US: 40 officers of China's National Police charged with harassing natives using fake social media accounts

Washington DC [United States], April 18 : As many as 44 people, including 40 officers of China's National Police, have been charged with various crimes related to efforts by the national police of the People's Republic of China (PRC) to harass Chinese nationals living in New York and elsewhere in the United States, according to an official press release from the US Department of Justice.

The two criminal complaints filed against them, by the US Attorney's Office, were unsealed on Monday in the federal court in Brooklyn. The defendants, including 40 MPS officers and two officials in the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), had reportedly perpetrated transnational repression schemes targeting US residents whose political views and actions were disapproved by the PRC government, like advocating for democracy in the PRC, the release said.

The defendants engaged in two schemes where they created and used fake social media accounts to harass and threaten PRC dissidents abroad and attempted to stifle their free speech on the platform of a US telecoms corporation (Company-1). It is suspected that the defendants accused in these schemes live in the PRC or another country in Asia and are still at large.

Assistant Attorney General Matthew G Olsen of the Justice Department's National Security Division said, "These cases demonstrate the lengths the PRC government will go to silence and harass U.S. persons who exercise their fundamental rights to speak out against PRC oppression, including by unlawfully exploiting a U.S.-based technology company." He added, "These actions violate our laws and are an affront to our democratic values and basic human rights."

Acting Assistant Director Kurt Ronnow of the FBI Counterintelligence Division said, "China's Ministry of Public Security used operatives to target people of Chinese descent who had the courage to speak out against the Chinese Communist Party - in one case by covertly spreading propaganda to undermine confidence in our democratic processes and, in another, by suppressing U.S. video conferencing users' free speech," as per the official release.

"We aren't going to tolerate CCP repression its efforts to threaten, harass, and intimidate people here in the United States. The FBI will continue to confront the Chinese government's efforts to violate our laws and repress the rights and freedoms of people in our country," he said.

The two-count complaint charges 34 MPS officers with conspiracy to transmit interstate threats and conspiracy to commit interstate harassment. All the defendants are believed to reside in the PRC and are yet to be arrested.

The complaint claims that members of the Group constructed thousands of fake online personas on social media platforms like Twitter to harass and threaten Chinese dissidents online. To counter the pro-democracy rhetoric of the Chinese dissidents, these online personas also propagated official PRC government propaganda and narratives. For instance, it is alleged that Group members used temporary email addresses to create and maintain the fake social media accounts, posted content from the PRC government, and engaged in online conversations to avoid giving the impression that the Group accounts were "flooding" a particular social media platform, according to the US, Department of Justice.

The Group monitors how well each member performs their duties online and awards those who effectively manage several online personas without drawing attention from either other platform users or the social media corporations that host the platforms.

The investigation also turned up formal MPS requests for Group members to produce videos and articles on specific subjects, including the actions of Chinese dissidents abroad or US government policies.

The defendants allegedly also tried to recruit Americans to work as unsuspecting agents of the PRC government by spreading propaganda or PRC government-related stories.

The defendants encouraged people they believed to be sympathetic to and supportive of the PRC government's narratives to spread Group content on a number of occasions using online aliases, as per the release of the US, Department of Justice.