The script was familiar. For more than five years, a wealthy Queens businessman forcefully delivered the same message to a man wanted by China. Return to the homeland, or you — and your family — will face the consequences.
On Wednesday, he was sentenced to prison for those threats.
The businessman, An Quanzhong, will spend about 13 months behind bars for trying to harass a U.S. resident into leaving for China to face charges for purported crimes. Mr. An pleaded guilty last May to working as an unauthorized agent for a foreign country, while his daughter, An Guangyan, pleaded guilty to an additional charge of visa fraud conspiracy. Ms. An is yet to be sentenced.
The government refers to Mr. An with his given name first, though Chinese naming conventions place his family name, An, first.
Mr. An has also been ordered to pay $5 million in penalties, including more than $1 million in restitution to the person he targeted and to two other victims.
Mr. An, 58, appeared before Judge Kiyo A. Matsumoto in Brooklyn federal court and listened to his sentencing through a Mandarin-speaking interpreter, with several relatives and supporters in attendance. He has been on home confinement since May 2023 after spending seven months at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.
In deciding Mr. An’s sentence, Judge Matsumoto said she had considered Mr. An’s difficult upbringing, his prominent status in the Chinese American community in Queens and the wretched conditions he faced at the detention center after he was detained in 2022. His time at the troubled jail, Judge Matsumoto said, warranted “a discount off his sentence.”
But she said a sentence was necessary to deter transnational repression by the Chinese government, which she described as widespread. She noted the harm he had caused the people he sought to repatriate, who remain in the United States.
“Mr. An’s conduct presents a serious threat to national security,” Judge Matsumoto said.
Ben Brafman, a lawyer for Mr. An, said in an interview after the proceeding that the 20-month sentence with credit for the seven months already served was about the best he could have hoped for, given the seriousness of the crime.
In 2022, prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York indicted the Ans and five others in connection with Operation Fox Hunt, the Chinese government’s clandestine campaign to repatriate dissidents abroad. The Chinese Communist Party under its leader, Xi Jinping, started the operation in 2014, claiming it was meant to make fugitives face justice for corruption. U.S. officials have said it is merely autocratic repression.
The sentencing was the latest example of Eastern District prosecutors’ crackdown on China’s efforts to harass U.S. residents and influence public officials.
In June 2023, three men, including a former New York police officer, were convicted of stalking a former Chinese government official. In September, a former aide to New York governors, Linda Sun, was indicted on charges that she had used her position to benefit China in exchange for lavish gifts. In December, a man pleaded guilty in Brooklyn federal court to working as an agent of a foreign government after he was charged with running a Chinese police outpost in Lower Manhattan.
The Chinese government since 2002 had targeted the man in the An case, who was not named, accusing him of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from a state-owned company, prosecutors said.
Starting in 2017, Mr. and Ms. An tried to induce him to return to China, prosecutors said, including by forcing a relative in China to travel to the U.S. to persuade him to return. On one occasion, Mr. An told the man’s son that the Chinese government had “targeted and monitored” the man’s family in China, and that “all of your relatives will be involved,” according to the indictment.
In 2019, the company that accused the man of stealing sued in State Supreme Court, and Mr. An told the man he could make the case go away if he returned to China, prosecutors said. In that event, Mr. An said, not only he would pay the Chinese government to drop the suit, but he would provide the man with housing, according to the indictment.
If the person didn’t return, Mr. An said, the suit would remain open. He also promised that the fugitive would not face prison in China, according to the indictment. In the courtroom on Wednesday, prosecutors said that lawsuit was still active.
Mr. An’s businesses and political influence spanned his native China and the United States, where he was a permanent resident, according to court papers. He founded the Anqiao Group, a real estate company based in Zaozhuang, a city in eastern China’s Shandong province that by 2015 had about $800 million in assets, Chinese state media reported. In 2014, Mr. An, through the Anqiao Group, opened the 96-room Parc Hotel in Flushing, Queens.
Mr. An was the president of the New York Shandong Association, an organization in Flushing for immigrants from that province, and enjoyed close ties to Representative Grace Meng, a Democrat whose district includes Flushing. She declared Oct. 6, 2015, “An Quanzhong Day.”
In a statement, a spokesman for Ms. Meng noted that the declaration took place before Mr. An’s crimes, and that she was “totally against any foreign government influencing or manipulating our democracy,” including China’s.
Back home in China, Mr. An was named in 2015 as a member of a government advisory committee in Zaozhuang, a city of about 3.9 million people.
In 2013, he was named to the standing committee of the All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese, an organization that is an essential part of the Communist Party’s United Front, which seeks to extend its influence both within China and among the tens of millions of ethnic Chinese people around the world.
In arguing for a lighter sentence, Mr. Brafman said that Mr. An had sought to repatriate the man out of genuine concern, and that his promise to protect him from incarceration in China showed he was looking out for him.
But Alex Solomon, an assistant U.S. attorney, said in court on Wednesday that Mr. An had more sinister intentions and “fundamentally undermined” American national security.
“This was an extremely coercive situation,” Mr. Solomon said.
Michael Forsythe contributed reporting.
