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by Joshua Kaplan

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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was incensed. Late last year, the state’s Republican legislature had drawn congressional maps that largely kept districts intact, leaving the GOP with only a modest electoral advantage.

DeSantis threw out the legislature’s work and redrew Florida’s congressional districts, making them far more favorable to Republicans. The plan was so aggressive that the Republican-controlled legislature balked and fought DeSantis for months. The governor overruled lawmakers and pushed his map through.

DeSantis' office has publicly stressed that partisan considerations played no role and that partisan operatives were not involved in the new map.

A ProPublica examination of how that map was drawn — and who helped decide its new boundaries — reveals a much different origin story. The new details show that the governor’s office appears to have misled the public and the state legislature and may also have violated Florida law.

DeSantis aides worked behind the scenes with an attorney who serves as the national GOP’s top redistricting lawyer and other consultants tied to the national party apparatus, according to records and interviews.

Florida’s constitution was amended in 2010 to prohibit partisan-driven redistricting, a landmark effort in the growing movement to end gerrymandering as an inescapable feature of American politics.

Barbara Pariente, a former chief justice of the state Supreme Court who retired in 2019, told ProPublica that DeSantis’ collaboration with people connected to the national GOP would constitute “significant evidence of a violation of the constitutional amendment.”

“If that evidence was offered in a trial, the fact that DeSantis was getting input from someone working with the Republican Party and who’s also working in other states — that would be very powerful,” said Pariente, who was appointed to the Supreme Court by Democrat Lawton Chiles.

A meeting invite obtained by ProPublica shows that on Jan. 5, top DeSantis aides had a “Florida Redistricting Kick-off Call” with out-of-state operatives. Those outsiders had also been working with states across the country to help the Republican Party create a favorable election map. In the days after the call, the key GOP law firm working for DeSantis logged dozens of hours on the effort, invoices show. The firm has since billed the state more than $450,000 for its work on redistricting.

A week and a half after the call, DeSantis unveiled his new map. No Florida governor had ever pushed their own district lines before. His plan wiped away half of the state’s Black-dominated congressional districts, dramatically curtailing Black voting power in America’s largest swing state.

One of the districts, held by Democrat Al Lawson, had been created by the Florida Supreme Court just seven years before. Stretching along a swath of north Florida once dominated by tobacco and cotton plantations, it had drawn together Black communities largely populated by the descendants of sharecroppers and slaves. DeSantis shattered it, breaking the district into four pieces. He then tucked each fragment away in a majority-white, heavily Republican district.

DeSantis Broke Up Black-Dominated District and Put Its Pieces Into 4 Majority-White Districts (Source: Redistricting Data Hub, IPUMS NHGIS)

DeSantis’ strong-arming of his Republican allies was covered extensively by the Florida press. But until now, little has emerged about how the governor crafted his bold move and who his office worked with. To reconstruct DeSantis’ groundbreaking undertaking, ProPublica interviewed dozens of consultants, legislators and political operatives and reviewed thousands of pages of documents obtained through public records requests and from the nonpartisan watchdog group American Oversight.

DeSantis’ office did not respond to detailed questions for this story.

“Florida’s Governor fought for a legal map — unlike the gerrymandered plan the Governor rightly vetoed,” Adam Kincaid, executive director of the National Republican Redistricting Trust, whose top lawyer was hired by DeSantis’ office, said in an email to ProPublica. “If Governor DeSantis retained some of the best redistricting lawyers and experts in the country to advise him then that speaks to the good judgment of the Governor, not some alleged partisan motive.”

In four years as governor, DeSantis has championed an array of controversial policies and repeatedly used his power to punish his political opponents. A presumptive candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, he has often made moves that seemed tailored to attract headlines, such as his recent stunt sending migrants to Martha’s Vineyard. But it’s the governor’s less flashy commandeering of the redistricting process that may ultimately have the most long-lasting consequences.

Analysts predict that DeSantis’ map will give the GOP four more members of Congress from Florida, the largest gain by either party in any state. If the forecasts hold, Republicans will win 20 of Florida’s 28 seats in the upcoming midterms — meaning that Republicans would control more than 70% of the House delegation in a state where Trump won just over half of the vote.

The reverberations of DeSantis’ effort could go beyond Florida in another way. His erasure of Lawson’s seat broke long-held norms and invited racial discrimination lawsuits, experts said. Six political scientists and law professors who study voting rights told ProPublica it’s the first instance they’re aware of where a state so thoroughly dismantled a Black-dominated district. If the governor prevails against suits challenging his map, he will have forged a path for Republicans all over the country to take aim at Black-held districts.

“To the extent that this is successful, it’s going to be replicated in other states. There’s no question,” said Michael Latner, a political science professor at California Polytechnic State University who studies redistricting. “The repercussions are so broad that it’s kind of terrifying.”

Rep. Al Lawson had his district broken into four pieces by DeSantis, reducing the share of the Black population in each. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call/AP Images)

Al Lawson’s district, now wiped away by DeSantis, had been created in response to an earlier episode of surreptitious gerrymandering in Florida.

Twelve years ago, Florida became one of the first states to outlaw partisan gerrymandering. Through a ballot initiative that passed with 63% of the vote, Florida citizens enshrined the so-called Fair Districts amendment in the state constitution. The amendment prohibited drawing maps with “the intent to favor or disfavor a political party.” It also created new protections for minority communities, in a state that’s 17% Black, forming a backstop as the U.S. Supreme Court chipped away at the federal Voting Rights Act.

Florida elected its first Black member of Congress, a former slave named Josiah Walls, in 1870, shortly after the end of the Civil War. But Florida rapidly enacted new voter suppression laws, and Walls soon lost his office as Reconstruction gave way to the era of Jim Crow.

Josiah Walls was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Florida in 1870. (Buyenlarge/Getty Images)

Thanks to distorted maps, Florida did not elect a second Black representative to Congress until 1992. That year, a federal court created three plurality-Black districts in Florida — and then three Black politicians won seats in the U.S. House.

After the Fair Districts amendment became law in 2010, state legislators promised to conduct what one called “the most transparent, open, and interactive redistricting process in America.” Policymakers went on tour across the state, hosting public hearings where their constituents could learn about the legislature’s decision-making and voice their concerns.

The hearings also served a more nefarious purpose, a judge would later rule. They were instrumental in what state circuit judge Terry Lewis described as “a conspiracy to influence and manipulate the Legislature into a violation of its constitutional duty.”

For months, a team of state-level Republican operatives worked in secret to craft maps that favored the GOP, coordinating with both statehouse leadership and the Republican National Committee. Then they recruited civilians to attend the hearings and submit the maps as their own.

An email detailed the advice the operatives gave their recruits. “Do NOT identify oneself orally or in writing,” it read, “as a part of the Republican party. It is more than OK to represent oneself as just a citizen.”

It took years of litigation for the details of the scheme to come to light. But in 2015, the Florida Supreme Court responded with force. In a series of rulings that ultimately rejected the Republicans’ efforts, the court laid out the stringent new requirements under Fair Districts, making clear that partisan “practices that have been acceptable in the past” were now illegal in the state of Florida.

After ruling that the legislature’s process was unconstitutional, the court threw out the Republicans’ congressional district lines and imposed a map of their own. That is how Lawson’s district came to be.

“It was important,” Pariente, who authored the key opinions, told ProPublica, “to make sure the amendment had teeth and was enforceable.”

Former Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Barbara Pariente, right, said DeSantis’ collaboration with people connected to the national GOP would constitute “significant evidence of a violation” of Florida’s constitution. (Phil Coale/AP)

The amendment took on even greater significance in 2019, when the U.S. Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling on redistricting.

The court’s decision in Rucho v. Common Cause barred federal court challenges to partisan gerrymanders. Writing for the 5-4 majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said it was not an issue for the federal judiciary to decide, but emphasized the ruling did not “condemn complaints about districting to echo into a void.”

In fact, the issue was being actively addressed at the state level, Roberts wrote. He cited Florida’s amendment and one of Pariente’s opinions. Responding to liberal justices who wanted to reject Rucho’s map as an unconstitutional gerrymander, Roberts wrote they could not because “there is no ‘Fair Districts Amendment’ to the Federal Constitution.”

In 2021, state legislative leaders were more careful.

The senate instructed its members to “insulate themselves from partisan-funded organizations” and others who might harbor partisan motivations, reminding legislators that a court could see conversations with outsiders as evidence of unconstitutional intent. The legislature imposed stringent transparency requirements, like publishing emails that it received from constituents. And they ordered their staff to base their decisions exclusively on the criteria “adopted by the citizens of Florida.”

The Senate leadership “explained to us at the beginning of the session that because of what happened last cycle, everything had to go through the process,” Sen. Joe Gruters, who is also chairman of the Florida Republican Party, told ProPublica.

In November, the state senate proposed maps that largely stuck to the status quo. Analysts predicted they would give Republicans 16 seats in Congress and Democrats 12.

“Were they the fairest maps you could draw? No,” said Ellen Freidin, leader of the anti-gerrymandering advocacy group FairDistricts Now. “But they weren’t bad Republican gerrymanders.”

DeSantis was incensed after the Republican-controlled legislature put forward its redistricting proposal. (Scott McIntyre/The New York Times/Redux)

DeSantis wasn’t satisfied. “The governor’s office was very pissed off about the map. They thought it was weak,” said a well-connected Florida Republican, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so he could be candid. “They thought it was ridiculous to not even try to make it as advantageous as possible.”

In early January, DeSantis’ deputy chief of staff, Alex Kelly, was quietly assigned to oversee a small team that would devise an alternative proposal, according to Kelly’s later testimony.

State employees often spend years preparing for the redistricting process — time that DeSantis did not have. As Kelly and his colleagues set to work, they brought in critical help from the D.C. suburbs: Jason Torchinsky, a Republican election attorney and one of the leading GOP strategists for redistricting nationwide.

On Jan. 5, Kelly and two other top DeSantis aides had the redistricting “kick-off call,” according to the meeting invite, which was provided to ProPublica by American Oversight. The invitation included Torchinsky and another guest from out of state: Thomas Bryan, a redistricting specialist.

In an interview with ProPublica, Bryan explained the connection between the national Republican Party and his work with DeSantis. “There’s a core group of attorneys that works with the party and then they work with specific states,” he said. “It’s not a coincidence that I worked on Texas, Florida, Virginia, Kansas, Michigan, Alabama.”

He added that the main lawyer he works with is Torchinsky: “Jason will say, ‘I want you to work on this state.’”

Jason Torchinsky, center, logged more than 100 hours working on the redistricting for DeSantis. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

A top partner at a conservative law firm, Torchinsky has represented the RNC, the Republican Party of Florida and many of America’s most influential right-wing groups, such as the Koch network’s Americans for Prosperity.

He also occupies a central role in the Republican Party’s efforts to swing Congress in its favor in 2022. Torchinsky is the general counsel and senior advisor to the National Republican Redistricting Trust, the entity the Republican National Committee helped set up to manage the party’s redistricting operations.

The NRRT boasts millions of dollars in funding and a roster of prominent advisors that includes Mike Pompeo and Karl Rove. Earlier this year, Kincaid, the trust’s executive director, summarized its objective bluntly: “Take vulnerable incumbents off the board, go on offense and create an opportunity to take and hold the House for the decade.”

In a statement to ProPublica, Kincaid said that the trust is one of Torchinsky’s many clients and that the lawyer’s work in Florida was separate: “When I would ask Jason what was happening in Florida, he would tell me his conversations were privileged.” Kincaid added that he personally did not speak with anyone in the DeSantis administration “during this redistricting cycle.”

Torchinsky’s involvement in the creation of DeSantis’ map has not been previously reported. His role in the process appears to have been intimate and extensive, though the specifics of his contributions are largely unclear. He spent more than 100 hours working for the DeSantis administration on redistricting, according to invoices sent to the Florida Department of State.

Redacted invoice from Jason Torchinsky's firm for its work on Florida redistricting (Screenshot by ProPublica)

Torchinsky held repeated meetings with DeSantis’ team as the group crafted maps and navigated the ensuing political battles, according to documents obtained by ProPublica. And he brought in other operatives who’d worked around the country in priority states for the national GOP.

A week after the kickoff meeting, Torchinsky scheduled a Zoom call between Kelly, Bryan and a second consultant, Adam Foltz.

Foltz and Bryan arrived in Florida just as they were becoming go-to mapmakers for the GOP. They appeared together in multiple states where the NRRT was directly involved last year, generating controversy in their wake.

In Texas, Foltz, Bryan and the NRRT’s leader, Kincaid, all worked behind the scenes helping draw maps, court records show. After they finished, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against the state of Texas, contending that the map violated the Voting Rights Act and illegally diluted Black and Latino votes. The case is still pending.

Last fall in Virginia, each party submitted three candidates to the state supreme court to guide the state’s redistricting process. The Democrats put forward three professors. Republicans submitted Bryan, Foltz and Kincaid. The court’s conservative majority rejected all three Republican nominees, citing conflicts of interest and “concerns about the ability” of the men to carry out the job neutrally.

Adam Kincaid, executive director of the National Republican Redistricting Trust, whose top lawyer helped DeSantis with his congressional maps. (T.J. Kirkpatrick/The New York Times/Redux)

In a statement, Kincaid said Foltz and Bryan are not partisan operatives and “the Virginia Supreme Court erred” in rejecting them. He also downplayed his own relationship to the consultants, saying they are not “employees or retained consultants” for his group.

“Adam and Tom are two of the best political demographers in the country,” Kincaid wrote. “It would only make sense that states looking for redistricting experts would retain them.”

Until last year, Foltz had spent his entire career working in Wisconsin politics, on state GOP campaigns and for Republican state legislators, according to court records. He was introduced to redistricting a decade ago when he spent months helping craft maps that became notoriously effective Republican gerrymanders. When he testified under oath that partisanship played no role in the Wisconsin process, a three-judge panel dismissed his claim as “almost laughable.”

Bryan was also a new figure on the national stage. Before 2020, he was a “bit player” in the redistricting industry, he said, running a small consulting company based in Virginia. He’d drawn maps for school districts and for local elections, but never for Congress, and he held a second job in consumer analytics at a large tobacco conglomerate.

“In 2020, my phone started going off the hook, with states either asking to retain me as an expert or to actually draw the lines,” Bryan told ProPublica. “I get phone calls from random places, and I’m on the phone with a governor.” While he mostly worked with Republicans, he was also retained by Illinois Democrats this cycle, according to court records.

Foltz and Bryan’s rapid ascension culminated in Florida. On Jan. 14, Torchinsky set up a third call with Foltz and Kelly. Then two days later, DeSantis released his map.

At left, Alex Kelly, deputy chief of staff for Gov. DeSantis, answers questions about the new district lines his office developed, during a Committee on Reapportionment meeting in April at the state capitol in Tallahassee. (Phil Sears/AP)

According to Kelly’s subsequent testimony, Foltz drew the map himself.

“I was completely blindsided,” said Rep. Geraldine Thompson, a Democrat on the House redistricting committee. “That is the purview of the legislature.”

Foltz declined an interview when reached by phone and did not respond to subsequent requests for comment. Kelly and Torchinsky, who went on to defend DeSantis in a lawsuit against the redistricting, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

The House redistricting subcommittee later brought Kelly in to answer questions about DeSantis’ proposals. Before the deputy chief of staff testified, the Democrats’ ranking member moved to place him under oath. Republican legislators blocked the committee from swearing Kelly in.

In his opening statement, Kelly took pains to emphasize that the governor’s office colored within the lines of the Florida constitution.

“I can confirm that I've had no discussions with any political consultant,” he testified. “No partisan operative. No political party official.”

This appears to have been misleading. By the time he testified, Kelly had been personally invited to at least five calls to discuss redistricting with Torchinsky, Bryan or Foltz, records show.

Kelly mentioned Foltz only briefly in his testimony. Torchinsky and Bryan’s names didn’t come up.

DeSantis holds as much sway in Tallahassee as any governor in recent memory. But even after he publicly weighed in with a map of his own, Republicans in the legislature didn’t bow down. The state Senate refused to even consider the governor’s version. In late January, they passed their original plan.

DeSantis’ aides argued that Lawson’s district was an “unconstitutional gerrymander,” extending recent precedent that limits states’ ability to deliberately protect Black voting power.

Florida Republicans were skeptical. House Speaker Chris Sprowls told reporters that DeSantis was relying on a “novel legal argument” that lawmakers were unlikely to adopt.

“In the absence of legal precedent,” Sprowls said, “we are going to follow the law.”

Florida House Speaker Chris Sprowls and fellow Republicans initially objected to DeSantis’ aggressive redistricting plan. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

On Feb. 11, DeSantis ratcheted up the pressure. He held a press conference reiterating his opposition to Lawson’s district. He vowed to veto any map that left it intact. But he still needed to win over Republican policymakers. Again, DeSantis’ top aides turned to Torchinsky.

In February, Torchinsky helped DeSantis’ staff pick out an expert witness to sell the governor’s vision to the legislature, according to emails provided to ProPublica by American Oversight. Once the group chose an expert, Torchinsky had a call with him in advance of his appearance.

With a deadline to prepare for the November midterms looming, the legislature moved toward compromise. In early March, it passed a new bill that was much closer to DeSantis’ version — but still kept a Democrat-leaning district with a large Black population in North Florida.

The governor’s attempts at persuasion were over.

On Mar. 28, Foltz and Kelly had another call, along with a partner at Torchinsky’s law firm. The next day, DeSantis vetoed the compromise plan.

Democrats were outraged; many Republicans were shocked. “A veto of a bill as significant as that was definitely surprising,” Gruters, the state senator and chair of the Florida GOP, told ProPublica.

Kelly soon submitted a slightly modified version of Foltz’s map to the legislature. This time, the legislature took DeSantis’ proposal and ran with it.

On Apr. 20, Rep. Thomas Leek, the Republican chair of the House redistricting committee, formally presented DeSantis’ plan before the general assembly. When his colleagues asked him who the governor’s staff consulted while drawing the map, Leek told them that he didn’t know.

“I can’t speak to the governor's entire process,” Leek said. “I can only tell you what Mr. Kelly said.”

Florida Rep. Thomas Leek during a Florida House of Representatives Redistricting Committee hearing on Jan. 13. (Phelan M. Ebenhack/AP)

The legislature had required everyone submitting a map to file a disclosure form listing the “name of every person(s), group(s), or organization(s) you collaborated with.” Kelly left the form blank.

The legislature voted on party lines and passed DeSantis’ proposal the next day. Anticipating litigation, they also allocated $1 million to defend the map in court.

Before DeSantis even signed the bill into law, a coalition of advocacy groups filed a lawsuit challenging the map in state court.

They soon scored a major victory. Circuit Court Judge J. Layne Smith, a DeSantis appointee, imposed a temporary injunction that would keep Lawson’s district intact through the midterm elections.

“This case is one of fundamental public importance, involving fundamental constitutional rights,” Smith wrote. His ruling cited the lengthy history of Black voter suppression in North Florida and across the state.

That victory was short-lived. Torchinsky’s firm quickly filed an appeal on DeSantis’ behalf. Then, in a unanimous decision in late May, the appellate court allowed DeSantis’ map to move ahead.

The higher court’s opinion was authored by Adam Tanenbaum, a familiar face in Tallahassee. Until DeSantis appointed him to the court in 2019, Tanenbaum was the Florida House’s general counsel, and before that he was general counsel to the Florida Department of State — both of which were parties to the case.

The very day Tanenbaum issued the opinion, he completed an application to fill a vacancy on the Florida Supreme Court, records show. In Florida, Supreme Court justices are appointed by the governor, in this case DeSantis.

Tanenbaum was not chosen for the position. He didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The broader case is still pending and is expected to eventually be decided by the state supreme court. Every justice on Florida’s supreme court was appointed by Republicans. The majority of them were chosen by DeSantis.

The deeply conservative body has already demonstrated its willingness to overturn precedent that’s only a few years old. DeSantis’ senior aides have indicated they hope it will do so here.

During his public testimony, Kelly was asked how Lawson’s district could be unconstitutional when it was recently created by Florida’s highest court.

Kelly responded tersely: “The court got it wrong.”

Help ProPublica Investigate Threats to U.S. Democracy

Do you know about how the redistricting industry is evolving nationwide or about partisan efforts to influence the process? Contact Josh Kaplan by email at joshua.kaplan@propublica.org or securely on Signal at 734-834-9383.

It will compensate seniors for the bout of inflation. Workers deserve as much.

The National Federation of Independent Business has been active in passing new laws allowing teenagers to work long and late hours in three states.

by Sebastian Rotella and Kirsten Berg

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This is part two of an investigation into a revolutionary money laundering system involving Chinese organized crime, Latin American drug cartels and Chinese officials, and how a major figure in the scheme managed to meet former President Donald Trump. Read part one: "How a Chinese American Gangster Transformed Money Laundering for Drug Cartels.”

In July 2018, President Donald Trump met at his New Jersey golf club with a Chinese businessman who should have never gotten anywhere near the most powerful man in the world.

Tao Liu had recently rented a luxurious apartment in Trump Tower in New York and boasted of joining the exclusive Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey.

But Liu was also a fugitive from Chinese justice. Media reports published overseas three years before the meeting had described him as the mastermind of a conspiracy that defrauded thousands of investors. He had ties to Chinese and Latin American organized crime. Perhaps most worrisome, the FBI was monitoring him because of suspicions that he was working with Chinese spies on a covert operation to buy access to U.S. political figures.

Yet there he sat with Trump at a table covered with sandwiches and soft drinks, the tall windows behind them looking onto a green landscape.

A longtime Trump associate who accompanied Liu was vague about what was discussed, telling ProPublica that they talked about the golf club, among other things.

“He was a climber,” said the associate, Joseph Cinque. “He wanted to meet Trump. He wanted to meet high rollers, people of importance.”

Documented by photos and interviews, the previously unreported sit-down reveals the workings of a Chinese underworld where crime, business, politics and espionage blur together. It also raises new questions about whether the Trump administration weakened the government’s system for protecting the president against national security risks.

For years, Liu had caromed around the globe a step ahead of the law. He changed names, homes and scams the way most people change shoes. In Mexico, he befriended a Chinese American gangster named Xizhi Li, aiding Li’s rise as a top cartel money launderer, according to prosecution documents and interviews with former national security officials.

“I’ve been doing illegal business for over 10 years,” Liu said in a conversation recorded by the Drug Enforcement Administration in 2020. “Which country haven’t I done it in?”

Liu surfaced in the U.S. political scene after Trump took office. In early 2018, he launched a high-rolling quest for influence in New York. He courted political figures at gatherings fueled by Taittinger champagne and Macanudo cigars, at meals in Michelin-starred restaurants and in offices in Rockefeller Center. He may have made at least one illegal donation to the GOP, according to interviews.

By the summer, Liu had achieved his fervent goal of meeting Trump. Two months later, he met the president again at Bedminster.

On both occasions, Liu apparently found a loophole in a phalanx of defenses designed to protect the president. The Secret Service screens all presidential visitors on official business, subjecting foreigners to intense scrutiny. In addition to their top priority of detecting physical threats, agents check databases for people with ties to espionage or crime who could pose a risk to national security or a president’s reputation.

Asked about Liu’s encounters with the president, the Secret Service’s chief of communications, Anthony Guglielmi, said, “There were no protective or safety concerns associated with these dates. The Bedminster Club is a private facility, and you will have to refer to organizers when it comes to who may have been allowed access to their facilities.”

The Secret Service does not have a record of Liu meeting Trump on the president’s official schedule, a Secret Service official said. Instead, the encounters apparently occurred during periods when the president did not have official business, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. While staying at his clubs at Mar-a-Lago and Bedminster as president, Trump often left his living quarters to mingle with members and their guests in public areas. The Secret Service screened those people for weapons, but did not do background checks on them, current and former officials said.

“Did the Secret Service know every name involved?” the Secret Service official said. “No. Those are called ‘off-the-record movements,’ and we are worried about physical safety in those situations. We don’t have the time to do workups on everybody in that environment.”

As a member or a member’s guest, Liu could have entered the club without showing identification to the Secret Service and met with Trump, the official said. It appears, in short, that Liu avoided Secret Service background screening.

During both visits, Liu accompanied Cinque, with whom he had cultivated a friendship and explored business ventures. Cinque said that he and his guests had easy access to the president at Bedminster.

“I just go in every time I want,” Cinque said in an interview with ProPublica. “I’m with Donald 44 years. … The Secret Service, they trust me. Because I got a great relation with the Secret Service and I’m not gonna bring anybody bad next to Trump.”

But Cinque now regrets ever having met Liu.

“He’s a professional con man,” Cinque said. “There was a lot of flimflam with him. He conned me pretty good.”

Cinque has given conflicting accounts about the July 2018 meeting. In an interview with a Chinese media outlet that year, he said Liu had spent three hours with the president. Last week, though, he told ProPublica that he had exaggerated the length of the conversation and Liu’s role in it.

A spokesperson for Trump and officials at the Trump Organization and Bedminster club did not respond to requests for comment. The Chinese embassy also did not respond to a request for comment.

Liu’s case is one of several incidents in which Chinese nationals sought access to Trump in murky circumstances, raising concerns in Congress, law enforcement and the media about espionage and illegal campaign financing.

Liu did catch the attention of other federal agencies. His political activity in New York caused FBI counterintelligence agents to begin monitoring him in 2018, ProPublica has learned, before his encounters with Trump at Bedminster. His meetings with the president only heightened their interest, national security sources said.

Then, in early 2020, DEA agents came across Liu as they dismantled the global money laundering network of his friend Li. Reconstructing Liu’s trail, the DEA grew to suspect he was a kind of spy: an ostentatious criminal who made himself useful to Chinese intelligence agencies in exchange for protection.

The DEA agents thought Liu could answer big questions: What was he doing with the president? Was he conducting an operation on behalf of Chinese intelligence? And what did he know about the murky alliance between Chinese organized crime and the Chinese state?

But the DEA clashed with the FBI over strategy. And by the time DEA agents zeroed in on Liu, he had holed up in Hong Kong. The pandemic had shut down travel.

If the agents wanted to solve the walking mystery that was Tao Liu, they would have to figure out a way to go get him.

This account is based on interviews with more than two dozen current and former national security officials based in the U.S. and overseas, as well as lawyers, associates of Liu and others. ProPublica also reviewed court documents, social media, press accounts and other sources. ProPublica granted anonymity to some sources because they did not have authorization to speak to the press or because of concerns about their safety and the sensitivity of the topic.

(For ProPublica) Prowling the World

Liu grew up in comfort and privilege.

Born in 1975 in Zhejiang province, he studied business in Shanghai and began prowling the world. He accumulated wealth and left behind a trail of dubious ventures, failed romances and children, according to court documents, associates and former national security officials. He lived in Poland and Hong Kong before moving in 2011 to Mexico City, where he dabbled in the gambling and entertainment fields.

Soon he met Li, the Chinese American money launderer, who also sold fraudulent identity documents. Liu bought fraudulent Guatemalan and Surinamese documents from Li and acquired a Mexican passport, according to prosecution documents and interviews. He played a crucial early role helping Li build his criminal empire, according to former investigators.

Both men had links to the 14K triad, a powerful Chinese criminal syndicate, according to former investigators and law enforcement documents. Moving between Mexico and Guatemala, they were on the vanguard of the Chinese takeover of the underworld that launders money for the cartels.

But in 2014, Liu embarked on a caper in China. He touted a cryptocurrency with an ex-convict, Du Ling, known as the “queen of underground banking,” according to interviews, media reports and Chinese court documents.

It was all a fraud, authorities said. Chinese courts convicted the banking queen and others on charges of swindling more than 34,000 investors from whom they raised over $200 million.

Stills from a promotional clip posted to the video-sharing site Tencent Video show Liu at his company’s lavish launch event in Hong Kong. There, Liu told investors about planned resorts in Fiji and the Americas, where guests would soon be able to spend cryptocurrency like “actual money.”

Although accused of being the mastermind, Liu eluded arrest, according to court documents, associates and other sources. He popped up in Fiji as a private company executive promising infrastructure projects inspired by President Xi Jinping’s visit months earlier to promote China’s development initiative, according to news reports and interviews. Liu even hosted a reception for the Chinese ambassador, according to news reports.

Liu’s activities in Fiji fit a pattern of Chinese criminals aligning themselves with China’s foreign development efforts for mutual benefit, national security veterans say. Liu claims corrupt Chinese officials were his partners in Fiji, “but then they threw him under the bus,” said his lawyer, Jonathan Simms.

Liu discussed development and tourism projects with Solomon Islands officials, including Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare (second from right). Those deals fell through after an alleged victim of Liu’s Chinese cryptocurrency scam sent emails to local embassies and media organizations calling for Liu’s arrest. (Solomon Islands Office of the Prime Minister and Cabinet)

After allegations surfaced about his role in the cryptocurrency scandal in China, Liu fled to Australia. Airport police there downloaded his phone and found discussions about fraudulent passports from countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, according to Simms and other sources.

In 2016, Liu returned to Mexico. He soon obtained a U.S. business/tourist visa by making false statements to U.S. authorities about whether he was involved in crime, prosecution documents say.

Now known as Antony Liu, he was ready to make a name for himself.

Money and Politics

Yuxiang Min is an entrepreneur in Manhattan’s Chinatown. For years, he has nurtured a “Chinese American dream”: to prosper in the herbal medicine industry by planting 16,000 acres of licorice in a desert in China’s Gansu province.

After meeting Min in early 2018, Liu promised to make the dream a reality, Min said.

“He made me believe he was very well-connected in China,” Min said. “And I think he was. He showed me photos of himself with top Chinese officials.”

Min said one photo appeared to show Liu with Xi, China’s president, before he took office. Between 2002 and 2007, Xi served in senior government positions in two places where Liu had lived, Zhejiang and Shanghai. But Min said he did not have the photo, and ProPublica has not confirmed its existence.

Liu rented Chinatown offices from Min, who said he helped the wealthy newcomer buy a top-of-the-line BMW and find a translator. Despite his weak English, Liu was charismatic and persuasive, associates said. He bankrolled dinners, a concert, an outing on a yacht; he flaunted the flashy details on his social media. He founded Blue Ocean Capital, an investment firm that did little actual business, according to associates, former national security officials and court documents.

Liu posted dozens of images of his high-rolling lifestyle to social media, including these from Manhattan’s Club Macanudo (first image) and a gala at Oheka Castle, a mansion-turned-hotel on Long Island. The second image is a still from a video in which an unseen man calls Liu “China’s organized crime boss.” In response, Liu laughs.

He even gained access to the United Nations diplomatic community, sharing his office suite in Rockefeller Center with the Foundation for the Support of the United Nations. The foundation’s website says it is a nongovernmental organization founded in 1988 and that it is affiliated with the UN. A UN spokesperson confirmed that the foundation had “consultative status,” which gave its representatives entry to UN premises and activities.

Liu became a financial benefactor of the foundation and was named its “honorary vice chairman.” Through the foundation, he was able to organize a conference at UN headquarters with speakers including publishing executive Steve Forbes and former Mexican President Felipe Calderón, according to interviews, photos and media accounts.

(Photos of Liu with Steve Forbes (first image) and Felipe Calderón at the UN that Liu posted to Facebook)

The Bulgarian mission to the UN helped secure the venue for the event, and ambassadors from seven countries attended, according to online posts and interviews. The mission did not respond to a request for comment.

Although it is startling that someone with Liu’s background could play a role in hosting an event at the UN, it is not unprecedented. In past cases, wealthy Chinese nationals suspected of links to crime and Chinese intelligence have infiltrated UN-affiliated organizations as part of alleged bribery and influence operations.

Janet Salazar, the president of the foundation, did not respond to phone calls, texts or emails. Efforts to reach foundation board members were unsuccessful. Emails to Salazar and the foundation in New York bounced back.

UN officials did not respond to queries from ProPublica about what vetting Liu received, if any.

“We are not aware of the story of Mr. Tao Liu,” the UN spokesperson said.

Calderón said in an email that he was invited through a speakers bureau to give a talk on sustainable development. The event included Asian participants who did not appear to speak English, Calderón said, and he had little interaction with them other than posing for photos.

Forbes’ staff did not respond to requests for comment.

Liu also met U.S. political figures through his latest romantic partner: a Chinese immigrant with contacts of her own. She introduced him to Félix W. Ortiz, then the assistant speaker of the New York State Assembly, who socialized with the couple on several occasions.

Ortiz, a Democrat who formerly represented Brooklyn, did not respond to requests for comment.

Because Liu was not a legal resident, U.S. law barred him from contributing to political campaigns. But he attended political events, according to photos, social media and associates. He also met with two veteran GOP fundraisers in the Asian community, Daniel Lou and Jimmy Chue.

Photos Liu posted to social media show him spending time with Daniel Lou and Jimmy Chue. Both were with him at a diner after a Trump rally they all attended in fall 2018 (first image; Lou is on the far left, Chue is second from right next to Liu). Liu also shared a picture (second image) with Chue and Lt. Steven Rogers (center), then a Trump campaign advisory board member, at a Manhattan restaurant in spring 2019. Rogers did not respond to requests for comment.

“He was interested in political donations and fundraising,” Lou said in an interview. “He wanted to participate. He was willing to help politicians here. That’s for sure.”

Lou said he did not engage in fundraising with Liu. In an email, Chue said he knew of “no illegal activities” related to Liu. He declined to comment further.

On April 27, 2018, Liu’s friend Min contributed $5,000 to the New York Republican Federal Campaign Committee, campaign records show. In reality, Liu told Min to make the donation and paid him back, Min said in an interview.

Min said he received the money in cash and did not have evidence of the alleged reimbursement. But if his account is true, it appears that Liu funneled a political donation illegally through Min, a U.S. citizen.

Photos on Liu’s social media show him rubbing elbows with political figures. Among them (clockwise from top left): U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao; Assistant Speaker of the New York State Assembly Félix W. Ortiz; New York Mayor Bill de Blasio; and Chair of the New York Republican Party Edward F. Cox and Lara Trump. Ortiz gave Liu an award at Blue Ocean’s launch ceremony.

The New York GOP did not respond to emails, phone calls, or a fax seeking comment.

A Sit-Down With the President

As he built his profile in Manhattan, Liu made it clear to associates that he was eager to meet Trump. For help, he turned to Cinque, the longtime Trump associate, according to interviews, photos and social media posts.

Cinque, 86, heads the American Academy of Hospitality Sciences, which gives international awards to hotels, restaurants and other entities. It has given at least 22 awards to Trump ventures, including the Bedminster club, and it once billed Trump as its Ambassador Extraordinaire.

Cinque has a colorful past. In 1990, he pleaded guilty to receiving stolen property, a valuable art collection, according to press reports. A profile in New York Magazine in 1995 quoted him discussing his interactions with “wiseguys” and a shooting that left him with three bullet wounds.

In 2016, Trump told the Associated Press that he didn’t know Cinque well and was unaware of his criminal record. In an article in Buzzfeed, Cinque’s lawyer said his client had no connection to the mob.

Liu dined with Cinque in May 2018 and they hit it off, according to photos and Liu’s associates. Cinque said he could make an introduction to the president, a close associate of Liu said.

Cinque told ProPublica that people in the Chinese American community introduced him to Liu, describing him as a wealthy entrepreneur and a “good person.” Liu impressed Cinque with his luxury car and entrepreneurial energy. He said they could make a lot of money by pursuing a lucrative cryptocurrency venture, Cinque said.

Liu and Cinque got together more than a dozen times, according to social media photos and interviews. At a June gala at the Harvard Club to launch Liu’s company, Cinque gave him a Six Star Diamond Award for lifetime achievement — an award he had previously bestowed on Trump.

“He was gonna pay me big money for giving him the award,” Cinque said. “So I did an award. I didn’t check his background, I’m not gonna lie to you.”

Liu indicated he would pay as much as $50,000 for the honor, but he never actually paid up, Cinque said.

Liu with Cinque at a United Nations conference (first image) and at the Bedminster golf club.

Liu followed a familiar playbook for well-heeled foreigners seeking access to Trump, according to national security officials: pour money into his properties.

In July, Cinque helped Liu rent a one-bedroom apartment above the 50th floor in Trump Tower by providing a credit report to the landlord as a guarantor, according to Cinque, a person involved in the rental and documents viewed by ProPublica. Liu paid a year’s worth of the $6,000 monthly rent upfront. Cinque believes Liu chose Trump Tower in an effort to gain favor with the president.

Liu also told friends he joined the Bedminster golf club, three associates said. Liu told Min he paid $190,000 for a VIP membership, Min said.

But Cinque doesn’t think Liu genuinely became a member. In fact, he said he brought Liu to Bedminster partly because Cinque hoped to impress Trump by persuading his well-heeled new friend to join the club.

“I was trying to get him to join, where I look good in Trump’s eyes if he joined,” Cinque said. But he said Liu “never gave 5 cents. He was a deadbeat.”

On July 20, CNBC aired an interview with Trump in which he complained about the trade deficit with China.

“We have been ripped off by China for a long time,” Trump said.

By the next day, Liu’s efforts to gain access to the president had paid off. He met Trump at Bedminster, according to interviews and photos obtained by ProPublica.

Liu posted a video on Facebook of Trump arriving by helicopter at Bedminster (first image). The second image is a photo obtained by ProPublica of Liu and Cinque meeting with Trump.

The images show the president with Liu and Cinque at a table covered with food, drinks and papers. Three other men are at the table. Trump also posed for photos with Liu and Cinque.

Liu was discreet about the conversation, according to Min. Cinque did most of the talking because of Liu’s limited English, Liu’s close associate said.

ProPublica found a few details in an interview of Cinque by SINA Finance, a Chinese media outlet. In the video posted that September, Cinque and a manager of his company announced a business partnership with Liu involving blockchain technology and the hospitality industry. And then Cinque said he had introduced Liu to the president at Bedminster.

“Antony Liu played a big role,” Cinque told the SINA interviewer. “Donald met him, and he wound up staying with him for three hours, just enjoying every moment.”

The video displayed a photo of the president with Liu and Cinque during the visit.

Cinque and Liu’s companies posted a shorter version of the interview on their social media pages. That video omitted the reference to Liu meeting Trump and the photo of the three of them.

In the interview with ProPublica, Cinque gave a distinctly different version than the one he gave to the Chinese outlet. He said he brought Liu along because Liu implored him for the opportunity of a meeting and photo with Trump. Cinque also said he “exaggerated the truth” when he said Liu spent three hours with the president.

The meeting lasted “maybe twenty minutes, a half hour,” Cinque said.

Cinque was vague about the topic of the conversation with the president, indicating it had to do with the golf club and the awards he gives.

Changing his account once again, he insisted that Liu did not say much.

“He just sat there,” said Cinque, who also denied discussing Liu’s business deals with Trump. “How I could tell anything good to Donald about him where he’s gonna do a deal? First I wanted to see if I could earn anything with him.”

A still from Cinque’s interview with SINA Finance in which he says the two of them spent three hours with Trump at Bedminster. (SINA)

Liu and Cinque met the president again that Sept. 22 during an event at Bedminster, according to interviews and photos. One photo shows Trump smiling with Liu, Cinque and three men who, according to a close associate, were visiting Liu from China for the occasion.

The photos appeared on the Chinese website of the Long Innovations International Group, also known as the Longchuang International Group. The consulting firm owned by Lou, the GOP fundraiser, has organized events allowing Chinese elites to meet U.S. leaders. A caption with the photos said: “Longchuang Group and Blue Ocean expert consultant team Trump luncheon.”

But Lou insists he didn’t know anything about such an event. He said colleagues in China controlled his company’s Chinese website.

“I categorically deny I was involved in this,” Lou said. “I was not there. I did not know about it. Tao Liu did offer to me at one point: You are the pro-Trump leader in the community. How about organizing an event at Bedminster? ... But I did not.”

Cinque, meanwhile, said he brought Liu and his visitors to the club. He disagreed with the company website’s description of an event with the president.

“There’s no political — it’s a golf situation there,” he said. “And people love being in [Trump’s] company.”

Although Cinque denied receiving money from Liu for himself or the president, he said he didn’t know if other visitors paid Liu for the chance to meet Trump, or if Liu made campaign donations through others.

Liu met Trump again at Bedminster in September 2018. The photos appeared on the Chinese-language website of the Longchuang International Group.

Much about the two Bedminster meetings remains unclear. Did Liu arrange a political event for Trump in September? Or did he bring a group of visitors to the club and manage to encounter the president? Either scenario raises once again the question of vetting.

The Secret Service screens all official presidential visitors for weapons and, along with White House staff, checks them in law enforcement and intelligence databases. Foreign nationals require added scrutiny that can include reviewing raw intelligence from overseas. If questions arise, the Secret Service can consult with the FBI and other agencies, said a former acting undersecretary for intelligence at the Department of Homeland Security, John Cohen, who worked on presidential protection issues.

It is not clear if databases available to the Secret Service held information about the charges against Liu in China and his other alleged illicit activities. But by 2018, Chinese media reports and court documents had described the fraud case complete with photos of Liu. English-language press had also detailed his troubles in the South Pacific and China. Despite Liu’s use of different first names, a diligent web search could have found some of that information.

But Liu apparently avoided background screening altogether, according to Secret Service officials, Cinque and other sources. Although visitors cannot schedule an official meeting with the president without being vetted, it is possible that they could communicate through the private club to set up an informal meeting, Secret Service officials said. Cinque said he took Liu to Bedminster on days he knew Trump would be there.

The case is another example, national security veterans said, of unique vulnerabilities caused by the freewheeling atmosphere at Trump’s clubs.

“Trump has chosen to reside in places that are open to the public,” Cohen said. “He has provided an opportunity to people who join these clubs to get access to him. We have seen that the president enjoys making himself available to people in these settings. A top priority for foreign intelligence is that kind of setting: infiltrating, gaining access. If the former president decides to allow access to criminals and spies, there is not much the Secret Service can do.”

A week after the Bedminster visit, Liu accompanied the Chinese American GOP fundraisers to West Virginia to see Trump speak at a rally. Liu sat in the VIP section.

Liu attended a Trump rally and posted photos of it on Facebook. In the Fall

A year later, Liu’s American spree was in shambles.

His romantic partner had a child, but they broke up. Liu accumulated angry business associates, including Min, who says Liu owes him $83,000. Liu owed another $2 million in a legal settlement with an investor who sued him for fraud in New York over a cryptocurrency deal, according to court documents.

In the fall of 2019, Liu stopped paying rent at Trump Tower, according to associates and other sources. His family left behind a crib and a bronze statuette of Trump. Liu went to California and departed the country on foot via Tijuana, later saying he “snuck out” to travel with his Mexican passport, according to his associates, national security officials and court documents.

By early 2020, Liu was back in Hong Kong. He set himself up in a high-rise hotel with a waterfront view. Then the pandemic shut down the world.

Liu’s Instagram documented his life in Hong Kong in the summer of 2020.

Meanwhile, the DEA had filed charges against his friend Li. Agents scouring a trove of communications, photos and other data realized that Liu had been an important figure in Li’s criminal activity.

The agents believed that Liu could tell them more about the money laundering for Latin American drug cartels and the alleged alliance between Chinese organized crime and the Chinese state. And his U.S. political activity intrigued and baffled them. They suspected that he had been operating in a gray area where crime and espionage mix.

“The theory is he was gathering information and feeding it back to Chinese intelligence in order to keep him in good graces to allow him to do his criminality,” a former national security official said. “His currency was influence. And the Chinese would use him as necessary based on his influence. And he was a willing participant in that. The DEA thought it could use him to get at targets in mainland China.”

But the pandemic had prompted Hong Kong to close its borders, and the authorities there were generally obedient allies of Beijing.

The Special Operations Division of the DEA often goes overseas to capture desperados with elaborate undercover stings. In that tradition, the agents came up with a plan.

In April 2020, Liu received a phone call. The caller spoke Chinese. He said he was a money launderer in New York. He said he had gotten the number from Li, their mutual friend in Mexico, court documents say.

The name apparently did the trick.

“Tao is in his apartment on lockdown,” Simms said. “He can’t go anywhere. He’s bored, talkative. He just talks and talks.”

Liu talked about teaching Li the tricks of the money laundering trade, according to Simms and court documents. He reminisced about Li’s casino in Guatemala. He boasted about using five different passports to slip across borders.

Soon, his new phone friend made a proposal, court documents say. He knew a crooked State Department official with a precious commodity to sell: bona fide U.S. passports.

Agreeing to a price of $150,000 each, Liu requested passports for himself and associates, according to prosecution documents and former national security officials. One of the associates was linked to the 14K triad, the former national security officials said.

By July, Liu had wired a total of $10,000 in advance payments. He received a realistic mock-up of his passport. He showed it off during a video call to Min.

“I’ll be back in America soon,” Liu exulted, according to Min.

In reality, the phone friend was an undercover DEA agent. Liu had taken the bait. DEA agents recorded their phone conversations over six months, court documents say.

(For ProPublica)

But a complication arose. The DEA learned that the FBI was conducting a separate investigation of Liu, national security sources told ProPublica.

FBI counterintelligence agents in New York became aware of him soon after he began spreading money around and cultivating political contacts in early 2018, national security sources said. Then his contact with Trump spurred an investigation to determine if Chinese intelligence was working with Liu to gain political access, the sources said.

His years as a fugitive gave credence to that idea. Although Chinese authorities had been pursuing him in relation to the cryptocurrency scandal since 2015, China did not issue an Interpol notice for him until 2020. Chinese authorities apparently made little effort to arrest him while he sheltered in Hong Kong for nearly a year.

The DEA and the FBI clashed over the imperatives of counterintelligence and law enforcement. FBI agents wanted to keep monitoring Liu to trace his contacts; DEA agents favored capturing him.

The DEA prevailed. That October, the undercover agent told Liu he had arranged for a private jet to pick him up in Hong Kong, according to court documents and former national security officials. It would take him to Australia, where they would seal the passport deal in person. Agents sent Liu a menu for the flight complete with a choice of cocktail. He thought that was “very high class,” his close associate said.

The stakes were high too. If Chinese authorities learned of the clandestine foray, a diplomatic uproar was likely.

On Oct. 13, the weather was warm and rainy. The DEA’s private jet landed in Hong Kong. Liu came aboard without hesitation, according to an associate and former national security officials.

Hours later, the plane touched down in Guam, which is a U.S. territory. DEA agents arrested Liu.

“He was surprised,” the close associate said. “So many police cars. He said it was like a 007 movie.”

Epilogue

On April 14 of last year, Liu pleaded guilty in a federal courtroom in Virginia to conspiracy to bribe a U.S. official in the passport sting and to conspiracy to commit money laundering. A judge sentenced him to seven years in prison.

Tao Liu (Alexandria (Virginia) Sheriff’s Office)

But two explosive questions remain unanswered: why he had contact with Trump and other politicians, and whether he worked with Chinese spy agencies.

The government has kept most of the story secret. Liu’s public court file does not mention his political activity. The DEA and Justice Department declined to discuss Liu with ProPublica. An FBI spokesperson said the agency could not confirm or deny conducting specific investigations.

Liu, meanwhile, accepted an interview request. But the Bureau of Prisons refused to allow ProPublica to talk to him in person or by phone, citing “safety and security reasons.”

The FBI investigation of Liu apparently focused on political and counterintelligence matters. Last year, agents questioned Min and at least two other associates of Liu. The agents asked Min about Liu’s interactions with Cinque and former Assemblyman Ortiz, and if Liu gave them money. Min said he told the agents he did not know.

In an interview with the close associate of Liu, FBI agents asked about Liu’s contact with Trump, whether he raised money for Trump and Ortiz, his relationship with Cinque, and his contacts with politicians in China. They also asked about money laundering in Mexico, the close associate said.

“I think the FBI thought he was a spy,” the close associate said. “I don’t think he’s a spy. His English is very bad. He just wanted to show off to Chinese people. This is the way a lot of Chinese business guys operate. A lot of American business guys, too. Getting close to politicians, taking photos with them.”

Cinque said federal agents have not questioned him about Liu.

“I just think he was a fraudulent hustler,” Cinque said. “I don’t think he would do anything against the country, but then I could be wrong. Look, he did a lot of things.”

As often happens in counterintelligence cases, Liu remains an ambiguous figure: a con man, or a spy, or possibly both. People familiar with the case are suspicious about his ability to roam the world for years and his success at infiltrating high-level U.S. politics.

“Guys like this never do this kind of thing on their own,” a national security source said. “They always do it for someone else.”

Do You Have a Tip for ProPublica? Help Us Do Journalism.

Jeff Kao and Cezary Podkul contributed reporting.

Anand Giridharadas’s ‘The Persuaders’ profiles activists, organizers, and change-makers charting a path to power through changing minds and ‘calling in.’

by Sebastian Rotella and Kirsten Berg

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

This is part one of an investigation into a revolutionary money laundering system involving Chinese organized crime, Latin American drug cartels and Chinese officials, and how one major figure in the scheme managed to meet former President Donald Trump. Read part two: “The Globetrotting Con Man and Suspected Spy Who Met With President Trump.”

In 2017, Drug Enforcement Administration agents following the money from cocaine deals in Memphis, Tennessee, identified a mysterious figure in Mexico entrusted by drug lords with their millions: a Chinese American gangster named Xizhi Li.

As the agents tracked Li’s activity across the Americas and Asia, they realized he wasn’t just another money launderer. He was a pioneer. Operating with the acumen of a financier and the tradecraft of a spy, he had helped devise an innovative system that revolutionized the drug underworld and fortified the cartels.

Li hit on a better way to address a problem that has long bedeviled the world’s drug lords: how to turn the mountains of grimy twenties and hundreds amassed on U.S. streets into legitimate fortunes they can spend on yachts, mansions, weapons, technology and bribes to police and politicians.

For years, the Mexican cartels that supply the U.S. market with cocaine, heroin and fentanyl smuggled truckloads of bulk cash to Mexico, where they used banks and exchange houses to move the money into the financial system. And they also hired middlemen — often Colombian or Lebanese specialists who charged as much as 18 cents on the dollar — to launder their billions.

Those methods were costly, took weeks or even months to complete and exposed the stockpiled cash to risks — damage, robbery, confiscation.

Enter Li. About six years ago, federal antidrug agents in Chicago saw early signs of what would become a tectonic change. They trailed cartel operatives transporting drug cash to a new destination: Chinatown, an immigrant enclave in the flatlands about 2 miles south of the city’s rampart of lakefront skyscrapers.

Agents on stakeout watched as cartel operatives delivered suitcases full of cash to Chinese couriers directed by Li. Furtive exchanges took place in motels and parking lots. The couriers didn’t have criminal records or carry guns; they were students, waiters, drivers. Neither side spoke much English, so they used a prearranged signal: a photo of a serial number on a dollar bill.

After the handoff, the couriers alerted their Chinese bosses in Mexico, who quickly sent pesos to the bank accounts or safe houses of Mexican drug lords. Li then executed a chain of transactions through China, the United States and Latin America to launder the dollars. His powerful international connections made his service cheap, fast and efficient; he even guaranteed free replacement of cartel cash lost in transit. Li and his fellow Chinese money launderers married market forces: drug lords wanting to get rid of dollars and a Chinese elite desperate to acquire dollars. The new model blew away the competition.

“At no time in the history of organized crime is there an example where a revenue stream has been taken over like this, and without a shot being fired,” said retired DEA agent Thomas Cindric, a veteran of the elite Special Operations Division. “This has enriched the Mexican cartels beyond their wildest dreams.”

As they investigated Li’s tangled financial dealings, U.S. agents came across evidence indicating that his money laundering schemes involved Chinese government officials and the Communist Party elite. China’s omnipresent security forces tightly control and monitor its state-run economy. Yet Li and others moved tens of millions of dollars among Chinese banks and companies with seeming impunity, according to court documents and national security officials. The criminal rings exploited a landscape in which more than $3.8 trillion of capital has left China since 2006, making the country the world’s top “exporter of hot money,” said John Cassara, a former U.S. Treasury Department investigator, in testimony to a Canadian commission of inquiry.

Adm. Craig Faller, a senior U.S. military leader, told Congress last year that Chinese launderers had emerged as the “No. 1 underwriter” of drug trafficking in the Western Hemisphere. The Chinese government is “at least tacitly supporting” the laundering activity, testified Faller, who led the U.S. Southern Command, which oversees military activity in Latin America.

In an interview with ProPublica, the now-retired Faller elaborated on his little-noticed testimony. He said China has “the world’s largest and most sophisticated state security apparatus. So there’s no doubt that they have the ability to stop things if they want to. They don’t have any desire to stop this. There’s a lot of theories as to why they don’t. But it is certainly aided and abetted by the attitude and way that the People’s Republic of China views the globe.”

Some U.S. officials go further, arguing that Chinese authorities have decided as a matter of policy to foster the drug trade in the Americas in order to destabilize the region and spread corruption, addiction and death here.

“We suspected a Chinese ideological and strategic motivation behind the drug and money activity,” said former senior FBI official Frank Montoya Jr., who served as a top counterintelligence official at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. “To fan the flames of hate and division. The Chinese have seen the advantages of the drug trade. If fentanyl helps them and hurts this country, why not?”

More than half a dozen national security veterans interviewed by ProPublica expressed similar views, most of them speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive subject. But they acknowledged that the alleged state complicity is difficult to prove.

Beijing rejects such accusations. And the question of whether China actively supports money laundering and the flow of fentanyl and other drugs to the U.S. remains a matter of debate in the U.S. national security community.

“There is so much corruption today in mainland China it becomes hard to distinguish a policy or campaign from generalized criminality,” said an Asian American former intelligence official with long experience on Chinese crime and espionage.

The Chinese embassy in Washington did not respond to a detailed request for comment for this story.

The takeover of drug-related money laundering by Chinese organized crime has drawn global attention. In Australia, authorities are investigating a Chinese syndicate that allegedly moved hundreds of millions of dollars around the world for clients, including a cousin of Chinese President Xi Jinping, according to news reports. (Xi’s cousin has not been charged with a crime, and the Chinese foreign ministry has dismissed reports about inquiries into his activities as “gossip.”)

Europol has warned that Chinese money laundering groups “present a growing threat to Europe.” The U.S. State Department estimates that $154 billion in illicit funds a year passes through China, calling it “of great concern.”

“We used to have a regular dialogue with the Chinese specifically on things like money laundering, counternarcotics policies,” Assistant Secretary Todd Robinson, who leads the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, said in an interview. “And since that has stopped, it has not been clear, we’ve not really been able to get a handle on how much of this is criminal organizations and how much of it is criminal organizations connected to or suborning Chinese government officials.”

Xi has led a well-publicized crusade against corruption, but it has been mainly a purge of rivals, according to U.S. national security officials and Chinese dissidents. In fact, they said, Chinese intelligence services have quietly expanded their ties with Chinese mafias, known as triads, for mutual benefit.

“There is no question there is interconnectivity between Chinese organized crime and the Chinese state,” said Montoya. “The party operates in organized crime-type fashion. There are parallels to Russia, where organized crime has been co-opted by the Russian government and Putin’s security services.”

The Li case led federal agents in an unexpected direction: an investigation of a possible Chinese covert operation to penetrate American politics. The DEA agents stumbled across Li’s enigmatic associate, an expatriate Chinese businessman named Tao Liu. After moving from Mexico to New York, he launched a high-rolling quest for political influence that included at least two meetings with President Donald Trump.

Xizhi Li’s associate, Tao Liu (right), met twice with President Donald Trump in 2018.

Both the DEA and FBI pursued Liu, suspecting he had ties to Chinese spy agencies. They wanted to know how and why a wanted Chinese criminal had gained access to the president of the United States.

Although authorities convicted Li and Liu of money laundering and other crimes, the political and diplomatic aspects of the groundbreaking investigations of them are still largely secret. Citing open investigations, the DEA declined to discuss the case or even the general issue of how Chinese organized crime launders profits for the cartels. The Justice Department and FBI declined requests for comment. Lawyers who represented Li rejected requests for interviews with them or their client.

To explore the full dimensions of the case, ProPublica interviewed more than two dozen current and former national security officials, as well as lawyers and others involved. ProPublica granted some of them anonymity, either because they were not authorized to talk publicly or because of concerns about their security. ProPublica also reviewed court files, social media, governmental reports and other material. Many details — about the suspected role of Chinese officials, the hunt across the globe, the links to U.S. politics — are being reported for the first time.

The Aura of Juan Lee

In 2008, Rigo Polanco met a cocaine trafficker who called himself Juan Lee. It was one of 17 aliases that Xizhi Li accumulated in a criminal career that was just getting started.

Polanco, a California anti-drug agent, had spent weeks undercover stalking Li, who was looking for a high-volume supplier. But the guy was a ghost. He used multiple phones. He hid behind intermediaries. Finally, he agreed to meet Polanco at a Denny’s by the Pomona Freeway in the suburban sprawl of the San Gabriel Valley.

(For ProPublica)

On June 24, Polanco’s Los Angeles County task force deployed surveillance around the diner. Polanco introduced himself as Alfredo, a corrupt Customs and Border Protection officer with access to cocaine. He sat down with Li, Li’s 25-year-old Mexican American wife and her brother.

At 35, Li stood 5-foot-7 and weighed about 135 pounds. But he was imposing. He spoke fluent, Mexican-accented Spanish, wore a Rolex and emanated menace.

“The aura of Juan Lee among the people around him was, ‘Don’t cross this guy,’” Polanco recalled in an interview. “There was some sense of fear of him among his associates.”

Li grew up in a unique subculture where crime spoke many languages and crossed borders with ease. The experience served him well.

He was born in a rural area of Guangdong province in 1973. About 10 years later, the family migrated to Mexicali, a Mexican city on the California border that is home to a large Chinese community. Chinese restaurants fill La Chinesca, the Chinatown. In the early 20th century, an underground tunnel complex was a refuge from the desert heat — and a site for gambling and cross-border crime schemes.

Li attended school and worked long shifts in a family restaurant. But one of his close relatives smuggled migrants and contraband into the United States, former investigators say. When Li was about 16, his family migrated to Southern California. He slid into crime in the 1990s and with help from relatives became an associate of the 14K triad, a Chinese criminal organization, according to law enforcement documents and former investigators.

Li obtained U.S. citizenship and had four children with a Chinese-born woman. In 2005, he opened the Lucky City Restaurant in the suburb of Monterey Park in Los Angeles County. The restaurant quickly became a den of drug trafficking and human smuggling, according to an affidavit written by a DEA investigator and sources familiar with the case.

By then, Li’s triad and family connections had helped him cultivate relationships with Chinese officials with diplomatic status in the United States, according to former investigators. He also recruited a corrupt U.S. border inspector to help with smuggling, according to law enforcement documents and former investigators.

Li’s hectic life bridged the Latino and Asian communities. He had two children with his Mexican American wife, whose family had useful cartel connections, according to interviews and court documents.

At the same time, Li maintained ties to his birthplace. Around 2007, he took Chinese relatives to Guangdong for the Qingming Festival, when families clean the tombs of their ancestors. Basking in the role of benevolent immigrant, he “funded the renovation of our village, transforming the muddy land into streets,” his sister wrote to a federal judge years later.

Back in the smoggy San Gabriel Valley, his prolific criminal activity drew investigations by the DEA and FBI. But Polanco’s team of Los Angeles County officers didn’t know about those open cases when they went after him in 2008.

During a second meeting at a seafood restaurant, Li told Polanco that he was smuggling 30-kilogram loads of cocaine through Mexico to Hong Kong, making $60,000 a kilogram. He also sent cocaine to Canada. And he had a sideline smuggling Chinese migrants through Cuba.

(For ProPublica)

This is no run-of-the-mill thug, Polanco thought. Mexico was violent. Cuba was a police state. Canada and Hong Kong were hotbeds of Chinese organized crime. You needed well-placed allies to navigate among those cultures and countries.

“It all added up to this picture of a very shrewd and cautious and sophisticated operator,” Polanco said. “There was a lot of sophistication in what he was doing, even then.”

After negotiations with the undercover agent, Li agreed to buy an initial 20 kilograms of cocaine. On July 14, he sent a young Asian man in a Mercedes to a supermarket parking lot to deliver $200,000. Polanco’s team captured the bagman and other accomplices. The bagman and Li’s brother-in-law pleaded guilty to drug trafficking offenses, while charges against the wife were dropped.

But Li fled south across the border. He soon proved Polanco’s instincts correct.

Chinaloa

In Mexico City, Li rebounded fast.

Qiyun Chen was from his hometown and worked in her family’s retail business. Only in her early 20s, she became his romantic and criminal partner, according to court documents and former investigators. Her charm and intelligence impressed gangsters and cops alike. (Chen could not be reached for comment.)

Chen introduced Li to her own network in the Chinese Mexican community, including a formidable trafficker known as the Iron Lady. In her online communications, Chen called herself Chinaloa. The alias fused the words China and Sinaloa, the state that has spawned many drug lords. It baptized her as a player in a multilingual subculture that she and Li created. Their text messages combined Chinese and Spanish. Li used the online handles JL 007 and Organización Diplomática (Diplomatic Organization).

The couple divided their time among luxurious homes in Mexico City, Cancun and Guatemala, making good money smuggling drugs and migrants. But they saw a new opportunity in money laundering.

(For ProPublica)

In 2011, Li went to Guatemala City to buy a casino. Located in a Holiday Inn, it had a ’90s-era decor that didn’t exactly conjure images of James Bond in Monte Carlo.

Nonetheless, Li struck an all-inclusive deal with the owner. He bought his casino, his casino license — and his identity. The U.S. fugitive became a Guatemalan gambling entrepreneur, according to court documents.

Along the way, Li had developed a complementary racket: selling fraudulent documents. Li himself had five passports from three countries. The fake papers were professionally done. Li infiltrated corrupt Latin American bureaucracies that sell real passports, identity cards, even birth certificates. He also had a government-connected source for passports in Hong Kong. Li charged about $15,000 per document, according to interviews and court files.

The same year Li bought the casino, a cafe owner in Mexico City introduced him to a wealthy Chinese expatriate who wanted a Guatemalan passport. The new arrival was a portly, baggy-faced 35-year-old named Tao Liu. It proved a providential encounter.

Li took his client in a private helicopter to the southernmost Mexican state of Chiapas. They landed in the jungle and trudged across the border into Guatemala.

(For ProPublica)

“Bodyguards with weapons and vehicles were waiting on the other side,” said Liu’s lawyer, Jonathan Simms. “They take them to Li’s mansion in Guatemala. Li leaves him there and goes to get the passports. Tao spent time in that mansion waiting with other Chinese clients for Li to bring back the documents. He got to know the other people there pretty well.”

While at the safe house, Liu met a senior Chinese military officer who also bought a fraudulent document from Li, Simms said. Years later, Liu identified the officer in a photo shown to him by U.S. agents.

Investigators say that episode contributed to evidence that Li provided fake papers, and other criminal services, to Chinese officials in Latin America, where China is an economic and diplomatic power. Foreign passports and multiple identities enable Chinese operatives overseas to engage in covert activity, launder money or take refuge from their government if accused of corruption.

The national security threat posed by Li’s passport racket later caused the DEA to bring in the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service to conduct its own investigation, which continues today.

After the Guatemala expedition, Liu and Li became friends. They gambled at the casino and took women to the Bahamas. Although Liu had access to money and power, he was also an admitted brazen lawbreaker. Sometimes his dubious immigration status forced him to enter Mexico by car or bus, and he bragged about bluffing or bribing border officers, according to court documents, his lawyer and law enforcement officials.

The two men did not seem like kindred spirits. Li was thin; Liu was obese. Li was reserved; Liu was gregarious. It is hard to find photos of Li; Liu bombarded social media with scenes of his extravagant lifestyle.

But they were both globetrotting outlaws. And Liu played a crucial early role in building Li’s empire, according to current and former law enforcement officials and other sources. A U.S. indictment later alleged: “TAO [Liu] worked with LI to begin money laundering in locations including Mexico and Guatemala.”

In later conversations recorded by the DEA, Liu described himself as an influential mentor who taught Li how to launder money, according to court documents and interviews. Liu’s lawyer argued that his client’s admissions were exaggerations. But the investigators tended to believe Liu’s account.

“The DEA thought that they were partners in the money laundering,” a former national security official said. “And they were definitely working closely together.”

Investigators believe Liu used his connections in China and the diaspora to recruit rich people who needed U.S. dollars. A sign of Liu’s access to that underworld: he had another associate in Hong Kong, known as “the queen of underground banking,” who provided black market money services to the Chinese elite, according to Chinese court documents and press reports.

Stocked with cash and guns, Li’s Guatemalan casino became a base of his emerging venture. He started bringing Chinese nationals to the casino: some of them politically connected, others corrupt officials, others expatriates, according to interviews and court documents. They mingled with Latin American drug traffickers, the second essential element in his scheme. The casino was a showcase to demonstrate to both sides that Li could deliver, court documents say.

The wealthy Chinese “had a need,” Simms said. “The cartels had a need. Li put it together.”

(For ProPublica) Mirror Transactions

Many ethnic diasporas have developed informal systems for moving money and funneling cash — earned honestly or illegally — into the legitimate international economy.

For decades, underground banking systems served the elite of the Chinese Communist Party, or CCP, especially after the totalitarian regime opened its command economy to global capitalism. Starting around 2013, Xi’s anti-corruption crusade pushed the elite to spirit more money overseas. A yearly limit of $50,000 on capital flight increased a demand for U.S. dollars.

“The underground banking system in China was pretty much self-sufficient just dealing with Chinese criminal organizations and the Chinese diaspora,” said John Tobon, the Homeland Security Investigations special agent in charge in Honolulu, who has written on the topic. “And it was then when all of these restrictions came in, when the CCP members could no longer count on doing it the easy way ... that the supply of dollars became an issue.”

Li and other enterprising criminals identified a seemingly limitless source of dollars: the Latin American drug trade. To amass the cash, Li offered the cartels unheard-of money laundering deals.

“With the Colombians, it had been an 18% to 13% commission,” said Cindric, the retired DEA agent. “The Chinese are doing it for 1 to 2% on average. And the speed at which they do it is unbelievable. The Chinese absorbed the risk. You know it will get paid.”

Li deployed dozens of couriers from Los Angeles to Atlanta. Just two couriers in Chicago picked up more than $10 million from cartel operatives in a seven-month period between 2016 and 2017, according to law enforcement documents.

“We saw the Chinese enter the market,” said Daniel Morro, a former senior HSI official in Chicago. “It was super-intriguing. We had never seen it before.”

If the couriers delivered, they collected a 1% fee. If not, they were on the hook with Li.

On March 11, 2016, Nebraska state troopers stopped a rental car on a desolate highway. They confiscated $340,000 and released the two couriers, who were driving from Chicago to Los Angeles. A courier called Li, who called a cartel representative in Mexico and sent a bank transfer to replace the lost load. The courier and his relatives rapidly reimbursed Li by depositing money in U.S. bank accounts, court documents say.

“He was a hard-ass,” said Michael Ciesliga, a former DEA investigator. “No nonsense. All business. Very strict, very hard even on his family.”

Li’s system generally worked like this: Cartel operatives in the United States would arrange a “contract” with him, often to launder about $350,000, a quantity of cash that fit into a suitcase.

Cartel transporters handed over the dollar loads to Li’s couriers, who sent Li or his lieutenants a photo confirming the handoff. Li then delivered the sums in Mexican pesos to drug lords from safe houses in Mexico stocked with that currency. The first stage, providing swift service to the cartels, was complete.

Li’s profits came from other players in the scheme: rich Chinese willing to lose money in order to obtain dollars outside China and Latin American import/export firms needing Chinese currency to do business in China.

Li’s couriers often drove loads of cash to New York or Los Angeles, which have large Chinese immigrant populations. Li “sold” the currency to wealthy Chinese clients or their expatriate relatives or representatives. As part of the deal, Li himself would sometimes turn the dollars into deposits in bank accounts or use front companies to issue cashier’s checks.

But the Chinese clients often had their own options, such as small businesses that handled cash without questions. Another method was gambling at casinos, which readily turned cash into chips. Many clients bought homes or paid U.S. university tuition.

In testimony to a Canadian commission of inquiry in 2020, Cassara, the former investigator at the U.S. Treasury Department, described the frequency of laundering in the U.S. real estate sector.

“Almost 60% of purchases by international clients are made in cash,” Cassara said, citing a report by the National Association of Realtors. “Chinese buyers have been the top foreign buyers in the United States both in units and dollar volume of residential housing for six years straight. ... In the United States, there is little if any customer due diligence by real estate agents.”

The next step in Li’s system took place beyond the sight and reach of U.S. authorities. He directed his wealthy clients to transfer equivalent sums from their Chinese bank accounts to accounts he controlled in China. Known as “mirror transactions,” these transfers enabled Li to “sell” the same money again — this time, as Chinese currency to the Latin American exporters.

How Xizhi Li Used “Mirror Transactions” to Launder Millions of Dollars Across the World

The transactions allowed Li to move millions among Mexico, the United States and China while evading law enforcement and charging steep commissions.

I. The Cartel

A Mexican cartel operative hands over $350,000 in cash to a courier working for Li on the streets of a U.S. city. The exchanges often take place in parking lots, motels and shops.

Li’s organization in Mexico delivers an equivalent sum in pesos to the cartel within a day and Li takes a 2% commission. The process is much faster and cheaper than traditional money laundering methods. Now that the dollars have been converted into pesos, it’s easier for Mexican drug lords to use the cash.

II. The Wealthy Chinese

Wealthy Chinese who want to get around limits on moving money out of China “buy” the $350,000 from Li’s couriers in the U.S. They often use the U.S. dollars to buy real estate or pay for U.S. college tuition.

The wealthy Chinese complete the trade by transferring $350,000 in Chinese currency from their bank account in China to a bank account controlled by Li in China. They pay Li a commission of 10% or more.

III. The Foreign Company

Li sells the $350,000 in Chinese currency to a foreign company, often Mexican, that needs Chinese currency to buy goods in China.

The company pays Li in U.S. dollars or Mexican pesos, plus a fee. This makes it easier to evade customs duties and taxes on goods shipped to Mexico, because the company obtained the Chinese currency on the black market. Now the drug money has been introduced into the legal economy in three different countries.

(Graphic by Lucas Waldron, ProPublica)

There were variations on the system. Li sometimes washed funds through companies owned by confederates in the United States and Latin America who sold seafood and other goods to China. Taking advantage of the $80 billion in trade between Mexico and China, launderers also sent goods from China to Mexican front companies connected to drug lords. Those companies would sell the products for pesos, creating a legitimate paper trail for money initially earned from the sale of drugs.

Li’s network used Chinese banks including the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and the Agricultural Bank of China, court documents say. Those state institutions were among the banks that moved millions around the world with little apparent scrutiny in this case and others, according to court documents and interviews. Prosecutors did not accuse any bankers of wrongdoing. But investigators suspect that some bankers looked the other way. (The banks did not respond to requests for comment.)

“They had to know it was illegal,” Ciesliga said. “Just the sheer amount of money, and the volume and consistency and frequency, there’s no legitimate businesses that are moving that kind of money. Any alert anti-money laundering investigator would have detected this kind of activity.”

In other cases, authorities have sanctioned Chinese banks for offenses related to money laundering. In 2016, New York state regulators fined the Agricultural Bank of China $215 million for anti-money laundering violations. A Spanish court in 2020 convicted four Madrid executives of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China of a brazen setup in which they received tens of millions of euros in cash day and night, and moved the funds illegally back to China. The Bank of China has paid fines and endured criminal penalties in Italy and France for the alleged illegal repatriation of proceeds from tax evasion and customs fraud.

On the streets of the Americas, turf wars and rip-offs were rare among the money laundering crews. But for Li, reality intruded eventually.

In 2016, gunmen ambushed Li near his casino in Guatemala City, shredding his armored Range Rover with more than 20 rounds. He survived unscathed. The attackers got away. Li suspected rival Asian gangsters, according to former investigators and others familiar with the case.

He was deep in treacherous territory.

(For ProPublica) The Streets of Memphis

By 2017, Li’s empire had grown to span four continents. It operated below the radar, with startling impunity. A Memphis-based U.S. drug agent was about to change that.

Peter Maher was a sharp, voracious investigator who had only been with the DEA a few years, colleagues say. (Maher declined an interview request.) He teamed up with Ciesliga, a Tennessee state agent assigned to a federal task force. As they traced drugs on the streets of Memphis back to their source, they discovered that the Sinaloa cartel of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán was supplying cocaine to a major Memphis drug crew. Markings on cocaine packets pointed at Marisela Flores-Torruco, now 52, a Mexican drug lord known as the Iron Lady.

Maher’s team learned that, because Flores had a Chinese grandparent, her organization was known as “Los Chinos,” or the Chinese. Based in Chiapas, she imported tons of cocaine from Colombia for the Sinaloa cartel, interviews and court documents say. (Flores could not be reached for comment.)

Soon, the agents identified a woman in Mexico who was one of the Iron Lady’s “principal coordinators of illicit money laundering operations,” court documents say.

It was Chen, Li’s paramour, using the handle Chinaloa. The DEA Special Operations Division, which specializes in international cases, began intercepting her communications, according to court documents and interviews. The agents figured out that Chen had introduced Li to Flores, who encouraged other traffickers to launder their money with his organization.

Chen’s communications led the DEA to Li, who was laundering for the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels. Tracking his U.S. couriers, agents picked off loads across the country.

In May 2017, agents arrested one of Li’s trusted money managers, a Brooklyn-based mail carrier and Chinese immigrant who had lived in Belize. He recorded about $2 million in illicit transactions in a ledger and sometimes received cash deliveries in his U.S. postal uniform, court documents say. The mail carrier pleaded guilty to conspiracy to launder money and got a 60-month sentence.

(For ProPublica)

The Memphis agents toggled between leads in the U.S. and Mexico as the Iron Lady’s ferocity kept them on alert. When Flores ordered her enforcers to kidnap the family of a man who owed her money, the agents warned Mexican counterparts. Later, she threatened to kill rivals with a bombing at a racetrack, Ciesliga said. DEA agents hurriedly obtained an Interpol warrant, and police arrested Flores in Colombia in July 2017.

Later that month, the agents captured Chen during a visit to Los Angeles. They seized five phones from her, along with airline tickets to visit accomplices in Portland, Oregon, who oversaw more than 251 Chinese bank accounts, according to interviews and court documents.

The next morning, Maher and Ciesliga drove to the Santa Monica Pier. Sitting in their rental car by the Pacific, they scoured Chen’s phones. They hurriedly took screenshots, worried that an accomplice could remotely erase the contents at any moment.

Looking at Chen’s smartphones, the agents were able for the first time to read the suspects’ most sensitive conversations on WeChat, an application for messaging and commerce. WeChat is ubiquitous in China and the Chinese diaspora and impenetrable to U.S. law enforcement. Because it uses a form of partial encryption allowing the company access to content, WeChat is closely monitored by the Chinese state, according to U.S. national security veterans.

U.S. officials view the brazen use of WeChat for money laundering as another suggestive piece of evidence that authorities in Beijing know what is going on.

“It is all happening on WeChat,” Cindric said. “The Chinese government is clearly aware of it. The launderers are not concealing themselves on WeChat.”

Chen’s arrest was a devastating blow to Li. Agents mapped out the structure of his organization and sifted through a global labyrinth of transactions.

“It made us realize how big Li really was,” Ciesliga said. “He was definitely one of the first. We were talking to 40 different agents around the country and around the world, and for them it was a new thing what he was doing.”

The Fall of the Boss

The investigation gathered momentum as the DEA launched Project Sleeping Giant, a campaign against China-connected drug activity.

The agents dug through phone data and old cases to find Li’s ties to the 14K triad. That all-important discovery helped explain his “sprawling spider web of connections” in Asia and the Americas, Ciesliga said.

The 14K connection also pointed at the Chinese power structure. The triad’s former boss in Macao, Wan Kuok Koi, allegedly mixes crime, business and politics to advance China’s interests overseas, according to public allegations by the U.S. government. He is an influential member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference of the Communist Party, according to Treasury Department anti-corruption sanctions filed in 2020. A former senior State Department official, David Asher, described him as “an ambassador of organized crime.”

Wan and a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson have denied the U.S. allegations.

(For ProPublica)

The alleged state-underworld alliance surfaces elsewhere. In Hong Kong and Taiwan, triads attack political rivals of Beijing. Canadian national security chiefs have warned for years about an alliance of Chinese spies, triads and oligarchs. U.S. gangsters assist the Communist Party’s overseas intelligence and influence arm, the United Front, according to national security experts.

The party “uses organized crime-linked money laundering networks to get money to United Front actors and to help them fund their activities,” said Matthew Pottinger, who served as U.S. deputy national security adviser from 2019 to 2021. In return, triads gain “a sense of political security,” he said.

In the Li case, agents learned that clients for his money-moving services included powerful figures in the party, the Chinese government and the diaspora, according to Ciesliga and other former law enforcement officials and people familiar with the case. But it was hard to gather evidence because, as prosecutors said in a court filing, “United States law enforcement rarely, if ever, obtains assistance from Chinese officials in criminal investigations.”

Chinese authorities permit criminals like Li to operate because dark money benefits the elite, strengthens China’s economy and weakens the West, U.S. national security officials say.

“There is a strategy; it’s not individuals acting on their own,” Tobon, the Honolulu HSI chief, said. “The amount of money coming out of China via the underground banking system is so significant that it would be virtually impossible for a government that has as much control of their people as the government of China to not be aware of how it's happening.”

Some critics of Beijing say that analysis applies to another threat: fentanyl. China is the top producer of the lethal drug that has killed tens of thousands of Americans. Although pressure by the Trump administration caused Beijing to reduce the direct flow of the drug to the U.S. in 2019, China’s pharmaceutical sector still sells fentanyl precursors and analogues that reach Mexico, where cartels produce opioids — and work with Chinese money launderers.

In late 2019, Li finally fell. Making him think he would meet an associate, the DEA lured him to Merida, Mexico. Mexican federal police captured him and delivered him to DEA agents at the Houston airport, court documents say. He spent four and a half hours answering questions in English, admitting to “financial transactions involving ‘bad money,’” prosecution documents say.

Prosecutors charged him with leading a conspiracy that washed at least $30 million, a number backed by direct evidence. The full amount was likely in the hundreds of millions, according to law enforcement documents and interviews.

Xizhi Li (Alexandria (Virginia) Sheriff’s Office)

Li pleaded guilty and received a 15-year sentence, according to court records. Chen and half a dozen others also pleaded guilty and went to prison. Colombia extradited Flores, who pleaded guilty and got 16 years.

Li’s high-powered connections put him at risk. His old friend Liu feared for his safety, Simms said, because Li “was involved in Chinese organized crime, in Mexican money laundering, in activity in China that goes to higher levels of the power structure.”

And in this case, the fall of the boss was not the end of the story.

Do You Have a Tip for ProPublica? Help Us Do Journalism.

Jeff Kao and Cezary Podkul contributed reporting.

STLduJour(nal) ⏳ - MMXXII:284-AM JW Tue, 10/11/2022 - 08:48 STL: Tuesday, October 11, 2022 Events 📆

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• Chuck’s Hot Chicken opening Rock Hill location on October 13 - St. Louis Magazine
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• At Gokul Indian Restaurant, Jitendra Sandhe is serving up a wide range of exclusively vegetarian and kosher fare - feastmagazine.com
• Arzola’s Fajitas & Margaritas cooks up Tex-Mex in Benton Park inspired by three generations - feastmagazine.com

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• The Nobel Prize Goes to Bernanke and Diamond and Dybvig - Marginal REVOLUTION

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STLduJour(nal) ⏳ – MMXXII:284-AM JW Tue, 10/11/2022 - 08:37 STL: Tuesday, October 11, 2022 Events 📆

• Jane Goodall visits new exhibit at Saint Louis Science Center, speaks to students – KSDK
• Mark your calendar for an evening of family-friendly spooky stories at the St. Louis Storytelling Festival – St. Louis Magazine
• Pickin’ in the Pumpkin Patch – Good Food St. Louis
• Artica 2022 – r/StLouis
• Keg Tapping, German Food, Music, Mass In Grass, Play Big Part Of Oktoberfest Saturday/Sunday – RiverBender
• Granite City Is Loaded With Halloween Activities Through October – RiverBender
• Granite City’s Month Of Magic & Mayhem Kicks Off With Impressive Parade/Monster Dance Party – RiverBender

BuySTL 👜

• St. Louis startup developing self-driving railcar expands to new HQ – St. Louis Regional Freightway
• St. Louis-based global packaging business to expand European reach with acquisition – KSDK

Restaurants 🍲

• New brunch spot to open in Eat-Rite building – r/StLouis
• Chuck’s Hot Chicken opening Rock Hill location on October 13 – St. Louis Magazine
• Kingside Diner arriving soon at St. Louis Lambert International Airport’s Terminal 1 – St. Louis Magazine
• At Gokul Indian Restaurant, Jitendra Sandhe is serving up a wide range of exclusively vegetarian and kosher fare – feastmagazine.com
• Arzola’s Fajitas & Margaritas cooks up Tex-Mex in Benton Park inspired by three generations – feastmagazine.com

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• St. Louis Taco Week Is Here: $5 Taco Specials at Area Restaurants – RFT
• St. Louis Taco Week starts Monday, Oct. 10 – FOX 2
• St Louis themed cookbooks – r/StLouis

STL100 💯

• Tina Farmer Is Now the RFT’s Theatre Critic – RFT
• Coast Guard: Mississippi River reopens to barge traffic after low water closures – stltoday.com
• Washington University professor shares economics Nobel Prize for crisis research – stltoday.com
• Washington University Professor Wins Nobel Prize in Economics – RFT
• WashU professor among economic scientists awarded Nobel Prize – KSDK
• St. Louisan wins Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences – FOX 2
• The Nobel Prize Goes to Bernanke and Diamond and Dybvig – Marginal REVOLUTION

STL99 😱

• Airport websites in St. Louis, other cities go offline; cause being investigated – stltoday.com
• Lambert Airport website restored after apparent cyberattack, flights not affected – KSDK
• St. Louis Lambert International Airport website targeted by Russian hackers – FOX 2
• Woman killed by hit-and-run driver in Tower Grove South neighborhood – stltoday.com
• Hit-and-run crash on Gravois Avenue leaves pedestrian dead – KSDK
• Another Pedestrian Killed by Driver in St. Louis’ South City – RFT
• Car slams into building early Monday at Gravois, Nebraska avenues – KSDK

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• Missouri participation in public benefits program WIC fell sharply during pandemic – Missouri Independent

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• Making Workers Keep Their Webcams on Is a Human Rights Violation, According to Dutch Judge – Gizmodo
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• Leaked Emails Show Mexico’s Military Sold Grenades to the Cartels – VICE US
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CityGov 🏛

• Coatar PAC gets $100K from hotel firm, PAC supported by Cardinals – St. Louis Business Journal
• St. Louis residents frustrated with broken, rusty dumpsters – FOX 2
• Pipe-PVC-SCH – City of St. Louis
• Custom FRP Platform – City of St. Louis
• Goose Neck Neo Ring – City of St. Louis
• 2023 or Newer Chevrolet Equinox LS – City of St. Louis

LocalGov 🏛

• Saint Louis Public Schools picks interim superintendent, launches national search for permanent job – KSDK

MoGov 🏛

• Mike Parson Won’t Offer Mass Pardons for Marijuana Offenses – RFT

FedGov 🏛

• Biden’s Weed Pardon Won’t Get Anyone Out of Prison—But It’s Still a Huge Deal – VICE US
• U.S. Army Chooses Google Workspace – Hacker News

Jobs 📄

• Schnucks, union try out new flexible option for grocery workers – stltoday.com
• Client Service Coordinator II (Department of Human Services) – Jobs
• Program Manager I (Homeless Services) – Jobs
• Public Information Officer I – Jobs

Sustainability ♻️

• To stay or to go: Increased flooding forces towns to make hard choices – stltoday.com
• Making room for the river: Communities look at nature-based solutions – stltoday.com
• This California City Is Rapidly Running Out of Water – Gizmodo

Infrastructure 🚽

• Rivian recalls nearly every vehicle it has sold – The Register

Ecology 🦤

• Assessing Air Quality Conditions in the St. Louis Region as the 2022 Forecasting Season Wraps Up – Clean Air Partnership
• The Southwest’s Famous Cacti Are in Trouble – Gizmodo

WWW99 🕸

• Hackers forced more than a dozen US public airport websites offline – Engadget
• US airports’ sites taken down in DDoS attacks by pro-Russian hackers – BleepingComputer
• PayPal Still fining $2500 for Promoting anything “Discriminatory”, “Intolerance” – Hacker News
• PayPal decides fining people $2,500 for ‘misinformation’ wasn’t a great idea – The Register
• Telegram Piracy: Police Target 545 Channels & Eight Suspected Admins – TorrentFreak
• An ‘everything app’ would be bad for liberal democracies and free markets – Hacker News

Space 🚀

• William Shatner writes about going to space – Waxy.org
• Underground microbes may have swarmed ancient Mars – The Big 550 KTRS
• NASA’s InSight Lander Hunkers Down as Martian Storm Moves In – Gizmodo

DIY 🪓

• Command line and local web note‑taking, bookmarking, archiving application – Hacker News
• Big improvements to ActivityPub on Micro.blog – Manton Reece

Tags STLduJournal ⏳

Listen to an episode about Ruth Kamphoefner on our Here’s History podcast with KDHX. It’s hard to imagine it now, but there was a time in St. Louis when the idea of saving old buildings was a foreign concept. Progress usually meant tearing down anything old or in need of repair. Old homes and businesses were generally …

Continue reading "Saving Lafayette Square"

In my last post, I reprinted an email from reader Melissa in which she posed the question: Were our buildings “built plain or became plain over time?  I gave her four examples which you can review here. Another very good example of how a building may change dramatically is that of the first Maplewood Bank […]

Emily Wells of East Alton, IL joined the Real Rock Army today

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LGBTQIA+ communities have been contributing to St. Louis’s history for centuries. Now the Gateway to Pride virtual exhibit will begin to uncover the rarely-shared or

The post Gateway to Pride Exhibit appeared first on Explore St. Louis.

The Veterans Administration has finally given the $20,000 it promised to pay years ago to a disabled Army veteran for an SUV.

"This is about human beings," Rep. Bush said.

"It's just heartbreaking. Parents must wake up and lock up their guns," said Sharon Webb with Mothers Advocating Safe Streets.

As St. Louis struggles to keep up with overflowing trash dumpsters, another issue has surfaced in the city's garbage crisis: dumpsters that are so old and rusty, they are falling apart. 

The North County Police Cooperative’s contract to police Pine Lawn ends Tuesday, Oct. 11. The co-op told FOX 2 last month it would not keep policing the area because of years of delinquent payments.