Ex-NYPD Detective Accused of Stalking Americans for China Goes ...

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On a fall day in 2018, two men drove from Brooklyn to a home in a New Jersey suburb. They pounded on the front door. They went to the back deck and peered inside the glass doors. Finally, they taped a note for a former Chinese government official hiding inside with his wife.

“If you are willing to go back to the mainland and spend 10 years in prison, your wife and children will be safe and sound,” it read.

Whether the men were China’s agents or its unwitting pawns is the central question in a landmark case that began in Brooklyn federal court on Wednesday. It is the first trial related to what China calls Operation Fox Hunt, a global effort that the authoritarian government says is aimed at fugitives, but which U.S. prosecutors say is intended to stamp out dissent using extortion and intimidation.

Three defendants are Michael McMahon of New Jersey, a retired New York Police Department sergeant turned private investigator; Yong Zhu, also known as Jason Zhu, of Queens; and Congying Zheng of Brooklyn. The government says Mr. Zheng was one of the men who delivered the letter, using an address provided by Mr. Zhu and Mr. McMahon.

All are charged with acting as unlawful agents of China, interstate stalking and conspiracy. They face up to 10 years in prison.

Orville Schell, director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society, said that the proceedings, which are expected to last two to three weeks, would illuminate China’s efforts to control speech outside its borders.

“These trials are more than just trials about a few people,” he said. “We get to look within the interior of how this system of control from Beijing works.”

When the case was announced, Christopher Wray, the director of the F.B.I., called it an example of “China’s ongoing and widespread lawless behavior — and our refusal to tolerate it.”

Prosecutors say the three men on trial targeted Xu Jin, the former official in New Jersey. Mr. Xu had fallen out of the Communist Party’s favor around 2008, and moved to the United States about two years later, Irisa Chen, an assistant U.S. attorney, said in her opening statement. He had resisted many attempts to get him to return, so in 2016, the Chinese government sought to locate him using illegal tactics, she said.

To that end, Mr. Zhu hired Mr. McMahon to find out where he lived, the government charges.

Lawrence Lustberg, a lawyer for Mr. McMahon, in his opening statement called his client a decorated “hero cop” unaware that he had been working for China. Mr. McMahon contends that he was hired to find someone he was told had embezzled millions from a Chinese construction company. He kept detailed records and alerted the local police when he conducted surveillance in New Jersey, Mr. Lustberg said.

“If he’s secretly acting on behalf of the Chinese government, is he going to call the cops and tell them that?” Mr. Lustberg asked.

Paul Goldberger, representing Mr. Zheng, said that his client had never met his co-defendants before the charges were filed. The man with whom he drove to New Jersey in 2018, Kuang Zebin, pleaded guilty last year and is expected to testify. Mr. Goldberger argued that Mr. Zheng had quickly realized his involvement was a mistake, and went back the following morning to take the note down.

“It’s less than 24 hours altogether that he was supposedly involved,” he said.

Kevin Tung, representing Mr. Zhu, said his client had met someone at a job fair in Wuhan, China, who asked for help tracking down a debtor in the United States. Because Mr. Zhu does not speak English, he found a lawyer, who in turn hired Mr. McMahon, he said.

“My client is also a victim,” Mr. Tung said. “He was used.”

The indictment lays out a scheme in which the Chinese government flew Mr. Xu’s octogenarian father to the United States to persuade his son to return — or at least reveal his address.

Mr. Xu’s sister-in-law, Liu Yan, testified Wednesday about a bizarre episode at her home in Short Hills, N.J., in April 2017. She was walking the dog one evening when her teenage daughter called to say that Mr. Xu’s father — who lived in Wuhan, and whom she had met only three or four times — was at their home.

Liu Yan said that the family knew that Mr. Xu was wanted for “things he did not do,” and suspected his father’s unexpected presence was part of a scheme to find him, she said. She arranged for Mr. Xu to meet them at a mall the following morning, instead of at his home.

Mr. McMahon monitored the meeting, and obtained Mr. Xu’s address after that, prosecutors said.

“Thanks to Mr. McMahon, the Chinese government finally learned where the victim lived,” Ms. Chen said.