The Irvine woman who was arrested by the FBI at Los Angeles International Airport earlier this month for allegedly working for China, pleaded not guilty Friday to federal espionage charges.
Appearing in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom, Wanying “Heather” Zhang, 34, pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy and acting as an unregistered foreign agent for China after federal investigators alleged she had spied on family members of Taiwan’s president.
Zhang’s trial was scheduled for Nov. 30 in federal court in Santa Ana.
Wanying Zhang, 34, a.k.a. "Heather Zhang," of Irvine, was arrested Sunday by the FBI after she was charged in a federal criminal complaint with acting in the United States as an unregistered agent of the government of the People’s Republic of China (“PRC”), including by conducting surveillance of family members of a high-ranking Taiwanese government official. Zhang was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport, where she planned to board a flight to China. She is expected to make her initial appearance and be arraigned this afternoon in U.S. District Court in downtown Los Angeles. @usao_losangeles
— FBI Los Angeles (@FBILosAngeles) October 5, 2026
The Justice Department said Zhang allegedly traveled to Seattle in September 2025 at the direction of Chinese officials and surveilled the Taiwanese president’s son and his family. A copy of the complaint obtained by NBC News indicates the surveillance operation included sending photos, videos and license plate information.
“She coordinated the trip with an associate and used tradecraft to avoid detection,” Essayli said in a post on X. “She never notified the Attorney General she was acting for a foreign government, a federal offense.”
Prosecutors said she never notified the attorney general she was acting for a foreign government, which constitutes a federal offense.
If convicted, Zhang could face up to 10 years in federal prison.
The federal criminal complaint does not name the alleged target, but the FBI’s rapid response account on the social media platform X said it was the president’s son. Ting-Yu Lai, the president’s elder son, lives and works in the Seattle area as an engineer.
Taiwan’s Presidential Office confirmed President Lai Ching-te’s relatives were the targets, without specifying if it was the president’s son, saying that “this is a classic case of transnational repression,” according to The Associated Press.
“Taiwan condemns in the strongest terms such barbaric acts — which disregard human rights and national sovereignty and aim to suppress, threaten, or even harm individuals advocating for freedom and democracy or their families — as such behavior should not be tolerated in the civilized world,” spokesperson Karen Kuo said in a statement.
A spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry in Beijing told NBC News they were not aware of the incident, and added, “China has always opposed hyped-up accusations of ‘China spying’ that slander and smear the country.”
California records show Zhang has been a licensed real estate agent since 2016. A Zillow page shows she has sold seven homes in the last year around Orange County.
Taiwan and China split after a civil war in 1949, but Beijing claims the island as part of its own territory. Lai, who was voted into office in 2024, has said that Taiwan and Beijing do not belong to each other and that the “People’s Republic of China has no right to represent Taiwan.”
China considers him a separatist and has called him a “destroyer of peace.”
While in office, Lai has stepped up spending on defense for Taiwan, notably pledging to increase defense spending from 3% to 5% of the GDP, and pushing through a special budget for the construction of a T-Dome air defense system.
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