Bronx man convicted of running secret Chinese police station in Manhattan

A Bronx man was convicted by a federal jury in Brooklyn on Tuesday of acting as an illegal agent of the Chinese government and obstruction of justice for his role in operating an undeclared overseas police station in Manhattan’s Chinatown, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York announced.

Lu Jianwang, a U.S. citizen also known as “Harry Lu,” was found guilty on two counts of a superseding indictment following a one-week trial before U.S. District Judge Nina R. Morrison, according to federal prosecutors. He faces up to 30 years in prison when sentenced.

Lu’s co-defendant, Chen Jinping, pleaded guilty in December 2024 to conspiring to act as an agent of the People’s Republic of China in connection with the station and is awaiting sentencing, prosecutors said.

Beginning in January 2022, Lu and Chen worked under orders from an official of China’s Ministry of Public Security to establish what prosecutors described as the first known overseas police station in the United States operating on behalf of the MPS. The station was located in an office building at 107 East Broadway in lower Manhattan, according to court documents. When FBI agents searched the site in October 2022, they recovered a blue banner reading “Fuzhou Police Overseas Service Station, New York, USA,” prosecutors said.

The Ministry of Public Security is China’s primary domestic law enforcement and intelligence agency, according to the Justice Department. Prosecutors said the agency routinely monitors Chinese political dissidents living outside China, including in the United States, and has used contacts worldwide to influence, threaten and coerce people with views adverse to the Chinese government. The New York station was part of what prosecutors described as a broader global initiative by the ministry to establish overseas police service stations around the world.

At trial, prosecutors said they proved that Lu was tasked by his MPS handler with collecting information on behalf of the Chinese government, including locating a pro-democracy advocate who had fled China and resettled in the United States. None of the participants disclosed to the U.S. government that they were helping operate an undeclared foreign police station on American soil, prosecutors said.

Following the October 2022 search, FBI agents reviewed phones seized from both defendants and discovered that WeChat messages between the defendants and their MPS handler had been deleted, according to prosecutors.

“A police station operating in New York City at the direction of the Chinese government has been exposed, its sinister purpose disrupted, and its founder held accountable,” U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr. said in a statement.

The case was prosecuted by the office’s National Security and Cybercrime Section.