Arcadia Mayor Eileen Wang has resigned following federal charges that she acted as an illegal agent of a foreign government.
Wang was also the District 3 City Council member.
Arcadia’s remaining council members did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
City Manager Dominic Lazzaretto released the following statement:
“We understand this news raises serious concerns, and we want to be direct with our community about what we know and where we stand.
“The allegations at the center of this case, that a foreign government sought to exert influence over a local elected official, are deeply troubling. We take them seriously.
“We want to be clear: this investigation concerns individual conduct, and the charges are for conduct that ceased after Ms. Wang was sworn into office in December 2022,” the statement concluded.
An internal review by city officials we confirmed that no city finances, staff, or decision-making processes were involved in Wang’s alleged work on behalf of the Chinese government, according to Lazzaretto.
He’d added that “all City Council actions are taken by the body as a whole and no single member holds unilateral authority. We have found no actions that require reconsideration or that are invalidated as a result of these developments. The remainder of the City Council is not under investigation, and city operations continue without interruption.”
Arcadia officials “remain committed to serving our residents with transparency, consistency, and the highest standard of public trust,” Lazzaretto said. “The City is ready to assist federal authorities if called upon to do so.”
The council will select a mayor and mayor pro tem from among the remaining four council members and will begin discussing how District 3 will be represented until the next election cycle this November.
Wang has agreed to plead guilty to the felony count, which comes with a statutory maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison.
She is expected to make her initial appearance this afternoon in United States District Court in downtown Los Angeles and is expected to plead guilty in the coming weeks.
“Individuals in our country who covertly do the bidding of foreign governments undermine our democracy,” said First Assistant United States Attorney Bill Essayli. “This plea agreement is the latest success in our determination to defend the homeland against China’s efforts to corrupt our institutions.”
“Individuals elected to public office in the United States should act only for the people of the United States that they represent,” Assistant Attorney General for National Security John A. Eisenberg said in a statement. “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.”
“By her own admission, Eileen Wang secretly served the interests of the Chinese government,” Assistant Director Roman Rozhavsky of the FBI’s Counterintelligence and Espionage Division, said in a statement. “Let this serve as a clear warning: Individuals who act on behalf of foreign governments to influence our democracy will be identified, investigated, and brought to justice. Protecting the rule of law and the transparency of our democratic process remains at the core of the FBI’s mission, and we will continue working alongside our partners to safeguard the integrity of our elections and keep hostile actors from undermining the voices of the American people.”
“All Americans should be alarmed to learn an elected official was brazenly spreading propaganda on behalf of the Chinese government,” Patrick Grandy, the assistant director in Charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office, said in statement. “The FBI is dedicated to rooting out those illegally acting as agents of a foreign government as they do the bidding of America’s adversaries.”
According to her plea agreement, from late 2020 through 2022, Wang and Yaoning “Mike” Sun, 65, of Chino Hills, worked at the direction and control of PRC government officials and coordinated with U.S.-based individuals to promote the PRC’s interests by, among other things, promoting pro-PRC propaganda in the United States. Sun is serving a four-year federal prison sentence after he pleaded guilty in October 2025 to acting as an illegal agent of a foreign government.
Wang and Sun worked together to operate U.S. News Center, a website that purported to be a news source for the local Chinese American community. Wang and Sun received and executed directives from PRC government officials to post pro-PRC content on the website.
For example, in June 2021, a PRC official contacted Wang and other individuals via the WeChat encrypted messaging application with pre-written news articles, including a PRC official-written essay in the Los Angeles Times that stated: “China’s Stance on the Xinjiang Issue – There is no genocide in Xinjiang; there is no such thing as ‘forced labor’ in any production activity, including cotton production. Spreading such rumor to do defame China, destroy Xinjiang’s safety and stability, weaken local economy, suppress China’s development[.]”
Minutes later, Wang posted the article on her own website and responded to the PRC official with a link to the article on her website. The others in the group chat did the same. The PRC official responded: “So fast, thank you everyone.”
In August 2021, Wang and three other members of the same group chat shared links to the same article on their respective “news” websites, after which the PRC official thanked them for their “reporting.” At the PRC official’s request, Wang made edits to the article, sent the official a link to the article reflecting the requested change, then sent the official a screenshot showing the article had been viewed 15,128 times. In response, the official messaged, “Great!,” Wang replied, “Thank you leader.”
In November 2021, Wang communicated with John Chen, a high-level member of the PRC intelligence apparatus, who regularly attended elite Chinese Communist Party functions, including military parades, and met personally with PRC President Xi Jinping, according to court documents. Wang asked Chen to post a “news” article from her website, and wrote, “This is what the Ministry of Foreign Affairs wants to send.”
Chen was sentenced in November 2024 to 20 months in federal prison after pleading guilty in the Southern District of New York to acting as an illegal agent of the PRC and conspiracy to bribe a public official.
Wang admitted in her plea agreement that she did not notify the Attorney General that she was acting in the United States as an agent of the PRC, that she was located in the United States when she engaged in these acts, and that did she not disclose on her website that some of its content had been posted at the direction of members of the PRC government.
The FBI is investigating this matter.