An Quanzhong, who will spend 13 months behind bars, harassed a resident whom China’s government wanted back home. His conviction was one of several that prosecutors have won against operatives in New York.
An Quanzhong, who will spend 13 months behind bars, harassed a resident whom China’s government wanted back home. His conviction was one of several that prosecutors have won against operatives in New York.
An Quanzhong, who will spend 13 months behind bars, harassed a resident whom China’s government wanted back home. His conviction was one of several that prosecutors have won against operatives in New York.
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.”