A former employee of a Chinese airline pleaded guilty Wednesday to acting as agent of the Chinese government for smuggling packages on flights from New York on behalf of the country’s military.
Ying Lin, a naturalized U.S. citizen from China, transferred packages from Chinese military officers assigned to the country’s United Nations mission in New York onto planes flying to China. The packages were listed as unaccompanied luggage or falsely listed under the names of passengers on the flights, breaking U.S. air safety rules that require checked baggage be accepted only from ticketed passengers, prosecutors said.
“This case is a stark example of the Chinese government using the employees of Chinese companies doing business here to engage in illegal activity,” Assistant Attorney General John Demers said in a statement. “Covertly doing the Chinese military’s bidding on U.S. soil is a crime, and Lin and the Chinese military took advantage of a commercial enterprise to evade legitimate U.S. government oversight.”
Lin worked for an international air carrier headquartered in China as a counter agent at John F. Kennedy International Airport from 2002 to 2015, then moved to Newark Liberty International Airport where she was a manager for the airline until April 2016. Prosecutors did not name the airline, though Air China is the only Chinese airline that services both airports.
In exchange for getting the packages on flights, Lin received tax-exempt purchases of liquor, cigarettes, and electronic devices, which prosecutors said were worth tens of thousands of dollars. Chinese construction workers, who were only permitted to work at government facilities, also did free work at her two residences in Queens.
She faces up to 10 years in prison.
