China’s government in 2022 asked Lu to help locate an individual living in California considered a pro-democracy activist, prosecutors said.
Lu and Chen are both US citizens who lead a non-profit organisation that lists its mission as providing a social gathering place for people from China’s Fujian province, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said the pair had admitted to the FBI that they deleted their communications with a Chinese government official after learning they were under investigation.
Also on Monday, prosecutors unveiled charges against 34 Chinese officials for allegedly operating a “troll farm” and harassing dissidents online, including by disrupting their meetings on US technology platforms.
They also added eight Chinese government officials as defendants in a case announced in 2020 charging a former China-based executive of Zoom Video Communications Inc with disrupting video meetings commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.
The officials charged are all at large.
China’s embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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Illegal Chinese police centres in Netherlands ordered to shut immediately
Monday’s charges come after FBI Director Christopher Wray told a US Senate committee in November that he was “very concerned” about the presence of such stations in US cities.
Prosecutors previously charged more than a dozen Chinese nationals and others with waging surveillance and harassment campaigns against dissidents living in the United States, including by trying to forcibly repatriate people whom China considered fugitives.
