Eileen Wang, who is the former mayor of the LA suburb of Arcadia, California, has officially pleaded guilty in federal court to a felony count of acting as an illegal agent for the government of China.
Wang entered her plea in an LA federal court, admitting that she cooperated under the discreation and control of Chinese government officials. She now faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison and is scheduled for sentencing in October of this year.
Sources shared how she worked with her former fiancé to run a website called US News Center. This site falsely presented itself as an independent local news outlet serving the Chinese American community.
Federal prosecutors revealed that Wang and Sun received pre-written, pro-Beijing articles from officials in China through encrypted WeChat messages. They ended up publishing these materials on their platform exactly as instructed.