A 33-year-old NYPD officer and ethnic Tibetan native of China has been arrested for allegedly acting as an agent of a foreign government and lying to obtain asylum in the United States, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn said Monday.
The cop, Baimadajie Angwang, who is a naturalized U.S. citizen and patrol officer with the 111th precinct in Queens, is also accused of lying about his foreign contacts, the complaint said. He allegedly was engaged in the espionage-related activity from May 2018 through his arrest.
Angwang faces charges including acting as an agent of a foreign government without prior notification to the attorney general, wire fraud, making false statements about his contacts and obstruction of an official proceeding.
Around May 2019, Angwang allegedly engaged in a scheme to defraud the U.S. Department of Defense and "obtain money and property from the U.S. government by means of one or more materially false and fraudulent pretenses, representations and promises," the federal complaint alleges.
To achieve that end, Angwang allegedly transmitted a fake Questionnaire for National Security Positions, which is a standard form required for jobs that require a certain level of security clearance. On that questionnaire, he allegedly lied about having "extensive contacts with government officials from the People’s Republic of China" and lied about having ongoing contact with family in China, some of whom were affiliated with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), which is the armed forces unit of the Chinese government.
The obstruction charges stem from the allegedly falsified documents he submitted for his own national security background investigation.
Angwang, who currently lives in Nassau County's Williston Park, first came to the United States on a cultural exchange visa. He overstayed a second visa and eventually sought asylum in the U.S. on the basis he had been tortured in China due in part to his Tibetan ethnicity, the complaint says. Thousands of Tibetans are believed to have been killed by the People's Republic of China since China occupied and took control of the region in 1951.
Officials believe that asylum request was also predicated on a lie, given Angwang has traveled back to China several times since his application was granted and has significant ties to family members who still live in the People's Republic.
Source: NBC New York
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