A 24-year-old Chinese international student, identified as Weiheng Zeng, studying at a Canadian university, has been charged by U.S. authorities with making false statements. This allegation stems from his suspected role in taking photographs of specific aircraft and freight logistics facilities at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, purportedly under the direction of a Chinese Communist Party intelligence liaison. The incident reportedly occurred after he lied during an interrogation at the U.S. border.
Federal investigators and experts have highlighted this case as indicative of the long-standing efforts by the Chinese Communist Party in intelligence collection in Chicago.
According to the charging documents from the FBI, Zeng entered the United States on April 11 of this year, driving a van across the border at Detroit. He claimed his visit was to see his sister, who is studying at a university in Chicago.
However, on April 21, surveillance footage from the FedEx freight parking lot at O’Hare Airport captured Zeng lingering in the area. Disturbingly, the footage showed him climbing onto a construction forklift and taking photographs of planes from American Airlines, United Airlines, and Atlas Air, including their tail numbers.
Zeng returned to Canada in late April. In late August, when he attempted to re-enter the United States, border officials found photographs and related aerial images of the FedEx parking lot on his electronic devices and cloud accounts, leading to his detention.
The indictment states that Zeng initially presented himself as merely an amateur aviation enthusiast. However, under further questioning from investigators, he confessed to being hired online by a “Chinese (CCP) contact.” He claimed that this contact had instructed him to photograph specific aircraft and internal FedEx facilities, expressing interest in data concerning the logistics of American air freight, as well as railway and highway schedules, with the assertion that this information was intended for “research purposes.”
Additionally, Zeng admitted that he was aware the contact worked for a department within the Chinese Communist Party responsible for national security.
Presently, Zeng is being held at the federal detention center in Detroit, facing charges of making false statements, which carry a maximum sentence of five years in prison. Prosecutors indicated that he used Detroit as a transit point for conducting these activities.
John Cohen, a former intelligence chief at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and now an ABC News contributor, asserted that this case exhibits typical characteristics of espionage operations. He noted that the ability of the masterminds behind such actions to recruit manipulable informants is particularly striking. Cohen pointed out that Illinois, with its multitude of top-tier universities, research institutions, and high-tech companies, has long been a primary target for Chinese intelligence efforts aimed at acquiring commercial secrets and sensitive information.
The Chicago region has a history of similar cases, including the 2012 sentencing of Hanjuan Jin for stealing trade secrets from Motorola, and the 2023 conviction of Chaoqun Ji, a graduate of the Illinois Institute of Technology, for recruiting scientists on behalf of the Chinese intelligence services.