An Ontario university student has been arrested in the United States after allegedly taking photos at two airports at the request of someone he believed to be a Chinese government official.
In an affidavit filed in Michigan court, an FBI agent said Weiheng Zeng, a Chinese citizen studying at the University of Waterloo, was initially flagged by authorities in connection with an incident at Chicago’s O’Hare airport in April.
The agent said a man was seen taking photos, climbing a forklift and trying to open locked trailers at a FedEx facility at the airport on April 21, about 10 days after Zeng drove into the U.S. via the Ambassador Bridge.
Zeng was later linked to a car that was at the facility during the incident, a dark blue minivan with Ontario licence plates, the affidavit said.
When Zeng tried to drive into the U.S. again with the same minivan on Aug. 23, the student was pulled aside for a series of interviews first with border agents and later with the FBI in its counter-intelligence investigation.
Zeng gave conflicting accounts over the course of the interviews, the agent said. The document said he has been charged with making false statements.
At first, Zeng gave few details about his trip to Chicago in April, saying only that he took photos of planes, the affidavit said. He had told customs officers at the time that he was going to visit his sister, it said.
When agents reviewed his phone, they found multiple photos of aircraft and military planes, as well as photos of Zeng and others in tactical clothes holding rifle-style firearms, the court document said.
Zeng said he took photos of model aircraft for a flight radar website, and that the guns in the photos were airsoft guns, which shoot pellets rather than bullets, the agent said. He also denied having any kind of military training.
During a second interview with border agents, Zeng said he took photos of planes landing at O’Hare from a public parking lot, the affidavit said. Later, he said he went to a FedEx facility and climbed a forklift to take pictures.
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The university student said he had also previously trespassed at a FedEx facility at Toronto’s Pearson airport but had been caught, the agent said.
In a third interview, Zeng said a Chinese contact had reached out to him on a website for aviation spotters and assigned him specific planes to photograph, giving him the planes’ tail numbers and paying $20 to $30 per photo, it said.
He told border agents the Chinese contact mailed him SIM cards to use for their communications. Zeng said he would later destroy the SIM cards and delete the conversations as well as the photos, the agent said.
He admitted he’d gone to O’Hare to take photos of American planes for the Chinese contact, who he suspected was connected to the Chinese Communist Party, the agent said.
Zeng’s story continued evolve during his interview with the FBI, according to the affidavit.
The Chinese contact was an aviation enthusiast who was interested in photos of rare planes for “research,” Zeng allegedly told the FBI.
Zeng said he took photos of a specific American United plane at O’Hare in April because it had a temporary paint job that made photos “highly desired,” and went to the FedEx facility to take photos of an MD11 that was rare due to its age, the agent said.
After more questioning, however, Zeng admitted he wasn’t taking photos of specific planes, the agent alleged. Rather, that was the cover story provided by the Chinese contact, who was actually interested in information on transportation logistics and wanted photos of particular locations around airports, the affidavit said.
Zeng also told the FBI the Chinese contact had sent him a photo of a badge as well as videos of scenes that only security officials could access, then used a function to recall the messages, the document said.
The Chinese contact asked Zeng for “help” after the pair had been messaging daily for three months starting in October or November 2024, the student allegedly told the FBI. Zeng said he agreed because he thought it was “cool,” the affidavit said.
Zeng said he received a new SIM card every few months and destroyed the previous one, the document said. He added he would send the photos through the phone and then delete them, and got paid through transfers to a Bank of China account, it said. He never took the phone with him to the U.S.
Though he was asked to go to locations in Orlando and Las Vegas, Zeng told the FBI he only accepted the O’Hare and Pearson assignments, the document said. He was only able to take photos of the exterior of the FedEx facility at Pearson, it said.
When FBI agents looked into the forum where Zeng said he’d met the Chinese contact, they found it didn’t exist, the agent said.
The allegations have not yet been tested in court.
Chris Mathers, a former RCMP officer who now runs a private crime and risk consulting firm in Toronto, said it’s common practice for Chinese state security to try to recruit people online.
“They cruise around these online forums and … try and attract individuals that might be able to do some work for them,” he said.
The kinds of assignments described in the court document sound like a test run to see whether someone can be cultivated as a source, Mathers said.
As for the information allegedly collected, while basic, it could nonetheless be valuable in light of tensions between China and the U.S. over Taiwan, he said.
The Americans may not have the logistical capability to get more equipment to Taiwan at the moment given their involvement in the Middle East and would likely have to use civilian transport on some occasions, he said.
Knowing more about the baseline situation at freight facilities might help government officials detect any unusual movement of equipment, Mathers added.
“The Chinese technique of intelligence gathering is to hoover up everything. Train schedules, phone books, a restaurant menu — they just hoover it all up and then they parse through it and pick out what might be of value now or in the future,” he said.
“It’s rather nebulous, obviously, but that’s just the espionage world.”
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