The mysterious clients who approached a private investigator in New Jersey provided scant details about who they were or why they wanted information about a Chinese expatriate named Xu Jin.
But they gave the investigator, Michael McMahon, not only Mr. Xu’s Social Security number and addresses, but also what a judge described as Chinese government material, including the man’s identification number and travel records.
Mr. McMahon, who had been a New York Police Department detective, dug deeper. He turned to a law enforcement database and discovered that Mr. Xu was wanted by the Chinese government.
Still, Mr. McMahon continued meeting with men who federal prosecutors later said were trying to coerce Mr. Xu and his wife, Lui Fang, into returning to China, part of Chinese government programs called Operation Fox Hunt and Operation Sky Net.
On Thursday Judge Pamela K. Chen of Federal District Court in Brooklyn sentenced Mr. McMahon, 57, who was convicted in 2023 of acting as an unregistered foreign agent, stalking and conspiracy, to 18 months in prison.
“This type of crime really does threaten our country’s national security,” Judge Chen said, adding that Mr. McMahon had shown a lack of empathy toward the victims of the operation, who had described feeling under constant threat.
Prosecutors had asked that Mr. McMahon be sentenced to five years and 11 months in prison, citing his participation in “an international campaign to threaten, harass, surveil and intimidate Xu Jin, Liu Fang and their adult daughter” and a need to deter the Chinese government’s operations in the United States.
Defense lawyers asked Judge Chen to spare Mr. McMahon prison. They called him an ethical investigator who had informed law enforcement in New Jersey of his surveillance activity and had been unaware that his work was on behalf of the Chinese government.
Two members of the U.S. House of Representatives, Michael Lawler of New York and Pete Sessions of Texas, wrote a letter asking Judge Chen not to sentence Mr. McMahon “to any term of incarceration.” The congressmen, both Republicans, wrote that they “believe in his innocence.”
Even as she criticized Mr. McMahon on Wednesday, the judge cited the many medals he received while a police officer and his work helping to clean debris at ground zero after the Sept. 11 attacks, saying that although such acts did not outweigh the harm to Mr. Xu and his family, “in the balance they weigh fairly substantially.”
Before the sentence was handed down, Mr. McMahon addressed the court, insisting that he had not knowingly helped a foreign government.
“I never thought for one minute I was working for China, stalking anyone,” he said, adding, “This is such a nightmare.”
In a statement, John J. Durham, the interim U.S. attorney in Brooklyn, said Mr. McMahon had “terrorized victims living in the New York metropolitan area, and shattered their sense of safety and security.”
Mr. McMahon is the third person in less than a month to be sentenced in Brooklyn in connection with Chinese repression of its citizens abroad. As scrutiny of Operation Fox Hunt has increased, authorities in the United States and other countries have also examined efforts by the Chinese police to establish clandestine overseas stations. In Manhattan in 2023, the F.B.I. carried out what appeared to be the first raid of such a facility to include the seizure of materials.
Prosecutors said that Mr. McMahon had worked within a network that included a policeman and a prosecutor from China who wanted to force Mr. Xu back to the country because of crimes they claimed he had committed there.
Two men who were convicted along with Mr. McMahon, Zhu Yong and Zheng Congying, were sentenced to prison this year. Other defendants, including the policeman, Hu Ji, and the prosecutor, Tu Lan, are not in U.S. custody.
In all, nine people were accused by prosecutors of taking part in a harassment and intimidation campaign targeting Mr. Xu that stretched over several years.
In 2017 Mr. Xu’s 82-year-old father, who lived in China, arrived in New Jersey — sent there, he said, by Mr. Tu, who told him that if he refused to cooperate one of his daughters would be jailed. According to court papers, the purpose of the visit was for Mr. Xu’s father to persuade his son to return to China.
The next year, according to prosecutors, Mr. Zheng and another man traveled to Mr. Xu’s home in Warren, N.J., and posted notes on his door saying that if he returned to China and served 10 years in prison “your wife and your children will be OK.”
Mr. McMahon’s part in the operation began in 2016, when he was hired by people who his lawyers said claimed to work for a construction company to which Mr. Xu owed money. Mr. McMahon did not question his belief that he was working for a private client even after learning that Mr. Xu was being sought by the Chinese government, Mr. McMahon’s lawyers said. “Parallel civil and criminal proceedings are quite common,” they added.
Over the next several months, prosecutors said, Mr. McMahon obtained sensitive U.S. government records related to Mr. Xu from someone at the Drug Enforcement Administration, provided those to his Chinese clients and surveilled the home of Mr. Xu’s sister-in-law, Liu Yan.
On the day that Mr. Xu’s father was brought to Ms. Liu’s home, in Short Hills, N.J., Mr. McMahon received a text message from one of his clients saying the “package” had arrived, Judge Chen wrote. Mr. McMahon observed Mr. Xu’s father arrive at the home, according to prosecutors.
During the trial prosecutors introduced as evidence a text exchange from that time between Mr. McMahon and another investigator he was working with, Eric Gallowitz. “You trust them?” Mr. Gallowitz asked. Mr. McMahon replied, “No.”
The next day, Mr. McMahon followed Ms. Liu as she drove with Mr. Xu’s father to a mall in Paramus, N.J., that Mr. Xu had chosen as a meeting place to thwart Chinese spying efforts, prosecutors wrote. The plan, the prosecutors said, was for Mr. McMahon to figure out for his clients where Mr. Xu lived by following him back to his home.
That effort was successful. “Got em,” Mr. McMahon reported in a text message to Mr. Gallowitz that day. “Client was very happy.”
Mr. McMahon added that he was “waiting for a call” to find out what to do next.
“Yeah. From NJ State Police about an abduction,” Mr. Gallowitz wrote, to which Mr. McMahon replied: “Lol.”
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