A Chinese language spy cozied as much as a California metropolis councilwoman — and helped to get the brand new “political star” elected in 2022 — to advance Beijing’s pursuits, the feds mentioned.
Yaoning “Mike” Solar, 65, will spend 4 years in jail after getting Eileen Wang to fall for him whereas serving as her marketing campaign adviser and treasurer throughout her marketing campaign for Arcadia Metropolis Council.
On the course of Folks’s Republic of China officers, he helped “orchestrate” the Wang’s 2022 election victory and subsequently submitted detailed stories to Chinese language intelligence detailing how that they had efficiently “cultivated” a brand new “political star” pleasant to the Chinese language authorities, in keeping with courtroom paperwork.
The pair went on to turn into engaged, the Los Angeles Instances reported. A number of the donations Solar helped steer to Wang’s marketing campaign got here from these with ties to the Chinese language authorities.
Solar pleaded responsible in October 2025 to 1 rely of appearing as an unlawful agent of a overseas authorities.
“Federal legislation enforcement is not going to permit hostile overseas nations to infiltrate the governance of our nation’s political our bodies,” First Assistant United States Legal professional Invoice Essayli mentioned in an announcement saying Solar’s sentence on Monday.
“The relentlessness of PRC intelligence operations in our nation should be met by equal relentlessness on our half to safe, shield, and defend america.”
Court docket information additionally present that in the course of the April 2023 go to of then-Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen to Southern California, Solar intently monitored her actions and reported on to PRC consular officers.
Solar and Wang — who went on to get engaged — have been additionally intently linked by way of enterprise ventures. They’re registered collectively on filings for the American Southwest Chamber of Commerce, an affiliation meant to advertise communication amongst Chinese language Individuals within the Southwest, and Solar ran a media website with Wang known as US Information Middle.
Wang has not been charged, and sources mentioned there isn’t any proof she knew about Solar’s espionage actions. However the affair and enterprise connections spotlight how Solar leveraged intimate entry to advance Beijing’s affect in native politics.
“When Individuals vote for elected officers, they anticipate them to characterize the pursuits of their constituents—not these of a overseas adversary just like the Chinese language authorities,” mentioned Assistant Director Roman Rozhavsky of the FBI’s Counterintelligence and Espionage Division.
“By exploiting his place as a marketing campaign advisor, Yaoning Solar tried to undermine our political processes and democratic establishments for the advantage of the Chinese language Communist Occasion.”
The case towards Solar was introduced in the course of the Biden administration, as US officers raised issues that China was searching for to affect native elections by backing candidates pleasant to Beijing, the Related Press reported.
His co-conspirator, John Chen — aka Chen Jun — was sentenced in 2024 to twenty months in jail after copping to fees of appearing as an unlawful agent of the PRC and conspiracy to bribe a public official.
“Chen was a high-level member of the PRC intelligence equipment, who often attended elite [Chinese Communist Party] features, together with army parades…[and] met personally with PRC President Xi Jinping,” the feds mentioned.
“Per his personal report, and different communications between Chen and PRC officers, [Sun] served as Chen’s right-hand man in america for many years.”
