Caught at the departure gate: FBI arrests California realtor accused of spying on Taiwan president's son

LOS ANGELES: The FBI arrested a 34-year-old California woman at Los Angeles International Airport on Sunday as she prepared to board a flight to China, accusing her of spying on the son of Taiwan's president at Beijing's direction. Wanying Zhang, also known as "Heather," of Irvine, was charged with acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government, the FBI said. She is due to appear in a Los Angeles federal court on Monday. According to a federal complaint signed on Saturday, Zhang travelled to the Seattle area on September 1, 2025 with an associate described only as "Individual 1", at the direction of Chinese officials. There, she allegedly surveilled a close relative of a Taiwanese government official — identified by the FBI in a social media post as a son of Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te, and named by the New York Post as Lai Ting-yu, a US-based engineer in his 30s. The affidavit is unusually vivid. Neighbour security footage allegedly showed Zhang and her associate waiting outside the relative's home in a rented black SUV; when the family arrived, the pair "quickly sat up within a black SUV, took out what appears to be their phones, and held their phones out in a manner indicating that they were taking pictures and/or videos of the family." Photos, video and licence-plate information of the son and his family were then sent to the Chinese officials, the Justice Department said. Investigators say they recovered WeChat exchanges from Zhang's iCloud account — obtained under a search warrant — that show her communicating with two people she appeared to understand were Chinese government officials. In one September 2025 exchange, Zhang allegedly told an official she had seen the president's son: "It's that young one," she wrote. The official asked whether she was available for an audio call; Zhang replied that she was recording video of him. "She coordinated the trip with an associate and used tradecraft to avoid detection," said Bill Essayli, the first assistant US attorney for the Central District of California. "She never notified the Attorney General she was acting for a foreign government, a federal offense." The Chinese embassy in Washington and the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office did not immediately respond to requests for comment. It was not clear whether Zhang had retained a lawyer. The allegations come from a criminal complaint and remain unproven in court. The case lands in a fraught moment. Lai Ching-te and his Democratic Progressive Party champion Taiwan's separate identity from China — a position that infuriates Beijing, which claims the self-ruled island as its territory and has vowed to "unify" it by force if necessary. Washington has no formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan but remains its most important backer and arms supplier. If the allegations hold, the arrest is a reminder that the cross-strait shadow war now runs through suburban Seattle — and through the phones of people who believed they were invisible.