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--:-- Aisha Roscoe: This is a Sunday story. NPR's Frank Langfitt spent a decade reporting in China, and he's also covered Chinese repression in Europe, which is how he came across this story of two Chinese dissidents.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: We begin with Gao Jur. He's a small, wiry, working-class guy, 44 years old with a goatee. I began talking with Gao in 2023. Over video chat, Gao told me the story of how he left China and ended up in the Netherlands.
--:-- Gao Jur: Gao grew up in China's boom years in a small village. Like tens of millions of other rural Chinese men, he moved from job to job. For instance, a waiter, a factory worker. He also worked as a security guard, drove trucks, opened a restaurant, and was an alcohol salesman.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Gao wasn't political growing up, but he learned how to get around China's internet censorship and began reading news sites overseas.
--:-- Gao Jur: In 2019, Gao read about the crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong. He was outraged and vented online. They started cursing the Communist Party, saying the Communist Party should be annihilated.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Gao recalls trying to talk to fellow factory workers about the protests.
--:-- Gao Jur: We have a very big canteen in the factory. There were four large TVs airing China Central Television. They were showing manipulated footage of the Hong Kong protests. I was telling my co-workers, it's not like this. But then I found out the people around me, they actually support the crackdown. They thought the protesters should all be destroyed.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Gao says he was so disappointed. He just wanted to leave China.
--:-- Gao Jur: I found that even if you want to enlighten some people, there's not much you can do. You end up being very pessimistic.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Gao managed to get a flight to the Netherlands and entered on a tourist visa.
--:-- Gao Jur: A few days after he arrived, his father messaged him. Police had come asking about Gao's whereabouts. Gao's father urged him to return and said he might have to do some prison time.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: At this point, I thought, wow, it's serious. No way I can go back.
--:-- Gao Jur: Gao asked for and was granted asylum by the Dutch government. His wife and two teenage kids remained in China.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Gao settled into a government-assigned house in a Dutch village. He only speaks Chinese, and nobody else there does.
--:-- Gao Jur: He says it was really lonely.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: I didn't know things would turn out like this. There's a lot of suffering you can't even express. A kind of emptiness.
--:-- Gao Jur: Gao survived on government assistance. Unemployed, he spent time studying Dutch, riding his bike, and posting online, protesting the Chinese regime, which was now thousands of miles away.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Freedom, freedom for China!
--:-- Gao Jur: Gao was also following what other Chinese dissidents were doing in the Netherlands.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Xi Jinping, down here!
--:-- Gao Jur: People sometimes demonstrated in Amsterdam or outside the Chinese embassy in The Hague.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: At the end of 2022, Gao joined a candlelight protest in The Hague's Chinatown.
--:-- Gao Jur: Afterward, as he waited for a train home, the protest organizer, a young man named Wang Jingyu, approached.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Gao already knew about Wang. In just the last few weeks, Wang had been interviewed by Dutch, German, Japanese, and Slovak media.
--:-- Gao Jur: His name is Wang Jingyu.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Gao was impressed.
--:-- Gao Jur: Such a young person with such clear-eyed and resolute resistance. I think it's very valuable, especially since he's in the same country as me.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Gao didn't know it at the time, but his relationship with Wang would change the course of his life.
--:-- Wang Jingyu: I'm 22, grew up a middle-class kid, studying at an international school in Chongqing, in China's southwest.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Unlike Gao, Wang speaks English and converses easily with people from different countries.
--:-- Wang Jingyu: Wong first made international headlines when he was 19. There had been a border clash between Chinese and Indian troops.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: China insisted that none of its soldiers had died. But writing on social media, Wong challenged that claim.
--:-- Wang Jingyu: And as reported in Indian news, Wong was right. China said for the first time on Friday that four Chinese soldiers died during a bloody...
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Speaking to NPR at the time, Wang said he couldn't stand that the government routinely misled its people.
--:-- Wang Jingyu: Since the founding of the Communist Party until now, the Chinese government has always been like this, fabricating facts, and the official media turns white into black to make Chinese people live in a world full of lies.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Chinese police wanted to detain Wang, but he was traveling overseas at the time and beyond their reach.
--:-- Wang Jingyu: Speaking here with Australian TV last year, Wong said he refused to be intimidated.
--:-- Wang Jingyu: Are you ever tempted to be silent to make your life easier? No, I will not. Because, you know, if I accept this, I just, you know, stop talking. And the Chinese authority will think this plan is work. And they will use this plan to attack another Chinese citizen. So I will not do this.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Like Gao, Wang also went to the Netherlands and gained asylum.
--:-- Wang Jingyu: He said he thought he'd be safe.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: But in the fall of 2022, Wang posted on X that he was receiving harassing calls and messages.
--:-- Wang Jingyu: It was also around this time that a human rights group revealed that China had surreptitiously opened police service stations around the world, including 30 in Europe.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: China said the stations just provided services like driver's license renewal.
--:-- Wang Jingyu: But Wang called reporters a Chinese police station in the Netherlands had bombarded him with calls and threatened his family.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: They make a phone call to me. I give you three days to go back to China. Otherwise, your family or your parents have a problem.
--:-- Wang Jingyu: In fact, it seemed the Communist Party really had it out for Wang.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: He told reporters someone had also made bomb threats in his name to hotels in Europe and Canada.
--:-- Wang Jingyu: This practice is called swatting. That's when someone reports a fake crime that tricks police into targeting an innocent person.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: It seems to have worked.
--:-- Wang Jingyu: Dutch police did investigate. And according to Wong, they questioned him after they received an anonymous email.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: It warned that Wong was planning to blow up the international criminal court in The Hague.
--:-- Wang Jingyu: I just told some police officer, I said, it's absolutely made by Chinese authority.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: And the police asked me, do you need a lawyer? I said, I don't need a lawyer because I didn't do anything.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Through his many interviews and claims, Wang became one of the public faces of Chinese government repression in Europe.
--:-- Wang Jingyu: More than 50 news organizations have quoted, mentioned or featured it.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Wang Jingyu is heading to his adversary.
--:-- Wang Jingyu: Wang Jingyu is a political dissident based in The Hague who claims he has been harassed by people connected to this service.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: His name is Wang Jingyu.
--:-- Wang Jingyu: Wang Jingyu who lives in the Netherlands has first experience of this secret force intent on flexing its muscle anywhere anytime
--:-- Frank Langfitt: A few months after Wong and Gao first talked at the train station, Wong messaged him on WhatsApp.
--:-- Wang Jingyu: He told Gao the harassment had become so intense, he could no longer stay in his apartment.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Wang said he couldn't sleep. He was very depressed.
--:-- Wang Jingyu: So he asked if he could come stay with me for a few days.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: I said where I am is remote, but it is quiet.
--:-- Gao Jur: Gao lived in a three-story house. The other bedrooms were empty as he waited for his family to come from China.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: They'd applied for visas to join him in the Netherlands, but were still waiting.
--:-- Gao Jur: So for the time being, Gao was happy to play host.
--:-- Wang Jingyu: And Wang made himself comfortable, extending his stay from days to weeks to months.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: And he continued to entertain reporters, even using Gao's living room for TV interviews.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: A few months after Wang's arrival, Gao received alarming news.
--:-- Gao Jur: Back in China, police officers had questioned his wife, Liu, roughed her up and seized her cell phone.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Gao urged her and their children, a daughter who was 16 and a son 19, to flee the country.
--:-- Gao Jur: So they flew to Bangkok.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: And that's when everything went to hell.
--:-- Gao Jur: Shortly after Gao's wife arrived in Thailand, she says she received a terrifying email.
--:-- Liu: It appeared to be from Dutch immigration.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Here's what the email said.
--:-- Liu: The airports in Berlin, Helsinki, Stockholm, in Copenhagen received bomb threats, claiming to be from you and your son.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Therefore, you and your son's travel to the EU is legally restricted.
--:-- Liu: They were shocked, frightened, and amidst the confusion, they overstayed their Thai tourist visas.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: As a result, a court sentenced them to two months in immigration detention.
--:-- Gao Jur: It seemed that they were being swatted, just as Wong said he had been.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Gao's son Peng had arrived in Thailand after his mother and sister, so his visa was still valid, and he's never been incarcerated.
--:-- Gao Jur: Back in the Netherlands, Gao got an even more perplexing message from that same Dutch immigration account.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: It said his wife and daughter had confessed to making additional bomb threats.
--:-- Gao Jur: They admitted to the Royal Thai Police that the bomb threats sent to the embassies of EU states in Thailand were personally sent by them.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: They apologized for this and volunteered to return to China.
--:-- Gao Jur: Gao couldn't believe it.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: He said his wife and kids weren't even political.
--:-- Gao Jur: Gao was sure the Communist Party was behind the threats, but he wondered why.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Why would the party go to such lengths to target him and his family?
--:-- Gao Jur: I really can't understand the motive. It's too big a waste of resources. I'm obscure, like a nobody.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Among Chinese dissidents, Gao was not that well-known.
--:-- Gao Jur: But his new friend Wang was.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: And in fact, Gao was getting some other strange messages that even mentioned Wang.
--:-- Gao Jur: Once, someone claiming to be a Communist Party agent sent a private message to Gao, urging him to stop Wang from talking to reporters.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: But Wang kept doing interviews.
--:-- Gao Jur: Maybe, the men thought, the Chinese government had targeted Gao's family because he'd failed to stop Wang.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: I think the Chinese government is treating us so badly to show its power. No matter whether you're at home or abroad, you cannot escape its power.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Welcome back to the Sunday Story. We've been hearing the story of Gao Zhur, a Chinese dissident living in the Netherlands.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: His family is trying to join him there, but they've been detained in Thailand and accused of making bomb threats.
--:-- Gao Jur: Gao and his friend Wang Jingyu suggest the Chinese government is actually behind these threats.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Frank Langfitt and his reporting partner believe this could be the case, but they need proof.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: I was drawn to this story because I was intrigued by Wang and his claims of swatting.
--:-- Wang Jingyu: This seemed like a really innovative tactic. Get law enforcement in free countries to do the Communist Party's dirty work.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: I told Wang I was interested in reporting on the phenomenon of bomb threats, so he introduced me to Gao.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: The bomb threats and detention of Gao's wife and daughter made for a gripping story, and we wanted to be the first to tell it.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: But there was a problem. We couldn't corroborate Gao's account.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Thai police and Chinese diplomats wouldn't discuss the case.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: We needed official documents.
--:-- Gao Jur: So Gao sent us screenshots of the emails from that Dutch government account.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: But he didn't include the sender's email address and refused to give it to us, which seems strange.
--:-- Wang Jingyu: This is personal contact information from the immigration service. So he did get permission first.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Otherwise, you know, the Dutch authorities will be angry because they don't want to talk to journalists.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: This was frustrating.
--:-- Wang Jingyu: Wong seemed to be serving as a gatekeeper, and I wasn't sure why.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: So I decided to try to verify the emails on my own.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: I forwarded one of Gao's screenshots to the Dutch Immigration press office, and then I called.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: At first, Dutch Immigration refused to discuss the case, citing privacy laws.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: I said, just tell me if the email's authentic.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: The press officer paused.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: She told me they had no record of it.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: We call that a forgery, I said.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Yes, the official responded.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: At this moment, the story began to change, and I had a whole new set of questions.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: So, if the emails were fake, what about the bomb threats mentioned in those emails? Did they even happen?
--:-- Frank Langfitt: I called police in Europe and asked about the alleged bomb threats to airports.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: The cops? They'd never heard of them.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: What the hell was going on?
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Was Gao trying to trick us? But someone tricked him.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: We video-called Gao. He was sitting in his living room on a gray couch against a bare green wall.
--:-- Gao Jur: At his side, as usual, was Wang.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: We told them the Dutch immigration email was fake.
--:-- Gao Jur: For real? This document's forged?
--:-- Frank Langfitt: I got a lot of emails from this Dutch immigration account. Wouldn't I be accused of forging the others too?
--:-- Gao Jur: I don't have those skills. For starters, I don't understand Dutch or English.
--:-- Wang Jingyu: Who gave the phone number to you? Could it be an imposter?
--:-- Frank Langfitt: In the following weeks, we didn't speak much with Wang and Gao.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: They didn't seem to trust us, and well, we didn't really trust them either.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Then, about six weeks later, Wang wrote me privately with shocking news.
--:-- Wang Jingyu: German police had arrested Gao.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: I couldn't believe it, but it was true.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: We called Gao shortly after he was released from jail and back home in the Netherlands.
--:-- Gao Jur: The story Gao told us was wild.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: He said one night he got an email from that same Dutch immigration account.
--:-- Gao Jur: It said that his wife and daughter had been released from Thai detention.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: The Dutch account told him they couldn't contact him while in transit.
--:-- Gao Jur: But it assured him they would soon be reunited.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: His wife and daughter were headed to Europe.
--:-- Gao Jur: His son Peng would follow later.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: In fact, Peng had already handed over credit card details to pay for his flights.
--:-- Gao Jur: But progress was slow.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: The Dutch immigration account explained that the bomb threat allegations continued to trail his wife and daughter as they traveled first to Istanbul.
--:-- Gao Jur: Leo and Han are currently being temporarily held in the immigration office's detention room.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Then, six days later, to Switzerland.
--:-- Gao Jur: Liu and Han are currently under criminal investigation by the Swiss Federal Police in Basel.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Finally, it appeared as if they'd cleared their legal hurdles.
--:-- Gao Jur: Gao's wife and daughter were on their way to Germany.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: The news was an enormous relief.
--:-- Gao Jur: Gao had even sent Peng a video to show how he was preparing for his wife and daughter's arrival.
--:-- Gao Jur: Look inside this fridge. I bought eggs and milk and things. It's all waiting for your mom.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: The next day, Gau gets the email he's been waiting for.
--:-- Gao Jur: You need to leave this afternoon.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Officials of the German Federal Police and the German Federal Intelligence Service will contact you directly.
--:-- Gao Jur: Following instructions from the Dutch immigration account, Gao took a train for several hours to a small German city.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: When he got off, he lit a cigarette and waited to hear from German officials on where to meet his family.
--:-- Gao Jur: Then, a man approached.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: When he stretched out his hand, I thought he was going to ask me for cigarettes.
--:-- Gao Jur: Instead, he grabbed me, pushed me to the ground.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: After he pinned me down, I had a chance to look up.
--:-- Gao Jur: I saw four or five policemen with guns pointed at me.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: It was the German police, but they weren't there to take Gow to his family.
--:-- Gao Jur: Instead, they were there to take him to jail.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: It was only during the interrogation when I was told that someone had accused me of threatening to kill them.
--:-- Gao Jur: I was shocked.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: According to German police and public statements made by the accuser,
--:-- Frank Langfitt: A young man who lived in Germany, a close associate of Wang's, told police Gao was part of a secret communist cell and that Gao had threatened to kill him.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: The police initially took the threat seriously.
--:-- Gao Jur: Gao knew the man in passing but he denied threatening the guy
--:-- Frank Langfitt: What my motivation right I finally escaped from China and went through so much hardship Did I escape to kill people
--:-- Frank Langfitt: The German police refused to comment on the case, but there's no evidence they charged Gao.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: They released him within several days, and Gao boarded a train for home.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: He was disoriented and distraught.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: It appeared Gao might yet be another victim of swatting.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Accused of a fake crime so police would target him, just like his family and his friend, Wong.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: But as Gao rode the train back to the Netherlands, he couldn't get through to Wong or his son, so he recorded a video for them explaining what had happened.
--:-- Gao Jur: My face was bruised after the police pressed me into the ground.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: What happened to you? I can't reach anyone.
--:-- Gao Jur: I just want to know what's going on. Were you also duped? Have you been arrested? How do I come and save you?
--:-- Frank Langfitt: There was no response.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Wang, who had left Gao's house weeks earlier, was now ghosting him.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: And the Dutch immigration account? It went silent too.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Maybe they'd achieved their goal and didn't need to contact me anymore.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: The con was over.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: When we left off, Gao Juer had been persuaded to go to Germany, believing he was about to reunite with his family.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Instead, he was arrested after what appears to have been another case of swatting.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: When German police release Gao, he heads back to the Netherlands.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: And he's had an epiphany.
--:-- Gao Jur: He's been conned.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: He just doesn't know by whom.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: After months of phone calls and messages, Frank and his reporting partner decide to meet Gao in person.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Welcome to Amsterdam and to National Airport.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: The local time is 7.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: So we're on our way to see Gao, and we've been driving for about two and a half hours, mostly through these flat green fields, some snow on the edges, past lots of wind farms here in the Netherlands, and now we're in a small village.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Little red brick homes, black roofs.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: We pulled up to Gal's house.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: The neighbor's cat was scratching at his door.
--:-- Gao Jur: Gao's even thinner and shorter than he'd appeared on screen.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: He scurries about his sparsely furnished living room, playing host to us, the rare visitors.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: I recognize the gray couch where he sat with Wang during our many video calls.
--:-- Gao Jur: Wang and his girlfriend spent six months living here.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Last August, they took off in such a rush, they left belongings behind, including duffels filled with clothing.
--:-- Gao Jur: These are Wang's slippers, Gao tells us.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: They're lined up along the wall, as though Wang might return any minute, even though he's been gone for months.
--:-- Gao Jur: Gao lays out more of Wang's possessions on the dining room table.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: And there are a bunch of passport photos.
--:-- Gao Jur: There are one, two, three, four, five, six, seven SIM cards.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: After German police released him, Gao returned here and sank into despair.
--:-- Gao Jur: He explained in a call.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: I was in very poor spirits. I couldn't get out of bed.
--:-- Gao Jur: I realized that I'd been deceived, leading to a catastrophe, a huge disaster for my family.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: A disaster, not only because of the emotional toll, but also because, Gao says, his family was tricked out of a total of $17,000, their life savings, plus loans from family.
--:-- Gao Jur: Alone and realizing he'd been wiped out, Gao finally decided to trust us.
--:-- Gao Jur: He and his son sent us their exchanges with that now infamous Dutch immigration account.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: We finally got to see the sender's email address.
--:-- Gao Jur: It was a ProtonMail account, not an email from the Dutch government, but an account from an encrypted email service that anyone can use.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Gao, who didn't grasp the significance of a domain name, didn't know that.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: But it was clear now.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: The Dutch immigration account was fake.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: The Gao sent us other emails as well.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: From fake Thai airways and fake Royal Thai police accounts
--:-- Frank Langfitt: There were also private messages
--:-- Frank Langfitt: From people claiming to be Communist Party secret agents
--:-- Frank Langfitt: You can only trust our group
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Because no one's going to believe a word you said
--:-- Frank Langfitt: My reporting partner spent weeks Poring through all the communications
--:-- Frank Langfitt: More than 700 emails and months of private messages, including documents, screenshots, photos and videos in Chinese, English, Dutch and Thai.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Bump threats claiming to be from you and your son.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: You can run away from now, but you will regret it forever.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Under criminal investigation.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: We accept all Visa, MasterCard, American Express, JBC, Diners Club International, EC Euro credit cards.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: What emerged was a roadmap to what the gals described as an elaborate long con.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Sifting through the emails, we saw how the fake Dutch immigration account manipulated and tormented the family.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Emails claiming they'd made bomb threats left them paralyzed with fear.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: The account also tricked Gao's wife and daughter into missing a real visa appointment, paving the way for their actual detention.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Then another devastating blow.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: The fake Dutch account convinced Gao to go to Germany, where he was arrested.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: And then there was the money.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: The family obtained credit cards, and the son handed over their details to the fake Thai Airways account.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Mysterious charges began appearing on the gals' bills.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: $16 for Uber Eats in Amsterdam, $41 for a big bus tour in Berlin, $172 to SeaTrip, China's largest online travel agency.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: The credit card company confirmed the charges to NPR.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: All this time, the gals said they had never used these credit cards.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: But they say they didn't cancel them because they thought they were necessary to get the family members to Europe.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Looking back at how this all began, with fake emails about fake bomb threats,
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Gao realized there was one common thread.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Are you ever tempted to be silent to make your life easier? No, I will not. His celebrity dissident friend.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: I will not do this.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Who lived with him.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: To put it bluntly, Wang Jingyu has been misleading me.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: But how to be certain?
--:-- Frank Langfitt: We went back through all those fake immigration emails and found evidence Wang might have written some of them.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: They referred to Wang 13 times and said he had a special status.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: One email told the Gals that Wong was, quote, a national key-protected person in the Netherlands.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Another email referred to a Dutch official named F. Langfit.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Someone had incorporated my name into this international fraud.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Who else but Wong?
--:-- Frank Langfitt: As we looked more closely at Gals' credit card records,
--:-- Frank Langfitt: We found at least one charge went to a PayPal account named Wong Jingyu NL.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Seems pretty damning, although Wong denies it's his.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: We also went back through hours of old interviews and found two moments when Wong assured us the Dutch immigration email account was authentic.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: We had it on tape.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Wong says, I want to be honest. I saw the email address.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: The end is at ind.nl.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: ind.nl, which is the real domain name for Dutch immigration.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: But of course, the emails came from a ProtonMail account.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: We sent some of the fake emails to the real Dutch Immigration and Naturalization Service.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: They were investigating who impersonated them.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: And we got to thinking, if Wang was behind all this,
--:-- Frank Langfitt: How could anyone trust anything he'd ever said?
--:-- Frank Langfitt: From his claims that Chinese authorities had targeted him with harassing calls,
--:-- Frank Langfitt: I can't understand. Why?
--:-- Frank Langfitt: To his stories about the Communist Party swatting him with fake bomb threats in Europe.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: It's absolutely made by Chinese authorities.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: One reason people were willing to believe Wang, including us for a while,
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Is because the Chinese Communist Party does spy on, threaten, and even abduct dissidents abroad.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: As long as there have been dissidents who have left repressive environments,
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Governments have followed them across borders.
--:-- Yana Gorhovskaya: Yana Gorhovskaya is a research director at Freedom House, the Washington think tank.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: She says scholars call these kinds of attacks transnational repression.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: And she says the Communist Party runs the most sophisticated and comprehensive repression campaign in the world.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: China is unique among countries that perpetrate transnational repression in the global reach and the number of tactics it uses.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: FBI Director Christopher Wray addressed the growing problem in a speech in April.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: They're exporting their repression efforts and human rights abuses,
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Targeting, threatening, harassing those who dare question their legitimacy and authority even outside of China,
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Including right here in the United States.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Wang appeared to exploit that reputation.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: In his dealings with the Gaos,
--:-- Frank Langfitt: He routinely blamed the party for everything bad that happened to them.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: For instance, when the Gao family realized their credit cards were bleeding money,
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Someone claiming to be a Chinese secret agent messaged Gao to take the blame.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: And Wang sent Gao a voice message to commiserate.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: This is so bad.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Old commie has so much money and still steals from other people.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Just like the Communist Party,
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Wang also sowed confusion and fear.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Gao Sun Peng was getting guidance from Wang on how to get out of Thailand.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: One time, when Peng couldn't get through to him,
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Wang suggested a communist agent was disrupting their calls.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: The idea terrified Peng.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: He said he was afraid to leave his hotel room in Thailand because he thought a Chinese agent might try to poison him
--:-- Frank Langfitt: The Communist Party does have this kind of dark history
--:-- Frank Langfitt: It will negotiate terms with you when you at your weakest
--:-- Frank Langfitt: So I thought if I comply will I be murdered
--:-- Frank Langfitt: In fairness, the party is not known for assassinating people overseas.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: China is not Russia.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: But the Gaos believed Wang because of China's history of repression.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Gao also says he trusted Wang because the news media did.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Newspapers published a lot of interviews with him.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: We trust the mainstream media, so we trusted him.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: We don't speak foreign languages, so with all of his media clips,
--:-- Frank Langfitt: It was very easy for Wang to trick us.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: I initially trusted Wang for similar reasons.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: But Wong appeared to try to trick and manipulate me, too.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: As we struggled to verify the bomb threats pinned on the Gao family,
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Wong warned me.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Another news organization was about to break the story.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: No journalist wants to get beat,
--:-- Frank Langfitt: But I hadn't finished my reporting.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Then, last July, the Associated Press published the Thai bomb threat story involving the Gals.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: The AP treated the fake Dutch immigration emails as authentic.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: And said the bomb threats appeared to be part of China's increasingly sophisticated efforts to harass Chinese dissidents living overseas and their families.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: On X, Wang touted the AP's story to his nearly 42,000 followers.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: The story was republished by the Toronto Star, the Washington Times, and one of Japan's top newspapers, Asai Shimbun.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: We reached out to the AP recently and told them about the forgeries.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Last week, the Associated Press decided to kill the story, citing the emails and saying, quote, there is uncertainty about any Chinese involvement.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: It was time to confront Wong face to face.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: He'd agreed to a meeting during our trip to the Netherlands.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Anytime and anywhere, he wrote.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: But after we arrived, Wong messaged us.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Now I got a note from him saying, Unfortunately, I'm in Germany now.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: I'm filming a documentary.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: I don't think I'll have time to go to Amsterdam.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: After a few hours back and forth,
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Wong did agree to talk, but only by phone.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Hey, Wong. Hey, Frank, how are you?
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Good, where are you?
--:-- Frank Langfitt: I'm a restaurant.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Well, I mean, it's not like you're in a bar? You're in a restaurant.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Long said he was in Germany, but who knows?
--:-- Frank Langfitt: The Gao family thinks that you were working behind these fake accounts,
--:-- Frank Langfitt: The Dutch immigration account, and that you and other people stole thousands and thousands of dollars from them.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: This is ridiculous. It's ridiculous.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: And I promise I will sue all of them.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: You will sue all of them.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Have you ever called in a bomb threat? Ever?
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Never.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Have you ever sent an email and made a bomb threat?
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Listen, honestly, it's ridiculous.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Do you consider yourself as a fighter for human rights and democracy?
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Oh, this is a really big question.
--:-- Frank Langfitt: Well, I mean
