CBS Finds Charged Chinese-Agent Realtor Linked to Cambodian Scam Group

A California realtor charged with working as a Chinese agent has connections to an alleged Cambodian criminal organization accused of using forced labor to run multibillion-dollar scams targeting Americans, a CBS News investigation reveals.

Last week the FBI charged Irvine realtor Wanying "Heather" Zhang, 34, with operating as an unregistered foreign agent. Agents allege they caught her surveilling the Taiwanese president's son in Seattle in 2025. She was accompanied by a travel companion CBS News identified as Fatai Miao, 54. Federal court filings reviewed by CBS News show that both Zhang and Miao have links to people involved in sprawling criminal enterprises.

During her time in California, Zhang appears to have traveled in wealthy circles. She posed for photos on the Chinese social media site Xiaohongshu in a Bugatti sports car, writing that it belonged to a friend. The car appears to be owned by a man the Justice Department describes as the "enforcer" in an alleged multibillion-dollar fraud ring fueled by modern slavery. The Justice Department says the Prince Group, an international conglomerate, ran at least $15 billion of online scams against Americans using workers in at least 10 alleged forced labor camps in Cambodia.

Zhang also built a yearslong relationship with Miao, a construction entrepreneur who is the registered agent and organizer for Yuanjin Development & Construction LLC. The company is registered at a five-bedroom, $4.5 million home in Irvine that prosecutors claim was also used as a "stash house" for an alleged Chinese money laundering organization working with the Sinaloa Cartel, according to a 2023 criminal complaint. Miao was not charged or named in that complaint.

In the complaint, Drug Enforcement Administration task force officer Steven Gonzalez described tracking a member of the alleged organization who dropped off a "red, medium-sized weighted tote bag" at the home on March 1, 2023. "I believe, based upon my training and experience, my knowledge of this investigation, and conversations with agents experienced in money laundering techniques, that [the man] had just picked up and made a delivery of United States currency that was the proceeds of illicit activity," the agent wrote. It was one of several alleged bag drops at stash houses around Los Angeles and Orange counties.

Miao has not been charged with any offense. Prosecutors said that days before the FBI executed a search warrant at his door in Irvine, he flew to China last month on a one-way ticket. At Zhang's second court hearing last Wednesday, a federal prosecutor claimed she too had been operating an "unlicensed currency exchange" business, with $190,000 in profits sent to her Chinese bank account. The government made no mention of the alleged drug ring in court or in public filings in her case.

CBS News also found links to the Prince Group. Miao's business partner in Yuanjin Development, Cheng Zhang, is also a business partner of the alleged Prince Group "enforcer." California corporation Big Bow LLC is managed by both Cheng Zhang and M Capital Global California LLC, which is controlled by Chen Sokly. CBS News identified Sokly as the man named only as "Co-Conspirator-2" in an indictment against Prince Group chairman Chen Zhi filed in New York last year. That indictment calls the Prince Group "one of the largest transnational criminal organizations in Asia." Business ties alone do not show that Zhang took part in the group's crimes, and the espionage case against her is separate.