Arcadia Mayor Eileen Wang Resigns After Federal Charge of Acting as Agent for China

Eileen Wang, mayor of Arcadia, California, has resigned and agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government. The 58-year-old was charged in April with one count of acting in the United States as an illegal agent of a foreign government.

She is expected to appear in federal court in downtown Los Angeles on the afternoon of May 11, 2026, and formally plead guilty in the coming weeks.

The felony carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison. According to her plea agreement, Wang and Yaoning “Mike” Sun worked on behalf of government officials for the People’s Republic of China from the end of 2020 to 2022. U.S. News Center aimed at the Chinese American community.

Chinese government officials instructed Wang and Sun to post pro-PRC content on the site. In June 2021, a Chinese government official sent Wang a link to a letter to the editor in the Los Angeles Times written by the consul general of the People’s Republic of China in Los Angeles.

Within minutes of receiving the link, Wang shared the article on her news site. The letter to the editor refuted reports of persecution, forced labor, and abuse of Uyghurs in Xinjiang. It stated there has never been genocide in Xinjiang or forced labor in the region’s cotton fields or any other sector.

Yaoning “Mike” Sun pleaded guilty to the same charge last October and is serving a four-year sentence. Sun was listed in campaign filings as the treasurer for Wang’s 2022 election campaign. Wang has also communicated with John Chen, who pleaded guilty to being an agent for the Chinese government and was sentenced to 20 months in prison.

Wang was elected in November 2022 to a five-person city council in Arcadia, from which the mayor position is selected on a rotating basis. She was sworn into office in December 2022. Arcadia is located about 13 miles northeast of Los Angeles.

The city has a population of about 53,000, is majority Asian and has a high concentration of Chinese residents. City manager Dominic Lazzaretto said in a statement that no city finances or staff were involved in the conduct charged against Eileen Wang. “This investigation concerns individual conduct, and the charges are for conduct that ceased after Ms.

Wang’s attorneys Jason Liang and Brian Sun said in a statement that she recognizes the seriousness of the charge and accepts responsibility for past personal mistakes. “She apologizes and is sorry for the mistakes she has made in her personal life,” Jason Liang and Brian Sun said.