FBI Charges Chinese Businesswoman With Gathering Intelligence From US Government Officials for Shanghai Intelligence Bureau

Federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of Michigan charged Di Jin, 41, on September 11 with acting inside the United States under the direction or control of a foreign government without notifying the attorney general 12. According to the FBI affidavit, sworn by Special Agent Robert Holbrook, CBP officers stopped Jin at Detroit Metropolitan Airport on September 8 after she flew in from Shanghai and confronted her with an April message in which she wrote that "Xi's team" had tasked her on procurement, rare earth metals, Treasury bonds, and tariff exemptions 13. Jin admitted during subsequent FBI interviews that she conducted intelligence-gathering work in the US on behalf of PRC officials who in turn assisted her business interests in China, and described contact with the Ministry of State Security's Tianjin bureau dating to 2012 and with Shanghai intelligence officers since February 2024, including US trips in 2024, June 2025, and March 2026 to meet officials identified in the complaint as Government Contacts 1 through 4 123. Phone searches recovered a July 2024 text in which Government Contact 1, described as an 81-year-old US government official, questioned whether Jin was under Chinese surveillance and expressed concern about the appearance of disloyalty 12. DOJ database checks on September 10 found no record that Jin had registered as a foreign agent under Section 951, and she faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted 12.