Eileen Wang, former Californian mayor, guilty of acting as secret agent to China

Eileen Wang, the former mayor of Arcadia, California, pleaded guilty to secretly acting as an agent of the People's Republic of China (PRC).

Wang's plea comes nearly three weeks after she was charged with the felony count in a federal court on May 11, the U.S. Attorney's Office, Central District of California said in a news release at the time. She stepped down from her role that same day, the city announced.

Wang appeared in court and entered a guilty plea on Friday, per KTLA, ABC 7 and CBS News. She is scheduled to be sentenced on October 6 and is facing up to 10 years in federal prison.

In a statement following her resignation, Wang, who joined the Arcadia City Council in 2022 and was sworn in as mayor on February 16, said she "apologizes and is sorry for the mistakes she has made in her personal life.”

The 58-year-old admitted in a plea agreement that she and Yaoning “Mike” Sun, of Chino Hills, worked together promoting pro-PRC propaganda in the U.S. from late 2020 through 2022, prosecutors said in the May 11 news release.

Sun pleaded guilty to a count of acting as an illegal agent of a foreign government in October 2025 and is now serving a four-year federal prison sentence, per the U.S. Attorney's Office.

The pair ran a website called U.S. News Center that purported to be a news source for the local Chinese-American community.

On the site, they posted pro-PRC content at the direction of PRC government officials and also communicated with PRC officials via encrypted messages on WeChat about prewritten news articles.

After Wang published a specific article on her site, she shared data with a PRC official confirming that the article had been seen more than 15,000 times, prosecutors allege. When the official expressed that they were pleased, Wang allegedly replied, “Thank you leader.”

Assistant Attorney General for National Security John A. Eisenberg condemned the actions in the May 11 news release, saying at the time, “Individuals elected to public office in the United States should act only for the people of the United States that they represent.”

“It is deeply concerning that someone who previously received and executed directives from PRC government officials is now in a position of public trust at all, but particularly so because that relationship with that foreign government had never been disclosed," he concluded.