LOS ANGELES
Two men were arrested for allegedly conspiring to smuggle contraband from China into the U.S. through the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the Justice Department announced.
Zhongliang Wang, 39, and Chenyu Zhao, 31, both of Hacienda Heights, were taken into custody—Wang on Wednesday, and Zhao last Thursday while boarding a one-way flight to China.
Both face charges of conspiracy and illegally removing goods from customs custody. They allegedly redirected flagged shipping containers to unauthorized locations, unloaded the contraband, refilled the containers with decoy cargo, and returned them for inspection, attempting to evade detection.
Law enforcement has seized over $1.3 billion in contraband tied to this and similar schemes. A search of one implicated warehouse revealed counterfeit luxury items and 19.5 kilograms of enobosarm, an illegal steroid.
“Protecting our nation’s borders from illegal smuggling is a top priority,” said Acting United States Attorney Joseph McNally. “These arrests highlight the unrelenting efforts of law enforcement to dismantle criminal networks that seek to exploit our trade system and endanger American businesses and consumers.”
According to court documents, Zhao and his co-conspirators operated warehouses to store, hide, and sell large amounts of contraband smuggled from China into the U.S.
When Customs and Border Protection (CBP) flagged containers for inspection, the defendants hired commercial truck drivers to transport them to locations they controlled, including a warehouse in the City of Industry managed by Zhao and others.
At these locations, they broke the containers’ security seals, removed the contraband, and replaced the seals with counterfeits to hide the tampering. The containers, now filled with replacement “filler” cargo, were then transported to CBP-authorized locations for inspection.
Wang, Zhao, and others paid above-market trucking fees to carry out the scheme. In one instance, Wang allegedly paid $15,000 to divert a single container in December 2024.
The defendants are presumed innocent unless proven guilty.
If convicted of all charges, Wang and Zhao would face a statutory maximum sentence of five years in federal prison for each conspiracy count and up to 10 years in federal prison for each count of breaking customs seals.
Homeland Security Investigations, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and Coast Guard Investigative Services are investigating this matter.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Colin S. Scott and Amanda B. Elbogen of the Terrorism and Export Crimes Section are prosecuting this matter.