She Pleaded Guilty to Being China’s Agent. The FBI Is Still Pulling the Thread in Southern California.
On May 29, 2026, former Arcadia, California Mayor Eileen Wang (D) stood before a federal judge and pleaded guilty to acting as an unregistered agent of the People’s Republic of China. Her campaign treasurer is already serving four years in federal prison for the same crime. That case is closed as to guilt; only sentencing remains.
What isn’t closed is the broader investigation it came from. On July 28, 2026, FBI agents fanned out across the Inland Empire and Beverly Hills executing sealed search warrants — a reminder that federal investigators believe the Wang case was not the end of the story, whatever it eventually connects to.
This piece keeps those two threads carefully separate: what a federal court has already established through a guilty plea, and what federal agents are still investigating with no charges filed and no confirmed targets named.
- 18 U.S.C. §951 the charge Eileen Wang pleaded guilty to — acting as an unregistered agent of the People's Republic of China — DOJ, C.D. Cal.
- 48 months the federal prison sentence her 2022 campaign treasurer, Yaoning "Mike" Sun, is currently serving for the same charge — DOJ, C.D. Cal.
- 5+ properties searched under sealed federal warrants on July 28, 2026, with no arrests and no charges filed against anyone searched — ABC7, CBS News LA
Eileen Wang (D) was elected to the Arcadia City Council in November 2022 and rose to mayor in February 2026 under the city’s rotating-mayor system. She switched her party registration from Republican to Democrat the same year she first ran, and her council campaign drew endorsements from Rep. Judy Chu (D), LA County Supervisor Hilda Solis (D), and former Assemblymember Michael Eng (D). She resigned her seat on May 11, 2026, days after federal prosecutors unsealed charges against her.
On May 29, Wang pleaded guilty to a single count under 18 U.S.C. §951 — acting as an agent of a foreign government without notifying the U.S. Attorney General, the same statute used against foreign spies and lobbyists who conceal who they actually work for. She was released on a $25,000 bond. U.S. District Judge Michael Fitzgerald set sentencing for October 6, 2026; Wang faces up to 10 years in federal prison.
Former Arcadia, California mayor Eileen Wang pleads guilty to acting as an illegal agent of the Chinese government, admitting she operated on Beijing's direction while serving in local office.
She wasn’t operating alone. Her fiancé at the time and 2022 campaign treasurer and manager, Yaoning “Mike” Sun, a Chino Hills resident, pleaded guilty to the identical charge in October 2025 — seven months before Wang’s own plea. A federal judge has already sentenced Sun to 48 months in prison. He is serving that sentence now.
According to the Justice Department, Wang and Sun operated a Chinese-language outlet called the “U.S. News Center” between 2020 and 2022, publishing pro-Beijing content on direction from Chinese officials. Prosecutors say the pattern was specific and fast: when instructions arrived over WeChat, the outlet would post content denying well-documented forced-labor abuses against Uyghurs in Xinjiang within minutes of receiving the talking points — the kind of turnaround that signals coordination, not coincidence.
A third man, Chen Jun— also known as “John Chen,” 71, Sun’s Southern California co-conspirator and a distinct individual from unrelated defendants who share that common name in other federal China-influence cases — was separately convicted on related charges and sentenced to 20 months.
“Individuals in our country who covertly do the bidding of foreign governments undermine our democracy.”
U.S. Attorney's Office statement on the Wang case, released by U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli
One more name surfaces in both the Wang case and the raid described below: James Su, CEO of EDI Media Inc., parent company of the Chinese-language outlet iCity News, which has been registered as a FARA foreign agent since May 2022. Public campaign-finance records show a documented $500 donation from Su to Wang’s 2022 campaign. Su has not been charged with any crime. His attorney, Andrew Cowan, says Su “is an American citizen who made campaign donations across the political spectrum and does not have any idea why he was served with search warrants.”
On July 28, 2026, FBI agents executed sealed federal search warrants at multiple Inland Empire and Los Angeles-area locations in a single coordinated morning: the home of San Bernardino County Supervisor Curt Hagman, the home of Ontario City Councilmember Alan Wapner, the home of private attorney and former Ontario Planning Commissioner Frank Lizarraga, and the home and office of James Su, whose name had already surfaced in the Wang case. Agents also searched a Beverly Hills mansion at 613 N. Canon Dr., sold in 2023 for $24.6 million to a mainland-China family, and served a subpoena on Ontario City Hall and Ontario International Airport for records — including, per a source who reviewed a warrant, communications between city officials and Chinese automaker BYD.
None of that tells us what investigators actually believe, because the warrants themselves are sealed. An FBI spokesperson would say only: “We are executing federal warrants today at various locations… Our warrants are under seal by the court, and so I’m unable to comment on the nature of the investigation.” No one has been arrested. No one has been charged. It is not established — and this piece does not assert — that Hagman, Wapner, or Lizarraga is even a confirmed target of the investigation, let alone that any of them did anything wrong; outlets covering the raid describe it only as connected to a “broader” or “larger” pattern of foreign-influence probes touching Southern California, not as a confirmed extension of the Wang case specifically.
FBI agents execute search warrants across San Bernardino County and Ontario, hitting the homes of Supervisor Curt Hagman and Councilmember Alan Wapner. The FBI says the warrants remain under seal and declines to detail the investigation.
Eileen Wang (D) — pleaded guilty May 29, 2026; sentencing set for October 6, 2026; faces up to 10 years.
Yaoning “Mike” Sun — pleaded guilty October 2025; sentenced to 48 months; currently serving.
Chen Jun (“John Chen”), 71 — convicted on related charges; sentenced to 20 months.
Curt Hagman, Alan Wapner, Frank Lizarraga, James Su — homes and offices searched July 28, 2026; NONE charged; warrants remain sealed; not confirmed as investigation targets.
Local officials responded carefully, without prejudging anyone. Ontario Mayor Paul Leon, whose office is nonpartisan, publicly asked Councilmember Wapner to step back from his outside board positions, including his seat on the regional airport authority, while the investigation runs its course: “it would probably be prudent… to see him step back… until we see this through… I am nobody’s judge.”
Rep. Norma Torres (D-Pomona), whose district covers part of the Inland Empire, said she is “deeply troubled by the reports the FBI has executed warrants against elected officials in San Bernardino County… our community has zero tolerance for any corruption.” Her statement is notable for what it doesn’t do: it demands accountability if wrongdoing is found, without declaring that any has been.
That restraint matters here specifically because this site’s editorial mission is documenting fraud and governance failure in Democratic-run jurisdictions — and Hagman and Wapner are not Democrats. Naming them as this story’s subject, or attaching a party label to unconfirmed search subjects, would get the facts and the mission both wrong. The documented record belongs to Wang and Sun. The July 28 raid belongs to an open federal investigation whose targets, if any, have not been disclosed.
A Democratic mayor and her campaign treasurer have already admitted, under oath, to acting as agents of the Chinese Communist Party from inside Southern California city government. That record is closed. What isn’t closed is everything the FBI searched for on July 28 — four more properties, a Beverly Hills mansion, and a city hall’s worth of records — without a single arrest, charge, or confirmed target attached to any of it. The pattern of Chinese Communist Party influence operations reaching into Southern California local government is bigger than one convicted mayor, and federal investigators are still pulling the thread.
