Helped his girlfriend in prison to delete WeChat incriminating evidence New York Chinese man pleaded guilty

Deleting Evidence Related to International Human Trafficking Investigation from WeChat Faces Up to 20 Years in Prison

A Chinese national in the United States pleaded guilty to conspiracy to tamper with evidence after helping his girlfriend in prison delete messages on WeChat about human trafficking. (MARTIN BUREAU/AFP)

Xu Zhang, a Chinese national in New York, pleaded guilty Tuesday in federal court in the Middle District of Tennessee to conspiracy to tamper with evidence related to an international human trafficking investigation.

According to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Xu Zhang, 31, was indicted in September 2019 after prosecutors said he conspired with his girlfriend, Gao Xing, to tamper with and conceal records related to the federal investigation. Xing Gao was the subject of an international human trafficking investigation at the time and was taken into federal custody, according to court documents. Zhang Xu visited Gao Xing in prison.

During the visits, Xing Gao told Zhang Xu to delete conversations from her WeChat account and gave him the password to his WeChat account, teaching him to access her WeChat account through his mother in China in order to delete important information from her WeChat account, including contacts and conversations, court documents said.

Xing Gao said what she wanted Zhang Xu to delete (if discovered) would make her case worse, and she instructed Zhang Xu to change her WeChat name, according to court documents.

The next day, Zhang Xu called the jail to tell Xing Gao that he had deleted the information she said she had and had changed Xing’s WeChat name and attempted to delete and destroy important information related to his WeChat account.

On Nov. 1, 2019, Xing Gao died by suicide in his cell at the Kentucky Detention Facility in Davis County.

A judge is scheduled to sentence Zhang Xu, who faces up to 20 years in prison, on Sept. 15 of this year. The case was investigated by the Department of Homeland Security, the IRS and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI).