial-scale scam, and this person has ties to the group. I

It gets worse:

Zhang also forged a yearslong relationship with Miao, who is the registered agent and organizer for Yuanjin Development & Construction LLC, located at a five-bedroom home on Interstellar Street in Irvine.

Miao, a construction entrepreneur, has a business registered at the home, a $4.5 million suburban house in Irvine, that prosecutors claim was also used as a "stash house" for an alleged Chinese money laundering organization. That operation allegedly worked in concert with the Sinaloa Cartel, according to a criminal complaint filed in 2023.

The nature of that relationship is not stated. And, wow, that's a laundry list of reported criminal connections; not only a scam ring in Cambodia, but also one of Mexico's most notorious criminal cartels. And, we have to ask, to what end? She's a Chinese national living and working in the United States, and it's a safe bet that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has a pretty fair idea what she's up to; it's a better-than-even bet that whatever she's up to, the CCP is wetting its beak in to some degree or another, although there is as yet no evidence of that.

What this should do, however, is prompt some increased scrutiny on Chinese nationals working in the United States. Why are these people here? What are they doing? Why did we give them visas, and why are we allowing them to do business here?

You can see previous RedState coverage of Zhang and her connections here and here. 

Former Congressman Eric Swalwell was unavailable for comment.

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