The mayor of Arcadia, California, has pleaded guilty to a felony of acting as an illegal agent for the People's Republic of China. 

The mayor, Eileen Wang, 58, agreed Monday to the charge, which carries a possible sentence of 10 federal prison sentence, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office of the Central District of California. 

“By her own admission, Eileen Wang secretly served the interests of the Chinese government,” Roman Rozhavsky, assistant director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence and Espionage Division, said in a statement. 

Wang was elected to the Arcadia City Council in November 2022, and the mayor is selected on a rotating basis. Wang was mayor from Feb. 3 until her resignation Monday.

From late 2020 through 2023, Wang worked at the direction and control of officials in the PRC, promoting its interests, according to Wang's plea agreement. Among other things, Wang promoted propaganda supporting the PRC. 

Yaoning "Mike" Sun, 65, of Chino Hills, was also charged in the case. He is serving a four-year federal sentence after pleading guilty in 2025 to acting as an illegal agent of a foreign government. 

Investigators say Wang and Sun operated U.S. News Center, a website that was presented as a news source for the local Chinese-American community. Officials of the PRC directed Wang and Sun on what content to host on the site. 

In June 2021, for example, a PRC official sent Wang pre-written articles. Among the articles was an essay written by a PRC official that was printed in the Los Angeles Times. The essay disputed claims of a genocide or forced labor in China's Xinjiang province, and claimed these were rumors spread to defame China and undermine its development. Wang posted the article immediately, and the PRC official thanked everyone at U.S. News Center for publishing it so quickly. 

"All Americans should be alarmed to learn an elected official was brazenly spreading propaganda on behalf of the Chinese government," Patrick Grandy, assistant director in charge of the FBI's Los Angeles Field Office, said in a statement. 

In her plea agreement, Wang admitted that she did not notify the attorney general that she was acting in the U.S. as an agent of the PRC, that she was residing in the U.S. while engaged in these actions, and that she didn't disclose on her website that some of its content was directed by the PRC government.