An alleged Chinese agent arrested at Los Angeles International Airport over the weekend will remain in federal custody, a federal judge ruled Wednesday during a court hearing. The decision comes amid concern from the FBI that she may try to flee the country if released, law enforcement sources previously told CBS News.
Prosecutors successfully argued that 34-year-old realtor Wanying Zhang posed too great a flight risk. She had offered to post more than $1.2 million in property for her bond.
Prosecutors told Judge Steve Kim at the L.A. hearing that Zhang has a brother with a history of working for the Chinese government, and that her parents and siblings live in China.
The Orange County mother is now facing federal prosecution for allegedly surveilling the Taiwanese president’s son in Washington last year at the direction of Chinese government officials.
Investigators have said Zhang owned a business in China, regularly has money deposited in a Chinese bank account and has parents, a brother and sister currently living there, CBS News has learned.
One law enforcement source said Zhang also had a Chinese passport that was not recovered during an FBI search of her home. Assistant U.S. Attorney Amanda Elbogen confirmed this Wednesday in court.
The sources provided information anonymously as they were not authorized to speak on the record. Zhang’s husband and sister declined to comment.
Elbogen told the court Wednesday that Zhang had received $190,000 into a Chinese bank account from an “unregistered cryptocurrency exchange” business and had “hundreds of thousands of dollars” at her disposal in China.
Zhang is currently in the custody of U.S. Marshals in Los Angeles. She was arrested Sunday trying to board a flight to Shanghai at LAX, CBS News was first to report.
She previously appeared briefly in court on Monday, represented by a public defender. The judge had told Zhang to get a private defense attorney by the time of her detention hearing Wednesday, which she did.
Prosecutors Wednesday accused Zhang of lying on the forms she filled out declaring her assets after her arrest, saying that she only had one property when in fact she had several.
Zhang’s defense attorney, Craig Harbaugh, told the judge it was a “misunderstanding.”
However, Kim noted “inconsistencies” about the number of properties and assets Zhang owns and “where the money is coming from.”
During the hearing, Elbogen also referred to Zhang as a “secret agent of a hostile foreign power” and accused her of “spying” on behalf of the Chinese government.
“She has been lying to her own family about who she is,” Elbogen told the court. Elbogen claimed Zhang has traveled to China 12 times since 2014 and internationally 29 times, including to Paris, France and Japan.
Harbaugh countered that the only allegation the government has made of spying dated back to September 2025, and that his client’s last contact with her Chinese government handlers, according to the complaint, was in October 2025.
Zhang appeared in court Wednesday in shackles and a white jumpsuit. Her husband, Eric Ding, a realtor at the same Irvine, California, firm as his wife, watched from the public gallery with his sister, attorney Elaine Lori, beside him. Both Ding and Lori attended Monday’s hearing as well.
According to the criminal complaint against Zhang, she attended the University of International Relations in Beijing between 2010 and 2014, which is run by China’s Ministry of State Security, the country’s intelligence agency and secret police.
FBI counterintelligence special agent Kevin Holt wrote in his affidavit in the complaint that the ministry “recruits heavily” from the university.
Two law enforcement sources told CBS News that Zhang was one of the top students in her class at UIR.
Zhang’s Facebook page shows she is friends with eight current or former staff and students at the university.
As an example of Zhang’s alleged Chinese government connections, Elbogen said Wednesday that when Zhang lived in China, she was able to fast-track government permission to move her residence from Beijing to another city.
In its criminal complaint, the FBI said it obtained Zhang’s text messages with Chinese intelligence officials, plotting and executing a plan last year to secretly film Taiwan’s first son, Lai Ting-yu, and his family in the Seattle suburb where they live. Investigators alleged they have footage from a neighbor’s security camera catching Zhang in the midst of her alleged surveillance mission.
Zhang’s suspected accomplice on her alleged Seattle trip, named only as Individual 1 in the complaint, left on a one-way ticket to China about two weeks ago, prosecutors said during Wednesday’s hearing.
On Tuesday, CBS News also revealed Zhang’s links to a Chinese American advocacy group with deep ties to the Chinese government.
She traveled to San Francisco with the organization, the All American Chinese Association, to celebrate Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit there in 2023. Pro-China activists then attacked pro-democracy protesters outside Xi’s hotel. There is no evidence Zhang was involved in the violence.
A photograph shows her behind an AACA banner, standing next to the group’s leader, Edward Cai, who previously served as vice president for an organization so close to the Chinese government, it was forced to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
FARA requires agents of foreign governments to inform the Justice Department of their status and any lobbying, attempted influence or other activities in the U.S.
Cai and the AACA did not respond to a request for comment.
Reached by phone on Sunday, Ding told CBS News, “I don’t know anything yet.” He declined to comment further on Monday in federal court.
