A Chinese National this week pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Nashville to conspiring to commit evidence tampering in relation to an international human trafficking investigation.
This, according to Acting U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee Mary Jane Stewart.
According to a press release, court officials indicted New York resident Xu Zhang, 31, in September 2019, after he conspired with his girlfriend and co-conspirator, Gao Xing, also a Chinese National, to destroy and conceal records pertinent to a federal grand jury investigation.
“According to court documents, on September 6, 2019, Zhang visited Gao Xing in jail while she was in federal custody and the subject of an international human trafficking investigation. During the visit, Xing instructed Zhang to delete material information, including contacts and conversations from her WeChat account,” the press release said.
“WeChat is a Chinese multi-purpose messaging, social media, and mobile payment application that can be accessed by mobile devices, personal computers, and the internet. Xing provided Zhang with a method to obtain her online WeChat account login information from her mother in China, and other details pertaining to her account. Xing indicated that the items she needed Zhang to delete would make her case or situation worse and she further instructed Zhang to change her WeChat name. The following day, during a telephone call from the jail, Zhang confirmed to Xing that he had deleted the information requested and had changed Xing’s WeChat name in an attempt to delete and destroy material information related to her WeChat account.”
Gao Xing committed suicide in her cell in November 2019 at the Daviess County, Kentucky Detention Center. Zhang, meanwhile, faces up to 20 years in prison when he is sentenced on September 15, 2021, the press release said.
Homeland Security Investigations, the IRS-Criminal Investigation, and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation investigated this case, according to the press release.
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Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star. Follow Chris on Facebook. Email tips to [email protected].
