(Minghui.org) A California resident was sentenced to four years in federal prion on February 9, 2026, for acting as an illegal Chinese Communist Party (CCP) agent. He was also accused of participating in the persecution of Falun Gong.
Yaoning “Mike” Sun, 65, from Chino Hills, California, pleaded guilty in October 2025 to one count of acting as an illegal agent of a foreign government, according to the press release from the United States Department of Justice.
This sentence was handed down by United States District Judge R. Gary Klausner. John Chen, from Los Angeles, had been sentenced to 20 months in prison for acting as an unregistered agent for the CCP in November 2024.
Yaoning “Mike” Sun (left) and John Chen (right) have been sentenced to prison for acting as Chinese Communist Party (CCP) agents.
Targeting Falun Gong and Influencing Election
“As an agent for the PRC, [Sun] worked covertly in the United States with his primary co-conspirator John Chen, a/k/a ‘Chen Jun,’” stated prosecutors in a sentencing memorandum. “Chen was a high-level member of the PRC intelligence apparatus, who regularly attended elite [Chinese Communist Party] functions, including military parades…[and] met personally with PRC President Xi Jinping… Per his own report, and other communications between Chen and PRC officials, [Sun] served as Chen’s right-hand man in the United States for decades.”
On January 15, 2023, Chen and Sun met to discuss how to persecute Falun Gong practitioners outside China. Before a politician who was running for city council went to China to meet with CCP officials, Chen also had Sun provide information about a Falun Gong practitioner in California.
According to court documents, Sun worked as a campaign manager and a strategist for a politician in Southern California. When the politician ran for election in 2022, Sun and Chen discussed his campaign strategy.
Chen also worked with the CCP to influence US government officials, including on issues related to Taiwan. Court documents show that shortly after the politician was elected, Chen instructed Sun to prepare a campaign report. After receiving the report, the CCP officials responded positively and thanked them for their efforts.
About one month after the politician won the election, Chen arranged a lunch for Sun and others at a Rowland Heights restaurant. Chen told a CCP official this gathering was a “core member lunch.” Because participants agreed to establish a “U.S.-China Friendship Promotional Association,” Chen called the lunch “very successful.” When communicating with a CCP official, Chen referred to the politician as a member of, “The basic team specifically formed for us.”
Bribery and CCP-Driven Operations
A press release from the Department of Justice in November 2024 indicated that Chen was sentenced “for acting as [an] unregistered agent of the PRC and bribing an IRS agent in connection with a plot to target U.S.-based practitioners of Falun Gong — a spiritual practice banned in the PRC.”
“As part of the PRC’s campaign against the Falun Gong, Chen and Feng engaged in a PRC government-directed scheme to manipulate the IRS’ Whistleblower Program in an effort to strip the tax-exempt status of an entity run and maintained by Falun Gong practitioners, the Shen Yun Performing Arts Center,” the press release continued. These activities were carried out following instructions from CCP officials.
Sun was arrested one month after Chen, and pleaded guilty in October 2025 for acting as an illegal agent of a foreign government. Court documents indicate his report to the CCP in February 2023, “Described various issues concerning ‘anti-China forces’ overseas, including opposition to independence for Taiwan, Tibet, and Xinjiang as well as issues involving Falun Gong.”
The politician who won the election in November 2022 with Sun’s support was referred as “Individual 1” in the recent press release from the Department of Justice. “At the direction of PRC officials, from 2020 through 2023, Sun and Individual 1 worked together to operate a purported news website for the local Chinese American community. Sun and Individual 1 received and executed directives from PRC government officials to post pro-PRC content,” stated the press release.
Stopping the CCP’s Intelligence Activities Against the U.S.
Akil Davis, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles bureau, wrote in his statement when charging Sun, “This case highlights the breadth of the PRC’s relentless intelligence and malign influence activities targeting the United States.”
“Federal law enforcement will not allow hostile foreign nations to infiltrate the governance of our nation’s political bodies,” said First Assistant United States Attorney Bill Essayli. “The relentlessness of PRC intelligence operations in our country must be met by equal relentlessness on our part to secure, protect, and defend the United States.”
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Category: News Commentary
